only when i'm drinking like socially so like when i'm out so like maybe like once a week i do have friends that are actually addicted to vaping i do think that it is legitimately destructive to some people's lives how often would you vape now oh way too often yeah yeah um every day yeah i probably go through one disposable vape a week i would say i was at a light level of addiction the easy thing about vaping is you can almost vape anywhere these days ayo nicotine addiction check [Music] vaping was hailed as a new way to quit smoking instead it's become a craze among young people it's no wonder this product appeals to young people so much it was designed for them it was marketed to them and it was available to them you are inhaling a cocktail of chemicals particularly the flavouring chemicals that we have no idea what the long-term consequences of that are going to be the right to sell nicotine vapes in australia has been hotly contested and there are some familiar backers how involved is big tobacco in the vaping industry big tobacco's in the thick of it the tobacco industry lobbies and they lobby hard you have to be willing to uh to stare them down you say big tobacco what is big tobacco divine big tobacco if they are trying to move away from cigarettes into a product that is better for people that gets people off cigarettes i i don't have a problem with that what's not in dispute is this booming market has been pushed underground it's a de facto prohibition every month millions of illicit unregulated vapes are imported into australia cheap disposable vapes are pouring in from factories in china sold here by local dealers to convenience stores and tobacconists as part of the illicit trade tonight on four corners we'll show you the thriving black market of e-cigarettes fueled by a failure to police the rules and we investigate the fierce battle over the harms of vaping it's a mess that's threatening to hook a new generation on nicotine [Music] you know it's bad but you don't care because your brain is hooked on it and it's like a physical addiction you have your phone and your vape like it's just it's an accessory that you constantly have it's the last thing you do before you go to sleep it's the first thing you do when you wake up sometimes you wake up a couple times during the night to hit it and then go back to sleep like it's it's totally got a hold of you it's the only thing you think about in her final year of high school ruby is battling an addiction to nicotine when did you first try vaping like i'm gonna say 2018 2019 really young so when i was 14 or 15 i'm gonna say super young at the time everyone was like oh it's healthier than smoking cause you're not getting like the tobacco and all the like carcinogens in your lungs um and it just felt clean because you didn't have the cigarette smell and the taste and they're like flavored with like fruity stuff so it just feels like you're taking a lolly or something do you remember how it felt the first time when you did try it um [Music] i want to say it felt like you were dying but in a good way like you get a head rush i i don't know how to explain you get super light-headed you get like shaky it's like it's this wave that just comes over you [Music] vaping is a multi-billion dollar global industry in australia it's now estimated about 400 000 people vape [Music] the majority of use is actually in younger age groups and it's particularly common in the in teenagers and young adults we are seeing quite rapid increases what is vaping how does it actually work so e-cigarettes heat and e-liquid which usually contains nicotine to a very high temperature and that creates an aerosol which the user then inhales and that gives them a dose of nicotine as well as the flavouring and other chemicals one of the issues with nicotine addiction at young ages is not only have the problem that goes with being addicted to a substance but it has effects on the developing brain so we can see that it can affect memory concentration and learning but it also sets the foundation for future addiction did you vape today it's okay i don't mind you can like you better tell me the truth yes you did yeah and how did you feel about that irritated a few months ago ruby confessed to her mum nicola she was vaping and needed help giving up so did you buy the vape or does someone give it to you um everyone just has one so it's like you just go to the bathroom it's like a thing like do you go to the bathroom all right she came to me and said that she had been vaping and it got a bit out of hand and she was doing it a lot and she tried to quit and she couldn't she'd had these really unpleasant symptoms that she didn't like that confused her and she wanted me to help her find a way out of it you know when you're having withdrawals it's miserable you just feel grumpy and you get anxious like you literally like i need i need a vape right now and you get headaches like dry mouth shaking sometimes it's it's not fun how did you feel as a parent hearing that sort of news from a 16 year old devastated because what she's saying is that at 16 years old i have an addiction that's what she was saying i have an addiction that i cannot control and i was i was really upset i was really fearful for her health all right secretly i felt really angry that this product existed