The Australian government will introduce a series of controls in the coming weeks to crack down on e-cigarettes, the government said Tuesday, accusing tobacco companies of deliberately targeting young people and allowing e-cigarettes to spread among teenagers and even elementary school children.

Foreign media said that the latest data from a survey showed that 1 in 6 of Australia’s 14-17-year-olds had smoked e-cigarettes; and 1 in 4 of the 18-24-year-old group had smoked e-cigarettes. To curb this trend, the Australian government will strictly regulate e-cigarettes.

Australia’s regulatory measures for e-cigarettes include a proposed ban on the importation of over-the-counter e-cigarettes, a ban on the sale of e-cigarettes in retail stores, and only the sale of e-cigarettes in pharmacies, with packaging similar to pharmaceutical packaging, including the concentration and content of e-cigarette flavors, outer packaging colors, and nicotine and other ingredients to be restricted. In addition, the government intends to completely ban the sale of disposable e-cigarettes. Specific restrictions will be further confirmed in the May budget.

In fact, before that, the Australian government has explicitly stated that you must have a prescription to legally purchase e-cigarettes from a pharmacist, but due to poor industry regulation, the black market for e-cigarettes has flourished, which has allowed more and more urban youth to use e-cigarettes through retail stores or illegal channels.

To support the above e-cigarette regulatory measures as well as tobacco reform, the Australian government plans to allocate A$234 million (approximately RMB 1.08 billion) in the federal budget announced in May.

It is worth noting that while a total ban on over-the-counter e-cigarettes is in place, Australia still supports allowing smokers to quit traditional cigarettes with the aid of legal prescription e-cigarettes and providing more convenience to these smokers by allowing smokers undergoing smoking cessation treatment to purchase e-cigarettes with a doctor’s prescription without the need to obtain Drug Enforcement Administration approval.

In addition to a comprehensive crackdown on e-cigarettes, Australian Health Minister Butler also announced on the same day that Australia will begin on September 1 this year, three consecutive years to increase tobacco taxes by 5% each year. Currently, the price of a carton of cigarettes in Australia is about 35 Australian dollars (about 161 yuan), much higher than the level of tobacco prices in the United Kingdom and the United States.