The reforms, announced this week by Health Minister Mark Butler, will reinforce the prescription-only model and restrict the flavouring and nicotine content.
Dr Colin Mendelsohn, an academic researcher and tobacco treatment and harm reduction expert, said these reforms would only lead to increased smoking rates.
“The current prescription-only model, spearheaded by former health minister Greg Hunt, has already been rejected by both doctors and consumers and created the thriving illicit market selling dodgy, mislabelled vaping products freely to children and adults,” he said.
“These regulations will do nothing to improve the failed vaping restrictions.”
Mr Mendelsohn said nicotine vaping products were proven to be effective as a smoking cessation aid and that authorities needed to make vapes easily available for adult smokers to help them quit, while restricting access for children.
“The only way to eliminate a black market is to replace it with a legal, regulated market,” he said.
“A tightly regulated consumer model for vaping — the preferred approach in every other Western country — would draw people away from the black market into a safe consumer market where the government can protect young people and provide a much less harmful alternative to deadly cigarettes for adult smokers.”
Mr Mendelsohn also labelled the reforms a $234 million mistake.
“As it stands, the proposed reforms will create one of Australia’s most significant public health disasters in decades.”
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