Shocking Scale of Australia’s Stupidity
Australia’s refusal to adopt a harm reduction approach to smoking has led to a huge black market – the scale of which has reached an incredible size
"Australia’s regressive and ignorant approach to tackling tobacco related disease and death has placed barriers in the way of smokers looking to quit and turned everyday vapers into criminals. Classifying vapes as a Schedule 4 prescription drug has led to an explosion in illicit products being smuggled into the country and recent seizures highlight the scale of Australia’s failure.
Australian smokers and vapers can only obtain alternative nicotine-containing products like e-liquid through a medical prescription. We have previously detailed how this is a drawn out and ridiculously complex process, placing obstacles in the way of people who wish to continue to use nicotine products but reduce their harm exposure.
Meanwhile, cigarettes are legal, on sale, and available everywhere.
Politicians and tobacco controllers were warned that by making access to vapes harder they would only succeed in developing a black market and criminalise innocent members of the public. They didn’t listen...
Last week, The Sydney Morning Herald revealed that in just one state (New South Wales) 100,000 products had been seized, bearing a value of $2 million. Extrapolating this figure across the entire country would give a figure in excess of $6 million – and this would just represent the items that could be confiscated, not the full size of the illicit market tobacco controllers have created..."
