Australia made pouches almost impossible to buy legally. 1 in 12 young adults used them anyway.

Australia has some of the strictest nicotine rules in the world. Nicotine pouches can’t be legally sold in shops. Vapes are pharmacy-only.

So how many young Australians use pouches? One in twelve.

That’s a government figure. 

The numbers

Australia’s National Drug Strategy Household Survey asked more than 17,500 people about their nicotine use between June and December 2025. For the first time, it asked about pouches.

Here’s what the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare found. In the past year:

• 1.8% of Australians aged 14 and over used nicotine pouches
• 8.4% of 18 to 24 year olds used them. That’s about 1 in 12
• 5.3% of 25 to 29 year olds used them

At the time, pouches were unapproved, prescription-only medicines. You could only get them legally through a doctor, or by importing them with a prescription. No shop could sell them.

So where did they get them?

The survey doesn’t say. But it does say where people got their vapes.

Vapes can only be sold legally in pharmacies. And yet 93% of people who vape got them from illicit sources. Only around 7% used a pharmacy.

Pouches were even harder to get legally than vapes. If the legal route barely worked for vapes, it’s hard to see it working for pouches.

The government’s answer: tighter still

The survey came out on 17 July 2026. The same day, the government announced it would close the last legal routes for pouches. From 24 July, the TGA, Australia’s medicines regulator, shut them down: no more prescriptions, no more personal imports, no more pharmacist compounding.

Here’s the thing. Australia already had one of the toughest regimes anywhere. Adults got pouches anyway. Most likely not from a shop that checks ID. Not as a product with a clear label and a known nicotine level.

Tightening the rules again doesn’t change that. It just leaves the illicit market as the only option.

What works instead

Other countries are taking a different approach.

Since 29 October, it’s been illegal in the UK to sell pouches to anyone under 18. Adults can still buy them. In Austria, pouches are sold only in licensed tobacconists, with age checks at the counter.

That’s where you protect people: at the point of sale.

Australia doesn’t have one. The pouches are still there. The age checks aren’t.