that seemed almost designed to to appeal to kids and now she couldn't stop it i i was upset i was angry yeah it was it was a horrible feeling so for the jewel it's like this i picked me up one of these bad boys right here you have the boat so this one is mango e-cigarettes have been around for 15 years sold as an alternative to smoking but the company that made vaping cool is a silicon valley startup called jewel nicotine addiction check there's 38 million americans that still smoke there are billion people who still smoke globally but 70 of those people want to quit jewel launched in 2015 its founders claimed their mission was to disrupt the tobacco industry with a device that delivered at least three times more nicotine than its rivals i would tell people anyone who would listen 50 years from now nobody's gonna be smoking cigarettes they're gonna look back and think oh my god i can't believe people used to do that and now i think it's actually gonna happen much faster in large part because of the progress that we've made there's something missing and so joule comes up with this product and initially i mean i don't know people's intentions i can't read people's minds but supposedly initially it was to help people to quit smoking very noble thing to want to do but that's not how the product was rolled out [Music] joule's first advertising campaign featured young glamorous models vaping the company's sleek stylish device well i think that just looking at the device it felt really disruptive it was to me a beautiful piece of industrial design and so we kind of talked and had conversations about like you know how do you sort of present that this is a new device so it had to feel contemporary great gorgeous amazing wow stephen bailey was the campaign's creative director i think when my clients come to me they have a very specific demographic in mind in terms of the audience they're trying to reach and appeal to did you have a demographic in mind when they came to you um i yeah i mean i believe it was millennials i don't have that paperwork in front of me it's certainly been a number of years [Music] i think the impact of the vaporized campaign can't be underestimated so you had ads in teen magazines you had ads on children's cartoon websites it's no wonder this product appealed to young people so much it was designed for them it was marketed to them and it was available to them becky freeman has spent her career studying how tobacco companies try to influence public health she tracked the success of jewel their rise was unstoppable vaping has come in and just completely been taken up by young people um including you know men women 18 to 24 year olds i think that this company saw a hole in the market and went for it it just kind of happened so fast it's in kind of every 7-eleven winn-dixie across the united states it's in my local sort of corner store in new jersey and that's when the real negative kind of publicity started to catch on it just felt like again from my perspective a little blip in the radar in the beginning but then it was like again like a huge explosion later um and there was you know clearly a lot of outrage from angry angry parents by 2018 more than three million american high schoolers were vaping and the backlash against jewel began mr monsis i will begin by swearing you in alarmed there was a youth nicotine epidemic congress grilled the company at public hearings we never wanted any non-nicotine user and certainly nobody underage to ever use joule products jewel labs isn't big tobacco we are here to eliminate its product the cigarette in fact at the time of this testimony the parent company of tobacco giant philip morris usa already owned a third of jewel philip morris buying such a large share in jewel was incredibly cynical because this is a company who in their early marketing materials was touting how they were going to be um some sort of big tobacco adversary that they are going to push big tobacco out of the market and be the new safer player in town and then you have big tobacco just swooping in and going huh this company operates just like us they target young people they don't care about health and they're quite savvy with product design and savvy with marketing materials well that fits right in with our company [Music] jill denies it marketed to children but has so far paid 77 million dollars to settle court cases with several u.s states stephen bailey has been repeatedly questioned over jules creative brief there's tons of litigation are you kidding me i've been deposed so many times i've been sitting around lawyers talking about this for feels like the last three years because i think there's a lot of misconceptions about that campaign like there's some smoking gun i mean lawyer after laura has been through every email i have ever written to anyone at that company right so it's kind of a disconnect for me to like sort of like say that that campaign is responsible for a teen smoking epidemic i just i don't buy it [Music] the bell rings you want to go to the bathroom and you just literally see tens of kids like sitting in a circle just all sharing one and it's crazy why do you think people like it so much or do it so much they just love the flavor i reckon it's and then the nicotine gets them addicted and they just can't stop high school is