Australia’s strict vaping laws appear to be backfiring, with black market sales now outstripping legal ones by almost 1,700 to one.
Experts warn the country is losing the “war on nicotine” in much the same way as it lost the war on drugs, as illicit trade surges and the legal market collapses.
Documents obtained by Australian newspaper The Daily Telegraph, under the Freedom of Information Act, reveal that pharmacists submitted an average of just 5,932 supply notifications per month between October 2024 and April 2025 under the Therapeutic Goods Administration’s (TGA) SAS C S3 system.
10 million black market vapes sold per month
In contrast, the TGA estimates that more than 10 million vapes are sold each month on the black market.
Despite the Albanese government’s efforts to control supply by limiting sales to pharmacies without a prescription, one of the country’s largest legal suppliers, Philip Morris, has confirmed it will withdraw from the Australian market on July 1.
In a letter to pharmacies, the company said it was “simply not possible” to meet the TGA’s new technical standards within the deadline and warned the move would “push smokers back to cigarettes and hand the market to black market traders.”
The decision is a major blow to the government’s approach, which relies entirely on pharmacies to supply legal vapes under strict conditions.
Experts say the government’s current model is flawed. In a recent article in the Harm Reduction Journal, criminologist James Martin and epidemiologist Edward Jegasothy wrote: “Australia’s current strategy may be creating more harm than it mitigates, mirroring many of the unintended consequences historically associated with drug prohibition.”
Martin added: “Look at the war on drugs; there is something worse than the tobacco industry, and that’s the black market.”
He noted that: “Vaping isn’t risk-free, but we need to consider its risk vis-a-vis the risks of smoking,” and “Here we have a harm reduction product that many smokers prefer.”
Between 2019 and 2023, Australia saw its steepest drop in smoking rates in 30 years, with rates falling from 11.6 per cent to 8.8 per cent – a period that also saw a significant rise in vape use.
But Dr Becky Freeman from the University of Sydney said she didn’t agree with calls to reduce taxes to boost legal trade.
She said: “Freezing tobacco taxes at the moment makes sense – until we get enforcement sorted out there’s no point in putting in extra taxes. But that’s quite different from rolling it back. They are not a consumer good..
“We made this mistake with tobacco products, why would we turn around and do the same thing with vapes?”
Legal sales ‘negligible’
Legal vape sales in Australia remain negligible. While there are over 5,900 pharmacies across the country, only about 700 are participating in the scheme each month.
Many report extremely low sales. Seaforth pharmacist John Than told The Daily Telegraph: “We’ve sold one vape … one vape in under nine months.
“Either people don’t know they can buy vapes from pharmacies, or they are choosing to buy them illegally elsewhere. Either way, this shows that the new laws are not working.”
Despite these warnings, Health Minister Mark Butler insists that the strategy is succeeding.
“Australia’s world-leading vaping legislations are working,” he said. “We’ve choked off supply at the border, seizing more than eight million vapes.”
However, critics point to the lack of any feasibility study, cost-benefit analysis, or enforcement plan before the pharmacy-only model was launched – something the Department of Health confirmed. An independent review of the scheme is not scheduled until July 2027.
