I have been vaping for 8 years and unfortunately lost my device on way over. I am aware they are available at pharmacies however it seems the majority do no stock them.

I am looking for a small non disposable refillable device and looking for help in which pharmacies/ online stores(?) are best for my needs. Situated in Melbourne and many stores pop up but all seem to be disposable type devices.

Thankyou!

My stockpile is starting to run dry, where do you guys get your flavour concentrates from these days?

It's "too good to be true" folks.

Apparently Bill and Melinda must've lowered their contributions after the cobtroversy, looks like they've had to seek other avenues...

Used to vape Relx for a while and stocked up heaps before reforms. I tried to make it last. When I ran out, I stuck to the occasional cigars. Then cigarillos. Then back to plain old cigarettes as it was so hard to get relx pods for the devices I already owned.

Then I saw aussievapers.

You guys helped me get off cigarettes again. That was a smelly habit and made me lose a lot of my fitness and dollars.

Hopped on Pharmacy world. Ordered one of the uwell g series and some liquids and spare pods. It doesn't have as nice a draw as I was used to with Relx but it sure beats cigarettes.

I think delivery was quick as.

Thanks guys/gals.

Really should have checked out this sub before trying to get gov vapes, are these prices reasonable? Or did I get got?

Nicovape Q20 Coolmint Cartridges 20 mg/mL Liquid for inhalation 20 mg/mL 2 mL [7] 4

$ 79.95 total $319.80

It appears our darling Lilly lays claim to two historic firsts in Australian history.

The first to actually vomit up a mixture of Banana eliquid and blood, and the first to get her hands on a JUUL when they weren't even a "thing" in Australia in 2018 when she supposedly started vaping.

JUUL (owned by the Marlboro company) made its first pitch to market their product under a different name around June 2019, (according to the Financial Review article, 21 June 2019). Their pitch was unsuccessful and as a result the JUUL never came to Australia. Our darling Lilly claims JUUL was her first vape, so you go figure!

Oh and not to forget her claims “I was coughing up heaps of liquid, I remember even times I was coughing up blood because of how much I’d strained my lungs.”

My dearest Lilly, you weren't using it correctly! You have to inhale the vapour, not drink it like it was a wheat grass health shake! Keep up your paid appearances on the various media, continue making a total fool of yourself in plain view of real vapers, and one day you too will become just a bad memory, like "Milli Vanilli".

They had a lot of admirers until the world realized their management team were fraudsters and liars, and only in it for the money and fame. Any of this resonating with you Lilly? I might stop there in case I throw up!

Bought the Vapo Flow 2 from myduke pharmacy, along with 12mg Menthol E-Liquid.

At the start it tasted like absolute balls, a bit burnt and dry, now it's a little better but I wouldn't even say it tastes like mint, how can anyone enjoy this?

Shame on me. I just had to tip a full 30ml bottle of mango simply salts 35% down the sink. I’m allergic to vaping mango flavour, gives me asthma. It was part of a simply salts set of 5, can’t sell it, don’t know anyone that vapes refillables. I needed the gorilla bottle to mix fanboy.

Listen to these morons discussing the problem of disposable vapes if you can stand it. They talk about the fines, the jail terms, upping the penalties to phenomenal heights, the TGA, the "notified list", and all the other obvious crap. They don't even HINT at maybe the problem is the same as Prohibition in the US in the 1930's? Government Legislation has failed and sent the Black Market chasing massive profits and this will continue until they realize they HAVE to change the legislation or this country will go to shit! The 60 Minutes reporter and Producer just don't have the intelligence to ask the real question - "WHOSE FAULT IS THIS DISMAL FAILURE, REALLY?"

https://youtu.be/Iy0mSYxtyik?si=m_ojwP9F0ubaxzK1

Oh and let's not forget our darling, Instagram influencer, vaping expert, banana and blood vomiting Lily Ford!
Lily it's time to fuck off and stop taking paid spots on Media and go back to your health and wealth channel!

So I recieved my vape & liquid today, the menthol is OK but as someone who is used to flavoured vapes it's very underwhelming.

I can see a lot of recommendations on here to buy unflavoured and mix with concentrates, although I have already spent $60 on a 100ml bottle of mint/menthol, also the site I purchased from did not have that option.

Can I mix concentrate into my current bottle? Or as someone who has 0 idea what they're doing will I just fuck up the entire batch.

