The Australian govt stated it sought after to crack down on the usage of e-cigarettes so as to “scale back smoking and stamp out vaping” in one of the sweeping tobacco regulatory strikes within the nation in years.

The proposal, introduced on Tuesday, would ban all single-use, disposable vapes; forestall the importation of nonprescription vapes; require “pharmaceutical-like packaging”; scale back nicotine concentrations and quantities; and prohibit sure flavors, colours and substances.

The government would additionally paintings with states and territories to finish the sale of vapes in comfort retail outlets and different retail settings “whilst additionally making it more uncomplicated to get a prescription for authentic healing use,” the Division of Well being and Elderly Care stated in a observation.

Nicotine vapes are lately to be had best with a prescription in Australia, however they thrive at the black marketplace, particularly amongst younger other folks. Whilst the contours of the proposal are nonetheless tentative, Mark Butler, the well being minister, stated its long-term intentions have been transparent.

“I need vaping to go back to the aim that we have been informed it was once invented for, that could be a healing product to lend a hand long-term people who smoke give up,” Mr. Butler stated in a speech on the Nationwide Press Membership of Australia on Tuesday. “We have been promised this was once a pathway out of smoking, now not a pathway into smoking. That’s what it has develop into. That’s what it’s been offered as so shamelessly and introduced as.”

Particularly, Mr. Butler stated, the federal government desires “to stamp out the concept that this can be a leisure product in any respect, however specifically a leisure product for our children.”

“Knocking that marketplace out is what I’m aiming for,” he stated.

Many well being regulators, together with the Meals and Drug Management in america, imagine e-cigarettes to be in most cases really helpful as a result of they supply an alternative choice to grownup people who smoke of conventional cigarettes, which coat the lungs in tar. However regulators didn’t account for younger other folks changing into hooked on nicotine once you have hooked at the fruity flavors of vapes, nor for the mysterious and life-threatening vaping-related diseases afflicting many younger customers. The F.D.A. started its personal crackdown in recent times.

Mr. Butler stated the Australian govt had no plans to prohibit smoking or to segment out smoking via start 12 months, as New Zealand did lately when it positioned an entire life prohibition on cigarette gross sales to everybody born after 2008.

In its observation, the federal government referred to as the tactic a “new nationwide framework” to cut back day by day smoking charges throughout Australia.

Australia’s treasurer, Jim Chalmers, will ship the government’s annual working finances to Parliament on Might 9. It’ll come with 737 million Australian bucks, or just about $492 million, in investment for the initiative.

The finances will name for a 5 p.c annual building up within the tobacco tax, efficient Sept. 1, producing an extra 3.3 billion Australian bucks, or about $2.2 billion, in income over 4 years. Mr. Butler stated on Tuesday that the federal government would in large part make investments that cash within the country’s well being machine, together with a brand new nationwide lung most cancers screening program, most cancers care products and services for Indigenous teams and systems to cut back vaping and smoking amongst First Countries Australians.

However the focal point of the initiative, Mr. Butler stated, was once to “close down a big well being possibility to the youngest era of Australians.”

“Everyone knows this as we engage as folks or uncles and aunties with younger college scholars — it’s only flourishing, specifically over the process Covid,” he stated. “We’re going to have to close down an trade, a marketplace that has been allowed to develop up, despite the truth that it wasn’t in reality intended to.”

However Nicole Lee, an accessory professor on the Nationwide Drug Analysis Institute at Curtin College, stated she was once skeptical that this sort of means would have the impact at the black marketplace that regulators was hoping it could. A scarcity of number one care medical doctors implies that the ones in the hunt for prescriptions for vapes are much less prone to get them, striking extra tension on an already explosive black marketplace.

“We need to see diminished get admission to and we need to see other folks in a position to make use of it for quitting smoking,” she stated. “Quasi banning it method the black marketplace will flourish and younger other folks have extra get admission to, now not much less get admission to.”

Yan Zhuang contributed reporting.