More than 30,000 illegal vapes seized in Sydney raids

The New South Wales government is ramping up efforts to crack down on illegal vapes being sold in shops.

Transcript

00:00 Nicotine vapes were seized from 60 shopfronts last week as part of a compliance blitz across

00:07 south east Sydney.

00:08 New South Wales Health claims it's a record number of inspections across a 7 day period.

00:14 Vapes containing nicotine are classed as prescription only medicine in New South Wales.

00:19 This means they can only be bought from pharmacies.

00:22 But the government's recent compliance blitz shows they're still widely available from

00:26 retail shopfronts.

00:27 I've asked Dr Chant and her team to have a look at the fines that are currently in place.

00:33 I think we should be increasing those fines to reflect the concern that we have around

00:38 the availability of these products.

00:40 It is a major problem in schools.

00:43 They are having real impacts and young people are saying that they often regret taking them

00:48 up.

00:49 30,000 nicotine e-cigarettes were seized in last week's operation.

00:55 Police officers also confiscated 118,000 cigarettes, 45 kilograms of flavoured and loose leaf tobacco

01:02 and hundreds of containers of nicotine pouches.

01:05 The government says the street value of all this contraband is just over $1.1 million.

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