a lot of people trying to fit in um and also it's colorful it smells nice and they just want to be cool i feel like that's why it could be really popular like you can't even really go to the bathroom at lunch anymore because they're just all hogging the bathrooms vaping why do they go to the bathrooms and do it to hide from the teachers because they don't want to get caught because they'll confiscate the vape if they find out in australia schools are only just coming to terms with how popular vapings become with kids in new south wales alone one in 10 16 to 24 year olds now vape it's more than doubled in the space of a year we see it consistently it is an ongoing consistent situation that we deal with at a school level um i am hearing from colleagues nearby that it's the same in all of the school contexts and we are hearing that it's happening across a range of age groups as well which is quite fascinating for me how young are we talking look i've heard stories of of children as young as year 3 and 4. in sydney's western suburbs principal brenda quail can't remember the last time she dealt with a smoker but she tackles vaping on an almost daily basis how difficult was it to actually detect or even catch out kids who were vaping the scent that is attached to some of the vapes that students are able to purchase now are quite sweet so the strange smells that we thought initially were perfume and you know a few jokes here and there about oh it's a bit of a sickly smell for a perfume and trying to piece together what it was that they were now using as deodorants really made us start to stop and think and go no this doesn't seem like a scent when we're talking about addiction in children e-cigarettes may actually be more dangerous than smoking because they're much easier to access the much you can they're much more discreet you can hide them and they also have these multiple flavors so they're much more appealing to children and they're marketed to children use of e-cigarettes in that younger age group isn't about giving up smoking it's about a completely new habit [Applause] research shows kids who vape are actually more likely to start smoking cigarettes young people who use e-cigarettes and are non-smokers have around three times the probability of taking up smoking as young people who don't use e-cigarettes come on in grace and i'll show you what we've collected over the last few months most of the vapes used by kids are the cheap disposable kind imported from china you can see here samples of how innocuous some of these look in this case this was a collection of things where students were on selling them but you can see some of them look like usb hard drives some of them certainly look like highlighters and the the palm size of them is quite a concern so how often are you having to confiscate vapes oh we'd be confiscating vapes a couple of times a week at the moment we do spend a lot of time in long conversations with young people about are you aware of how dangerous this is it's illegal to buy or sell devices containing nicotine unless you have a prescription from a doctor but kids of all ages are having no issue tracking them down on what's become a black market sold under the counter in stores or on social media i don't want to be like a massive snitch but it's it's actually like super easy um you can buy them from convenience stores and there's also um like kids and young adults who buy them overseas in bulk and then sell them so like you're just street dealers and stuff so yeah they're super accessible like you go on your phone you're like can i can i pick up a vape you know like 20 minutes and you just you just meet them somewhere and they just hand it to you how do you know who to message when you want to vape a word of mouth mostly i think it's the same as any other drugs any social media as well yeah just it's whatever [Music] illicit sales on social media are rife kids are using tik tok snapchat and facebook to find where they can buy nicotine vapes suppliers also use code words and images to illegally sell their products and they deliver we've found there are literally hundreds of these suppliers on social media that you can buy from so i've messaged one of them to order some vapes and he's going to drop them off to me [Music] an hour later he arrived [Music] okay so this is what he sold me a bunch of cheap disposable vapes the whole exchange took probably 30 seconds it felt a bit shady but to be honest it was fairly straightforward he gave me the vapes i gave him the cash and then he left so what did you bring me today all right so quite a few brands that i have seen before yeah i get and gunport we have we've come to the university of wollongong to find out exactly what's in the vapes we bought dr celine kelso has tested over a hundred samples she's not surprised that the key ingredient nicotine isn't listed on the packaging at the moment nicotine is illegal in australia so by not having it on the packaging it's a way for sellers to stop the seizing of those samples so that in your experience they still their steel will contain nicotine yes i'm pretty sure these vapes may look sleek on the outside but inside they're very basic held together with some wires foam and masking tape so we have the mouthpiece the liquid and then the battery and then in the little