Fears vaping generation risk chronic lung disease and shortened life spans as '10,000

May 29, 2023

The emergence of vaping devices claiming to contain up to 10,000 puffs has prompted calls for health authorities to take urgent action given the rate of young people taking up the habit.

It comes as the Australian Medical Association of Queensland (AMAQ) has called on the governments to crackdown on the vaping industry to protect the health of young people.

University of Sydney associate professor Becky Freeman recently led the Generation Vape study, which surveyed more than 700 New South Wales teenagers aged between 14 and 17 about their experiences and perceptions of vapes.

The study found 32 per cent had used a vape, and a third of those bought it themselves from a friend or from retailers like convenience stores or tobacconists.

Dr Freeman told the ABC she had seen a vaping device that claimed to contain 10,000 puffs after it had been seized by NSW authorities late last year.

It comes after a decade of change in the devices that have become much more enticing to children, she said.

Many vaping devices claim to contain hundreds of puffs up to several thousand.

"Over the past 18 months, much larger devices have come on the market, and while they're still disposable, they have so much liquid in them, and so many puffs, that they're also rechargeable," Dr Freeman said.

"When we compare that to cigarettes … a typical pack of cigarettes would say have 20 cigarettes inside, each cigarette which would have 10 puffs, that's 200 puffs in a pack of cigarettes," she said.

"These disposable devices come with a recharging cable that you can plug in and keep using until you use up those 10,000 puffs."

To listen to the key decision makers, health experts, and the kids at the centre of the vaping discussion, join Kat Feeney on ABC Radio Brisbane.

Dr Freeman said the habits of vapers is often different to that of smokers.

"When a smoker goes outside for a cigarette break, they have their one cigarette, most likely they smoke it they go back inside either to work or to their families or the social situation they're in," she said.

"Whereas a vaper might use their product continuously throughout the day, taking in small puffs using it to keep those nicotine levels up."

However, Dr Freeman said the Generation Vape study had shown younger users prefer devices with 100 to 200 puffs because they are cheaper and easier to conceal, while the new high-puff volume devices more popular with older teenagers and young adults.

AMAQ president Maria Boulton said the amount of nicotine and chemicals in vaping devices containing several thousand puffs was concerning.

Dr Boulton said one of the concerns was the "quantity of toxic substance" in vapes promising thousands of puffs.

"Vapes are a highly unregulated industry, a lot of the time we don't know what we find or what those vapes contain in them," she said.

"The issue is that there are laws already in place that prohibit the sale of nicotine containing vapes to people without a script, but somehow these vapes are still making it to the market and they're still making it to children and adolescents, I mean, this is just really, really serious."

Dr Boulton said studies had shown that vaping was dangerous, whether or not they contained nicotine.

"It can cause seizures, can cause lung injury, lung burns, chronic lung disease, headaches, and it can also lead to an increase in people taking up cigarette smoking," she said.

"What we don't want to see in the next 10, 20 years is children who are then adults who become hooked on vaping and then start presenting with chronic lung disease and who unfortunately, will have a shortened life span because of that."

It comes as a Queensland parliamentary committee is investigating the prevalence and risks of vaping in the state, after reports of primary-school-aged children using the devices.

The parliamentary inquiry is currently taking submissions and is due to report back at the end of August.

In its submission the AMAQ has called for the state government to establish a licensing regime for tobacco retailers, and to "properly enforce" existing regulations because officials were "already playing catch up".

The federal government last week conceded authorities were "losing the battle" on vaping.

It has committed to reviewing advice from the Therapeutic Goods Administration on vaping reform — which received 4,000 submissions.

Health Minister Mark Butler said the "status quo on vaping had become completely unacceptable".

"Health Ministers are determined to take strong action about the explosion of illegal vaping in Australia and stamp out this menace," he said in a statement.

"The tobacco industry has found a new way to develop a generation of nicotine addicts and we will not stand for it.

"The TGA's work will help to inform the work of health ministers."

The new Health of Queenslanders report, released yesterday, shows that between 2018 to 2022, e-cigarette use among Queensland adults had increased by 40 per cent.

The largest increase in vaping over that time was among those aged 18 to 24 years.

In 2022, 19.7 per cent of Queensland adults had used an e-cigarette in their lifetime.

The report also included data from a 2017 Australian Secondary Students' Alcohol and Drug (ASSAD) Survey, which showed 15.6 per cent of Queensland school children 12 to 17 years had used an e-cigarette in their lifetime.

We've got an ABC News homepage for you. Adjust your settings for the right mix of local and national news.

More than 2,553 parents completed a phone survey last year on their views about vaping, the report said.

Less than half of parents surveyed had spoken to their child about vaping but one third said their child's high school had provided information.

Of the parents, 90 per cent believed secondary schools should provide more information about e-cigarettes to students.

Despite legal restrictions on advertising of vapes, about one in five parents reported seeing advertisements for e-cigarettes in physical shops, most commonly tobacconists and vaping stores, and about one in six had seen advertising online, mostly on social media and online marketplace websites.