<
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/oct/02/predatory-shops-are-selling-lollies-and-vapes-to-children-across-australia-with-no-date-set-for-import-ban>
"From the outside, the stores look like “every child’s dream”, says University
of Sydney tobacco control expert Prof Becky Freeman.
Throughout Australia, an increasing number of stores are opening, displaying
colourful, often international lolly brands in their windows, including across
the road from schools. Inside the stores, e-cigarettes and vapes are readily
available in similarly attractive packaging and flavours to sweets and
ice-cream – bubble gum, watermelon and exotic lime.
Freeman says it is a marketing tactic mastered by the tobacco industry.
“There used to be huge walls of tobacco products in shops and the packages were
the same colours as the chocolate and lolly wrappings on the sweets being sold
alongside them,” Freeman says. “Appealing to young people has always been the
core business of these harmful industries.”
Dual vape-lolly shops are opening despite the health minister, Mark Butler,
announcing in May that reforms will be introduced to ban the import of nicotine
and non-nicotine vapes and vape products, with only licensed pharmacists
permitted to import and sell them to people with a prescription from their GP.
Once the rules come into effect, vape stores will be forced to close, and other
retailers will have to get rid of all vape products. But no start date has been
set, and in the meantime, Freeman says, stores selling vape products continue
to open seemingly undeterred, some of them metres from schools.
Regulations requiring vaping products to come with warning labels, in
restricted flavours, and in plain pharmaceutical packaging are also yet to take
effect.
The Melbourne GP Dr Stuart Emmerson says he is “dismayed” to see a new candy
store, which also sells vapes, open directly opposite a primary school."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