bag the center take together this sponge is soaked in the e-liquid people inhale that's probably enough so this is an example of results and a most significant result is the presence of nicotine is in a concentration that's as high as he comes in those types of devices as high as it comes yes dr kelso says if the nicotine levels were any higher it would cause physical discomfort by burning the vapor's throat some devices also will include cooling agents like ws23 which are usually present especially in the presence of high concentration of nicotine to help the vapor to not feel the throat heat that high concentration of nicotine will create very little is known about the long-term risk of inhaling the chemicals found in vapes including the variety of flavors the bottom line i think from our review is actually that for the major health outcomes that most people are concerned about like cancer cardiovascular disease mental health reproductive outcomes we actually don't know what e-cigarettes do to those outcomes so their safety for those outcomes hasn't been established yet in jurisdictions where professor emily banks is a world-renowned epidemiologist at the australian national university there's quite a lot of interest in what the implications are for regulation the federal government tasked professor banks and her team with investigating the harms of e-cigarettes her report is the most comprehensive review of the global evidence so far and found vaping poses a serious public health risk they cause addiction they can cause poisoning toxicity through inhalation which can lead to seizures trauma and burns lung injury and we've found that they are harmful overall but vaping advocates claim any harms caused by e-cigarettes pale in comparison to the dangers of smoking it's important to remember that there are 21 000 deaths from smoking every year 8 million deaths from smoking worldwide every year it's a big issue dr alex wodak has campaigned on drug law reform for 40 years i'll do whatever's necessary it's needs to be done it has to be done it can't be postponed particularly around illicit drugs heroin users are much better off getting clean heroin of known concentration from doctors and the health system generally the parallels between the battles we've fought for methadone treatment needle syringe programs drug consumption rooms and so on and the battle over vaping it's it's exactly the same battle dr wodak is part of a vaping advocacy group called the australian tobacco harm reduction association so how long have you been vaping now completely without smoking athera was founded by dr colin mendelsohn a gp who helps smokers quit it's been about eight and a half years since you quit smiling i've seen a lot of patients who have tried and failed repeatedly with traditional remedies and many of them have given up on quitting so they've said look i expect to die like my father from lung cancer i never thought i'd be able to quit and for many of them vaping is a revelation do you think vaping is harmless certainly not harmless no credible authority says vaping is harmless nothing is as good as fresh air but for people who are otherwise going to smoke and have that level of risk vaping is substantially less harmful these products are really being targeted as being useful for quitting smoking and there is limited evidence the jury is kind of still out as to whether they are really effective for that but for some people they do help them to quit smoking dr mendelsohn and dr wodak describe e-cigarettes as a threat to big tobacco's profits but athera has previously accepted eight thousand dollars from an organization called knowledge action change which receives funding from tobacco giant philip morris athra has also accepted donations from vaping businesses we declared that funding right from the beginning so the the donations to from the vaping industry were declared at the time it was on our website i declared it at an international conference you did though in several interviews deny taking funding or donations from e-cigarette companies vaping companies so why why would you do that in interviews then why did that was that i denied taking any personal donations as i have to you so people have asked me do you take any donations have you had any funding from tobacco or e-cigarette companies and i've said no i haven't we've been very transparent about the support that ather's had from e-cigarette companies i mean do you really think there's that much of a difference taking funding personally or is the founding chairman of azeroth i do i i have no personal benefit in any of this for me it's absolutely clear that as smoking rates come down big tobacco is trying to drive up in a regard action the use of nicotine based vaping in one of his last interviews as health minister greg hunt spoke to four corners about his push to crack down on e-cigarettes and curb the influence of the tobacco industry the tobacco industry lobbies and they lobby hard but you have to be aware of this and you have to be willing to uh to stare them down i've refused to meet with them throughout my time as a minister not just in health but throughout my time in government why have you refused to meet them i look in my mind these are merchants of death domestic laws ban the sale of nicotine vaping products in australia