The Australian Government's new vaping policy should be part of a larger plan towards a tobacco endgame

Abstract

The Australian Minister for Health and Aged Care, Mark Butler, made a strong push to address the growing problem of youth vaping in his speech at the National Press Club in May 2023.1 While new approaches to controlling youth vaping are urgently needed, it is critical that policy reforms to end the tobacco cigarette epidemic are also pursued with equal vigour — otherwise we risk shifting people currently using vapes to tobacco smoking. In this article, we argue that Australia should leverage its strong vaping regulation to commit in parallel to an ambitious commercial tobacco endgame to rapidly minimise smoking.