It’s October 1, 2021, and 20,000 vape-mail packages arrive in the ABF warehouse.
These packages are sorted, opened, checked for a prescription, no prescription is found, the TGA is referred for assessment - If they’re able to complete process this at a rate of a package a minute, it will take a dedicated team of over fourty people three full days.
(Note: these 20,000 packages have to be stored safely in a warehouse somewhere, nicely laid out on shelves so they can be easily found at a later date.)
By day three, the TGA has been notified of all 20,000 original packages, and have sent out letters to each of the 20,000 Australian Vapers asking for a copy of the prescription.
It takes a week (or more) for the letters to arrive, and the vapers have a week to respond.
The vapers wait a week, and reply back to the TGA via letter, taking another week (or more).
The TGA then takes three days, with a team of forty two letter-openers, opening letters every minute of every working day to process the letters.
At least three weeks and six days have passed since the original packages were stopped - it’s now October 28, 2021 (or later), and the TGA has notified the ABF that in fact, all 20,000 vapers have provided prescriptions.
By this point, the ABF have at least 540,000 vape packages on their shelves, and have to go through them to find the first 20,000 to re-seal, and re-ship out to the first 20,000 Vapers. This takes another team of at least 80 people three days to complete.
Yeah, it all seems pretty crazy to us, too.