greg hunt's stance on vaping caused upheaval in the coalition in 2020 28 backbenchers signed a letter opposing what they called an effective ban on vaping forcing a delay there are people all the time that have differing views some in that group had strong views um some um simply were supporting their colleagues as they said to me at the time how far were you willing to go there's no doubt that for me this was something i was willing to sacrifice my job my role my career over greg and i disagreed around vaping and it's stemmed primarily from the personal choice aspect of it if you want to vape if you want to smoke if you want to have a nicotine tab or spray you should be allowed to do that liberal senator holly hughes is passionately pro-vaping she's a patient of dr mendelsohn pictured here with other vaping advocates so i never really knew much about vaping at all i was you know probably what you call more of a social smoker and it was only that colin got me to try it and uh got got some of the vapes had to go and have never ever looked back so it was accidental quitting is probably the best way to describe it and i guess that really re-emphasized to me how effective it can be as a smoking cessation tool so you're still vaping today yeah but not probably not as much as i was when i started i'm on a very very low dose of nicotine it's probably more a habit with something in my hand as opposed to the actual delivery method but yeah still vaping today and haven't looked back big tobacco's evolution from cigarettes to vaping is accelerating last year alone british american tobacco earned nearly one billion dollars from e-cigarettes i think big tobacco is actually more trustworthy and more more pro-health in this than many of the public health bodies in australia they're producing credible research they're producing products which save lives public health in australia is opposed to that and i think that's that's that's wrong i i think they're actually costing lives by campaigning against vaping are you undermining confidence in official public health bodies i think official public health bodies are undermining confidence in themselves what do you think of that kind of statement um [Music] i don't know what to say really because um i just think it's untrue i think tobacco the tobacco industry has the interests of its shareholders at heart it's not interested in public health it's interested in maintaining profits and i also think they have shown themselves repeatedly that they cannot be trusted and it's a mistake to trust them the playbook which big tobacco used to thwart and delay legislation regulation the same sort of thing that the same arguments which are being used by the vaping advocates and of course these days big tobacco is in vaping all the companies have invested in vaping and we estimate that all together about 7 000 people may have quit as a result of the program professor simon chapman has been exposing the tobacco industry's tactics since the 1970s tobacco smoking is considered by a lot of people to be the number one preventable health problem in the western world this was he says they are more active than ever in the battle to legalize vaping where can we find big tobacco in that mix very much behind the scenes they have lobbyists they use third parties to represent them they use overseas groups trade associations freedom organizations libertarian organizations that sort of thing an organisation that's worked closely with the tobacco industry is legalized vaping australia an offshoot of the libertarian activist group the australian taxpayers alliance in 2018 they drove a bus known as vape force one down the east coast to promote their campaign despite talking up its grassroots credentials legalized vaping has worked with an initiative funded by philip morris while british american tobacco provides the group with a media consultant free of charge legalized vaping australia is run out of the same office as a lot of other right-wing causes libertarian causes look they've been very successful with the same sort of back benches that support this issue in the parliament they've given them dinky little uh sort of trophies or plaques thanking them for their uh their activities good day guys we're just here in dubbo just set up we've got a pretty awesome spot legalized vaping australia is led by 33 year old brian marlow we're just setting up now and say g'day and find out more about vaping he's a friend of senator holly hughes seen here celebrating the delay of the vaping ban hugh says their friendship has nothing to do with her stance surprisingly i'm actually able to make up my own mind on issues this might come as a shock to some people but there are women in the liberal party who have their own minds and able to determine what they feel about an issue all right let's get started according to electoral records marlow is a big donor to the liberal party personally donating 44 000 last financial year we wanted to ask milo about it but he pulled out of an interview with four corners very important for australian vapers i wanted to ask did you know that he's a big donor to the new south wales liberal party i don't know what he donates to the liberal party well i can tell you that records show he donated 44 000 in total to the new south wales liberal party last year