Nearly 5,000 vapes have been seized in a crackdown on illegal e-cigarettes by South Australian health authorities. Twelve businesses have been fined as part of the operation, with some retailers resorting to hiding vapes in empty pizza boxes to conceal them.
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00:00 The result of an eight-week blitz targeting stores selling illegal vapes.
00:06 Unfortunately we've seized almost 5,000 vapes through that process over the past eight weeks
00:13 and of those over four and a half thousand have come back from the laboratory saying that they contain nicotine.
00:20 SA's health authorities launched the operation amid rising concern over the prevalence of vapes containing nicotine
00:27 with fears a growing number of young people are becoming addicted.
00:31 Well it looks like a sipper cup doesn't it if you're a two-year-old, I mean you just start sipping it.
00:35 Of the nearly 5,000 vapes seized as part of the blitz, more than 90% were found to contain nicotine
00:42 and in one case the amount was potentially life-threatening.
00:45 There was one vape, so one cartridge, which was equivalent to three packets of cigarettes.
00:52 All up, 15 South Australian businesses have been found to be selling illegal nicotine vapes
00:57 and authorities are warning they'll be continuing to look for traders doing the wrong thing.
01:01 It's not over. Those licence conditions remain in force and businesses need to comply with them on an ongoing basis.
01:08 South Australian retailers are now required to show proof their products do not contain nicotine.
01:13 National authorities are also working to ban the importation of non-prescription vapes.
01:18 For more information visit www.aclu.org/vapes