Australia banned vape advertising more than two years ago, yet illegal vape sellers have turned to social media to promote nicotine-filled products, with experts calling for a crackdown including stronger penalties for the platforms. This was reported by Qazaqyia.kz citing The Guardian.
Guardian Australia has identified a network of posts across TikTok, Instagram and YouTube promoting the sale of illegal products to Australian audiences. The accounts posted promotional content offering to sell viewers popular vape brands, in most cases directing viewers to order via private messages or encrypted messaging apps such as WhatsApp.
There are similarities between many of the posts, including use of the same vision and editing techniques, suggesting a degree of coordination across the platforms. Some content also appeared to be AI-generated. In some instances, content has been boosted on TikTok as paid advertising.
The Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) said it was aware of thousands of similar posts, and was taking "strong and sustained" action to remove them. Australia has some of the world's toughest anti-vaping laws, introduced in 2024, which banned the advertising of vapes across all media platforms, including social media.
Between January 2024 and June 2026, the TGA said it had "removed over 8,500 unlawful vape advertising posts from social media and redirected more than 390 websites unlawfully advertising vaping goods". It has also issued more than 90 infringement notices, resulting in more than $1.5m in fines.
Despite the laws, Prof Becky Freeman, a public health researcher at the University of Sydney, said the content was "so blatant, they're not even bothering to hide it". She said the posts continued to appear because accountability sat largely with individual sellers, rather than the platforms.
Freeman called for "enforcement at the platform level as well as the individual ad level", adding that "these platforms aren't doing the job that they promised they would do". She suggested fining platforms for allowing such content, rather than just taking down individual ads.
TikTok, Instagram and YouTube each confirmed the identified content violated their community guidelines. A TikTok spokesperson said accounts posting such material were in violation of rules that "prohibit trading, marketing, or providing access to tobacco, drugs, and other regulated substances". The platform also said it was "constantly working to proactively identify, review, and remove content that violates our policies", and urged users to report suspicious content.
A Meta spokesperson said it also encouraged users "to report items that may breach our rules so we can review and take the appropriate action". YouTube said the site "prohibited content that aims to directly sell, link to, or facilitate access" to illegal products and services, including in video descriptions, comments, live streams, external links and verbal directions.
In their responses, the three platforms said they had banned or terminated the accounts identified by Guardian Australia. Accounts that had posted the vape content did not respond to requests for comment.