Thanks!

im going to buy 50mg/1ml salt, how long does that last you guys?

Hey guys,

Next week I’m transiting through Singapore (just for 4 hours, only going to explore the airport), and I am wondering if this has been troublesome for y’all? I plan to put a disposable in my carry on, thanks :)

I’m planning to get a device from QuitHero, which will cost me $100, including the juice and shipping. Before I spend the money, does anyone know if these products are going to be banned soon?

I received my vape kit from my online order this morning and the tank had been broken in transit.

I have had very bad service from other online retailers in the past, and as this is my first purchase since the vape bans I was sceptical that they would gave a shit about what is essentially a captive audience.

I emailed them and received a response within 30 mins, they requested photos and a serial number, I sent it and they ordered me a free replacement on the spot.

All sorted within an hour.

Peter, if you are here, I appriciate the work you do.

I have never felt the need to shout out a company, but I am truly impressed with the the way they handled it.

Anyone aware of where to move on my vapepocalypse kit? or if I can? I have a bucket load of gear just going to waste atm.

Vapes Australia: How Chinese multinationals, organised crime fuelled a public health crisis

‘Big vape’: How Chinese multinationals and organised crime fuelled a public health crisis

The smell hits you before they open the pallet: mango, grape and “blackberry pomegranate cherry ice” wafts through the air as Australian Border Force officials comb through a sea of boxes.

Inside this secure warehouse near Botany Bay in Sydney, there are 28,000 vapes in a single load – a fraction of the number arriving in containers each week.

More than 20 pallets are filled with vapes and their accessories. Only five are stacked with cigarettes. These brightly coloured, easily disguised, highly addictive and wildly profitable devices have become the second-largest illegal drug market in the country, worth more than $2 billion a year.

In January, when the federal government announced laws banning disposable vapes, Border Force was seizing 280,000 a month. By May that had almost quadrupled to 950,000, taking the total above four million in the year to date.

But vapes are continuing to slip through to convenience stores around the country, fuelled by organised crime gangs making a windfall out of prices more than doubling over the past year and an open rebellion by Australian pharmacists against an Albanese government policy that makes them the face of the legal market.

The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age and 60 Minutes can reveal a series of claims including:

an employee of a company with links to one of the world’s largest vaping giants boasted about claims of paying the Australian government as it prepared to change laws to sell through pharmacies;

the Department of Health created an unprecedented “notified list” to rush vapes off the streets and into chemists, which allows big tobacco companies to self-declare that their products are safe;

and pharmacists are refusing to stock vapes over fears they could be targeted by organised crime.

The government’s vaping reforms are now in jeopardy as it attempts to create a legal market for devices that help people to stop smoking, while cracking down on the illicit trade hooking a new generation on nicotine.

Federal Health Minister Mark Butler said vaping was “the most significant public health menace” facing young Australians.

“Frankly, it got under our guard,” he said. “I hear constantly, particularly from parents in school communities, how angry they are that this has become so rife in schools.”

Decades of public health advances are at risk. For the first time since the 1990s, when Australia began a world-leading crackdown on tobacco, total nicotine consumption grew last year among Australians aged 15-24.

“I’m enormously worried,” said Butler. “All of that progress is threatened by the nicotine addiction that we’re seeing increasingly among young Australians.”

In schools, principals are rostering teachers to monitor toilets at recess and lunch to stop children vaping; teenage vape dealers have become schoolyard fixtures; and students are struggling to get through three-hour exams without nicotine withdrawal.

“What we are seeing in Australia is a really escalating public health crisis,” said Quit director Rachael Anderson, who leads an organisation that has spent decades campaigning against big tobacco.

“Over the last four years, the rates of vaping in Australia have tripled and, really alarmingly, the rates are escalating at a rapid pace among our young.”

The Department of Health’s chief medical officer, Tony Lawler, said the government was monitoring reports from doctors of thermal and chemical damage to the lungs, heart and kidneys, and reports from dentists around significant oral injuries including to the tongue and gums, as well as the growing mental health impacts of nicotine addiction.

Nicotine, heavy metals, arsenic, tin, mercury, and a chemical compound known as diacetyl make up most of the elements in vapes available nationally.

But the health message is struggling to gain traction. Vaping has become normalised in places where smoking has been banned for decades.

“When I found someone vaping in a hospital ward … that was probably the time when I realised not just the health impact, but the social impact that vapes were having on our community,” Lawler said.