was brian marlow's donation a thank you for your support uh no i don't know in what way brian donated through whatever mechanism he donated there's nothing illegal to donating to the liberal party there's nothing wrong with donating to liberal party and uh abs i mean that is just insulting for you to actually insinuate that you're a friend of his though and you're a liberal senator in new south wales am i supposed to lose all my friends as soon as i become a senator because the abc doesn't condone their behavior activities i don't think that was suggested well i think it might be being suggested so if you want to fight back and fight for your rights to live a life without cigarettes then you need to take action right now following our interview with senator hughes brian marlow revealed to four corners the 44 thousand dollars wasn't a personal donation the money actually came from legalized vaping's fighting fund in a statement marlow said every dollar raised came from vape shops and vapers off the back of that we held a series of vaping round table events to allow working-class vape shop employees and owners the chance to have long-form engagement with mps marlow said one of the round tables was this one with holly hughes senator hughes said in a statement the members of legalized vaping are salt of the earth everyday australians as an elected representative i regularly meet with a variety of industry representatives and business owners across a range of issues as should all my colleagues i think there are some camps in this country who particularly oppose vaping and have a desire to try and see a conspiracy every way they turn and that is absolutely false senator hughes has previously faced questions over her friendships with two lobbyists working for british american tobacco michael couter and david gracie when asked if they'd lobbied hughes or any other pro-vaping mps couture told four corners they comply with the lobbyist code of conduct as it relates to all elected representatives it is the most ridiculous claim i've ever heard that somehow there's some interwebbing here david and i both went to school together in perth at john 23 i've known michael carter in fact i know his whole family but michael was the former deputy director of the national party when i was on the board of the liberal party so being in coalition we actually got to know each other back then have you spoken to them about vaping have you spoken to them about those clients i have no problem talking to anyone about any issue i can tell you people come through my office all day every day talking about a range of issues and as long as they are representing legal entities i am more than happy to talk to them even if that's big tobacco you say big tobacco what is big tobacco divine big tobacco who are they uh british american tobacco it's a cigarette company they don't define themselves as big tobacco they define themselves as a cigarette company and a tobacco company do you really think there's much of a difference i do think because it's the it's the language here that's used to to bring up some emotion to try and demonize you can't demonize an interest rate and then turn around and expect to work with them if they are trying to move away from cigarettes into a product that is better for people that gets people off cigarettes i don't have a problem with that a senate committee inquiry into e-cigarettes was held in 2020 where pro-vape mps took on public health authorities it seems you've got a lot of book smarts there's a lot of studies and there's a lot of science there's not a lot of street smarts i think the department of health and this year more than ever has shown that it is entirely science health medical based in relation to the health of australia okay will pharmacies be selling something like this holly hughes was the chair so this is a bottle of nicotine salt right so yes i'll assume you have a prescription for it well that's empty so you can be reassured and in fact i do have a prescription so i've got both faces covered professor emily banks was one of the key witnesses so i'm not sure exactly which document you are i'm telling you the least study 2019. so and there were three three right so that is one one of them but it's used as part and listening to your opening statement i've got to say professor banks you don't sound like you're a big fan of e-cigarettes and think that well which is a little bit of a worry since the report isn't finalized and you seem to have a pretty predetermined view it's 5006 is that true well what i say is that i'm here to present the evidence and so that's what i do and i wish the news was different i wish that e-cigarettes didn't have the harms that they do but i have to present the evidence and i think the other thing is that that there are people out there who want the evidence to be different and one of the commonest things they do is to accuse people who are presenting the evidence of bias vaping was having a real impact on their lives and on their families lives ultimately the pro-vape camp failed in its ambition to make e-cigarettes widely available but regulations were watered down to allow vapes to be legally sold in pharmacies with a prescription it's far better to have limited access than to have open slather and again the people who want to open