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Australia

Meta and TikTok ran ads for illegal nicotine products in Australia — and kept the money

Meta's own ad library showed 460 ads for black-market vapes. Both platforms took money from criminal groups for illegal nicotine ads, pulled them only after questions, and Meta refuses to refund a cent.

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Meta and TikTok ran hundreds of advertisements for illegal cigarettes and vapes on their platforms in Australia — some of them pushed by AI-generated women — and only pulled many of them after a Sydney Morning Herald investigation started asking questions. Meta, when asked whether it would return ad revenue it now knows was probably paid with criminal proceeds, answered with one word: no.

Australia banned nicotine pouches outright in July 2026 and has spent two years forcing vapes into pharmacy-only channels. The country also marked 50 years of cigarette advertising bans this month. None of it matters much if the places where Australians actually see advertising are selling slots to the black market.

What the investigation found

The Herald's review of Meta's own ad library turned up 460 unique ads selling Alibarbar vapes — a Chinese brand imported by crime gangs — across Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Threads. At least 93 were still active when the paper put questions to Meta on Wednesday; 86 remained live by Friday.

Both platforms also carried ads from Austobac, a self-described Sydney business delivering Manchester-brand cigarettes produced in the Middle East, plus Double Happiness, a Chinese cigarette brand. The packaging alone is a giveaway: it flagrantly breaches Australia's plain packaging laws, meaning these products are only sellable under the counter.

Meta says tobacco and vape ads aren't allowed and that it has "taken action against the accounts and ads that breach our policies." TikTok says every account the Herald identified has been permanently banned and that 99.8% of videos violating regulated-goods rules are taken down proactively. Neither company would explain how the ads were approved in the first place, or how much revenue they collected.

Why it matters for nicotine pouches

Australia closed every legal pathway for nicotine pouches in July, which turned the entire pouch category into an import-ban enforcement problem overnight. This investigation shows what that enforcement problem looks like from the demand side: a platform ecosystem that takes criminal money, runs ads for illegal nicotine products for weeks, and keeps the revenue even after being caught.

The scale underneath is already documented. The Australian Bureau of Statistics reports illicit cigarettes and vapes went from 12% of the market in 2017 to 80% in 2025, and some estimates put 95–98% of vape sales in the illegal channel. Pouches entering that same machinery — social ads, discreet delivery, under-the-counter retail — is not a hypothetical. It is the established playbook for every other banned nicotine product in the country.

There's also a policy irony worth naming. Supporters of Australia's total pouch ban argue prohibition protects young people. But the same investigation found many Australian kids still use TikTok and Meta despite the under-16s social media ban enacted in December — and those are exactly the platforms carrying ads for illegal nicotine products. A legal, age-checked retail channel was replaced with AI-generated women on Instagram selling black-market vapes.

Money is part of the story too. TikTok wrote $883.7 million in Australian revenue in 2025, and Meta collected $1.74 billion in gross advertising revenue from a portion of its Australian advertisers — sending $1.51 billion of it offshore to related entities. Regulated Australian media, which actually follows advertising law, is losing those dollars.

For the Australian politicians currently debating whether to legalise and regulate pouches — the Coalition has proposed exactly that — the lesson of this investigation cuts both ways: enforcement against platforms is weak, and prohibition without a controlled market keeps feeding the black market it was meant to starve.

If you want to see what a regulated pouch market looks like instead, compare brands and strengths at PouchFinder.

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