Lily Ford’s vaping journey began when she was 15. By the time she was 20, she was coughing up banana vape liquid and blood.

“I think when you’re younger, it’s the novelty, right? You’re associating the vaping with this idea of being cool,” she said. “It planted a seed in my mind as to what socialising looked like.”

Misinformation proliferated throughout the classroom: “Vaping helped you concentrate, vaping relaxed the muscles in your throat to improve your singing, vaping’s OK because it’s so much better than smoking.”

But Ford’s social vaping spiralled into a full-blown addiction during her final year of school.

“I’d feel anxious, I would reach for the vape, I’d smoke the vape, put the vape down, feel relaxed for almost 10, 15 seconds, straight back to feeling anxious again, picking up the vape, smoking it. It was just a repetitive cycle that I was trapped in for a really long time,” she said. “I was going through quite a tough time. And for me, during that time, vaping was this thing that I could hold on to in the dark and feel like I was secure.”

Today, a third of Australian teenagers have vaped, according to the most recent Australian Secondary Students’ Alcohol and Drug Survey, with many citing social pressure and marketing as key reasons they started vaping.

The explosion in vape use prompted Butler to introduce laws this year that banned all disposable vapes and restricted all sales to pharmacies, while limiting flavours to mint, menthol and tobacco, and nicotine concentration of 20 mg/mL or less without a prescription.

“Until we really took hold of this issue last year … the laws had enormous loopholes in them,” Butler says. “You could drive a truck through them.”

But even under the new laws, multinational companies, including those on the Therapeutic Goods Administration’s “notified list”, are continuing to flout Australian laws by advertising banned products for sale in Australia, while vapes are widely available at convenience stores.

iGet, the most popular Chinese brand owned by Shenzhen Hanqingda Technology Co, a company that puts its staff through military drills to teach them to “never give up”, is continuing to market directly to Australians to bulk buy from its range of 30 different flavours in a dozen different vapes, from the “legend” to “the Goat”.

Others, including Alibarbar, are now also entering the market, as the costs of production decrease and factories proliferate throughout China.

Chinese vapes have become so dominant in the Australian market that Prime Minister Anthony Albanese raised vaping exports with Chinese Premier Li Qiang when they met in June.

Australian Border Force officials are now liaising with their Chinese counterparts to stem the flow.

Competitors are also emerging, particularly in the Middle East and South-East Asia.

The sharp rise in the cost of vapes (from $25 to $55), fuelled partly by their prohibition, has meant organised crime is taking an interest in the market to complement its profits from illicit tobacco – driving turf wars between tobacconists, convenience stores and vape shops from Ettalong in NSW to Mickleham in Victoria.

“Organised crime recognised that they could make money out of this and channel that money into other criminal activities, drug trafficking, sex trafficking, and all of the other things that organised criminals do,” said Butler.

Australian Border Force assistant commissioner Tony Smith said organised crime groups importing illicit tobacco were increasingly shifting resources into vaping.

“It’s incredibly serious,” he said. “The key thing to note is that where there is a profit to be made, that is where we start to see serious organised crime creep in.”

The government has appointed a dedicated Illicit Tobacco and E-cigarette Commissioner, Erin Dale, to co-ordinate the response across state and federal agencies.

“We want to make sure that organised crime is not creating the next generation of nicotine addicts,” she said.

Between March 2023 and July this year, there were 71 arson attacks on tobacco premises and other business premises linked to the illicit tobacco and vape market in Victoria alone.

Victoria Police assistant commissioner Martin O’Brien told a Victorian parliamentary inquiry in July that Middle Eastern organised crime entities, outlaw motorcycle gangs and networked youth offenders have all been linked to the attacks.

“Police intelligence suggests that organised crime entities are committing extortion, arson and firearm-related offending as a means to threaten, intimidate, control or eliminate competition in this industry,” he said.

The attacks have also spooked pharmacists, now charged with selling a product very few want to distribute.

The national councillor of the Pharmacy Guild of Australia, Anthony Tassone, said the infiltration of organised crime into the market “led to the decision by many pharmacies to not stock these items”.

Tassone and members of the Pharmacy Guild, which make up 70 per cent of pharmacists, are in open rebellion against the government legislation, putting up 2000 posters across their stores to notify customers they will not stock the products.

“We just felt shocked by these reforms,” said Tassone. “It’s been policy on the run.”