slather for the most part uh interested in the perspectives of the tobacco companies and then there are those that are legitimate and have views i just respectively and categorically disagree with those views based on the strong clear evidence from the medical and scientific bodies not just here in australia but around the world it's uh idiocy that that people smokers who want to switch from deadly cigarettes to much safer vaping have to jump through hoops to to do that but if they want to keep using deadly cigarettes they can get them very easily from 20 000 outlets that's crazy it's not hard to find a vape shop in australia but they're not allowed to sell nicotine instead business owners like maxim fitchkin are restricted to stocking empty devices and non-nicotine e-liquids what kinds of flavors can you get fruity cinnamon berry crunch mint candies grape um the world is your oyster if a smoker a current smoker walked in here today how do you kind of help them what sort of service do you give them in a vape shop we just need them to say that they want to quit smoking and from there we ask them a flurry of questions that helps us get an understanding of what device suits them what flavors would suit them and if they choose to source their nicotine legally how they would go about you incorporating that into their vaping journey since the prescription model was introduced a slew of new businesses have sprung up offering a one-stop shop you can buy your vape products and get a nicotine prescription all in one go even though it's legal some of these websites don't even require you to speak with a doctor you just fill out an online form with your medicare details and a prescription is emailed within hours but that's not how most people buy vapes there are practically no pharmacies around that are selling nicotine in the format required in order to continue vaping the way they have been the regulatory changes have created a black market by restricting a consumer's ability to be able to source nicotine legally and making it far more difficult is forcing them to have to go to the black market and purchase disposable vapes state and federal authorities have started targeting the illicit vape market new south wales health has raided stores like this tobacconist seizing more than one million dollars worth of stock since january the therapeutic goods administration has also fined individuals and online suppliers but our investigation has found the black market is still thriving the reason we've got a black market is because people are bringing in these products taking a chance that they won't be apprehended they're landing them for about a dollar each and they're selling in shops for 20 to 25 so this is a massive incentive for that to continue [Music] millions of disposable vapes made in china are being imported and sold here illegally by online dealers we've looked into one of them promoted as a major australian distributor of the popular gun pod brand we ordered vapes from the website and had them delivered the wholesaler also claims to supply major tobacconess so four corners bought gunpod vapes from four of the chains free choice signal tsg and king of the pack testing confirmed all the vapes contained high levels of nicotine [Music] we've tracked down the man behind the website how low he didn't respond to our emails so he went to his warehouse hello hello grace tobin from four corners do you sell these i don't see this one do you run a vaping business out of this warehouse no so you've never sold these products before no are you sure yeah thank you within days of speaking to hal lu changes were made to the gunpod australia website it now states it doesn't hold any stock and that it's working to bring gunpod to all pharmacies as the first tga approved vape brand in australia what's the vape model of choice like what's your favorite music it changes i guess i get excited yes actually i get pink it's a hot topic do we think there is non-vapor elitism i feel like people that like don't vape they just look out yeah look down on people who do vape but like also you don't know how hard it is to like seriously at 17 years old ruby is trying to stop vaping she's now on nicotine patches to help her quit what have you told your friends about trying to give up i told everyone at my school i was like do not give me any vapes like i had to have other people hold me accountable and it's like a monster that takes over you like when i go to people i'm like jenna vape and they're like we can't give it to you and i told them not to give it to me but i get so angry i'm like you're not my friend like if you really like cared for me you'd give me a vape what do you think about ruby giving up honestly i've seen ruby giving up many times it's been like a little not linear progression but you know just like an up and down thing and yeah i just think it's great because it is really hard and if she does quit this time she doesn't quit this time i think it's great that at least she's trying [Music] for a product that's meant to help smokers quit ruby's finding it's not that easy giving up vaping either have you fully quit vaping or is it hard to stick to that it's very hard to stick to it when is it hardest constantly all the time 24 7. it's ridiculous like there is no rest [Music] [Applause] [Music] you