Tassone said vapes had sidestepped the normal process for pharmacy approval by being put on a “notified list” – a term he never heard of until the government rushed through changes to get the legislation passed.

The government watered down its prescription-only model in a deal with the Greens, who wanted easier access to vapes to help Australians give up smoking.

“It’s unprecedented. In all my career, of over 20 years being a pharmacist, I can’t recall another occasion where we had a separate notified list. Something was either approved or not approved,” he said.

To get on the notified list to be supplied in pharmacies without a prescription, all companies have to do is self-declare that their product is safe. The list includes products from big tobacco.

“One of the manufacturers of these vaping products that are on the notified list is Philip Morris. As some pharmacists have said to me, ‘I’m a health professional, not a tobacconist. I promote healthcare, not big tobacco products’.”

Already, two state governments – Tasmania and Western Australia – have baulked at the list, refusing to allow vapes to be supplied without a prescription.

A Department of Health spokesperson said the TGA was conducting ongoing surveillance of vapes on the notified list to ensure they were compliant with standards. ​

“This includes laboratory testing and monitoring adverse event reports,” the spokesperson said.

Other companies on the government’s notified list include Chinese giant RELX. RELX also owns the WAKA brand of disposable flavoured vapes which have been sold illegally in convenience stores and are popular among teenagers.

The company’s Chinese headquarters is run by billionaire former Uber executive Kate Wang. Former Unilever and Didi employee Du Bing oversees its international operations.

RELX has 18 products on the notified list that can now be sold in Australian pharmacies.

Late last year, employees at one of its related entities, Hellow SG, were caught boasting about claims of making government payments in Asia and Australia. The recording was first obtained in Singapore by The Straits Times, but the newspaper did not reveal the company behind the comments.

“In difficult markets or markets with heavy, strict regulations, all you have to do to circumvent them is to go into grey channels,” the employee said. “We don’t do that visibly in Australia and New Zealand. But government payments are not a problem for us because these are extremely … subtle. It’s just like how big tobacco does it. They go through multiple shell companies and associations and consultants and agencies and whatnot.”

This masthead can now reveal Singaporean registration documents show the business at the address in Singapore is registered under Hellow SG. That company is wholly owned by Hellow HK Limited. Hong Kong financial documents show RELX executive Du Bing is the sole director of Hellow HK Limited. Cheerain Inc, a company based in the Cayman Islands, is the only other shareholder.

Singapore’s Health Sciences Authority confirmed it was investigating the company.

RELX was contacted for comment. There is no suggestion of wrongdoing by Wang or Du.

Butler said he had no knowledge of what the payments could refer to but said there was no place for big tobacco or big vape in Australian politics.

“I can’t imagine what payment they would be talking about,” he said. “I’ve never met with them. I only wrote to all of the members of parliament and all of the senators in the lead-up to this legislation to remind them as public officials they’re not supposed to be meeting with big tobacco either.”

Until June, when the government’s prescription model was briefly in operation, one of RELX’s distributors was also offering prescriptions to vape users 24 hours after filling out an online Google Form, without a phone consultation with a doctor, skirting government regulations.

Since then, despite joining the regulated market through a legal distributor, other Australian distributors have been advertising the company’s illegal disposable flavoured pods for sale online to Australian customers.

Butler said he was concerned by RELX continuing to sell illegal products to some distributors and would ask the department to investigate. He defended the laws and the concessions the government made.

“We had to get the laws through the Senate and the argument was made that we needed to balance, first of all, the objective of continuing to provide access to this where there is a genuine therapeutic need, but also clamping down on the main mischief here,” he said.

Despite record levels of seizures at the border and penalties of up to $2 million for shops selling vapes, the illicit trade shows few signs of slowing down.

Vapes were on sale at 10 convenience stores within three kilometres of each other in inner Sydney last month.

“I think the government has tried, yet I’m still seeing people vape and buy vapes,” said Lily Ford.

Ford is one of a handful of former vape users willing to speak publicly against the industry. The 22-year-old has been targeted online by vapers who accused her of attacking a product that helped them stop smoking cigarettes.

“I think there are kids that are picking up the vape because their peers are doing it and they just want to fit in,” she said. “I understand that, I sympathise with it, I’ve seen it and I’ve experienced it.”

Butler said enforcing the new laws would be challenging. While more than 30 countries have attempted to ban vapes with little success, Australia is the only country in the world to have implemented a non-prescription, pharmacy-based vaping supply model.

“I think there is a window still to stamp out recreational vaping, but I don’t pretend it’s not going to be tough,” he said.

On Wednesday, Butler announced that a nationwide vaping intervention program in Australian schools would start next year.

“Now, some people said, ‘it’s all too hard, and we should just give up and raise the white flag and accept this as part of Australian life’,” he said. “But I just didn’t want to do that.”

I have been vaping for a few years, never used disposables.

Found a place that is infinitely easier to get disposables under the counter than legitimately through chemists with their 3 shitty flavours

The government wanted to crack down on vaping and ironically made is easier for me (and everyone i know who vapes who I will be telling them where to go) to vape

11/10 government

Haven’t watched it yet but here’s a link for the story

https://9now.nine.com.au/60-minutes/vaping-ban-australia-inside-war-on-vaping-tough-new-laws/8f32d5e9-11a9-4cde-8878-94498371cb7c

I doubt it’ll be a ln unbiased story as usual.

People, I wish to get hold of an RTA, primarily for flavour and recipe experimentation. I don't have the knowledge to go down the home-build path (yet) but wondering if any of you guys know where I might be able to get hold of one?

I'm registered with 5 pharmacies and none of them seem to have one. Would like to get a Geekvape Zeus if at all possible? Thanks.

Looking for recommendations for LEGAL 3mg freebase flavours, I know there isn't many to choose from with the online chemist retailers lol but there's a few different brands to choose from, anyone have any personal experiences they could share??? Cheers in advance. 😊👌

Hi everyone,

Moved from NZ about two months ago and are going to run out of my stash pretty soon.

Need to get some Nicotine Salts, any recommendations please?

Thanks!

I am looking for some 50-100ml bottles of 0% flavour liquid. I already have a script from quit hero, any suggestions in Melbourne?

hi guys,

Could someone please tell me what is the difference between these two vape liquids. I currently use the 3MG one. Wanted to try 5mg and see its available only as FREEBASE. Is this something that can be directly vaped in my current vape xros 3?

VAPURE MENTHOL ICE FREEBASE (ARCTIC ICE) (1 X 60ML) BOTTLE

WILD BY INSTINCT MENTHOL 3MG/ML (1 X 60ML) BOTTLE

Just got complacent ordering or mixing my own and I will be out of juice till I mix and steep a batch (few days) or the order I made from QuitHero over the weekend arrives.

Any pharmacy anywhere in Sydney I can drive to and buy a bottle or two to tide me over? I am aware they can order using TGA Approval numbers but that takes time as well.

Good evening everyone. The brass pin in my eteno e100i just shit itself tonight and now I gotta buy a new device. I checked pharmacy world and they don't have any devices that will fit the e100 pod, does anyone know where I can get one? Do you reckon if I order one from overseas I'll actually get it? I don't really want to get a different brand or one that can't fit my pods, because I literally just replaced 2 coils and filled the tanks with the little amount of juice I have left. Hope this makes sense. Thanks in advance.

I've always vaped menthol, reason being that menthol is used in lot of products that are known to not affect your lungs, never had an issue in ten years of vaping, but the quit hero ones are disgusting so far and I'm getting a cough akin to a smokers cough. Is there a better alternative, I always smoked halo sub zero prior to the ban, decent company that published testing on their products to show no nasties, these TGA approved vapes taste like cheap nasty shit. Last one was a menthol that's taste like bubblegum, does anyone know of better?

Why can I not get any contact from quit clinics, I have filled out the form to get a prescription days ago and sent them questions in the chat option on their website still no answer? Does anyone have a phone number for them ?

Has anyone been able to find coils for SMOK mods? I can't get them shipped from NZ or overseas and I'm not sure if pharmacies have them.

I’ve ‘dabbled’ in cigarettes over the years but my main vice has always been vapes, specifically disposable ones. I recently picked up a Tobacco Alibarbar, and as someone who mainly uses iget products the flavours from most alibarbars come off far too strong, but I’ve found their tobacco to be rather mild.

The best way to describe the taste profile is it tastes identical to the Dare Espresso milk. It tastes sort of caramelised and while id definitely call it an “acquired” taste it isn’t as intense as real cigarettes, however oddly it leaves a feeling in my throat and mouth reminiscent of a cigarette that I don’t get from any other alibarbars.

What do you think, reddit?