Survey Says: Australian Prohibition Policies are Forcing Vapers Towards the Black Market
Ancient societies like Egypt, Zhou dynasty China, Greece, and Rome all had some version of what we today refer to as clowns. These entertainers occupied different roles, such as entertainment, satirising the powerful, boosting morale, and even playing with social norms.
For me, the modern Australian version of these primordial jesters lack the depth of their spiritual predecessors. While they might have mastered the exaggerated facial expressions, ill-fitting clothes, and predisposition to farce, the Simon Chapmans and Mark Butlers of this world leave much to be desired despite their clear commitment to the hallowed art of clowning.
For starters, they don’t have the self-depreciation or ability to connect with ordinary people, which is one of the hallmarks of clowns gone by. Sure, you can argue that these contemporary manifestations are just as silly and gaffe-prone, but you never get the feeling they’re in on the joke in the same way.
For example, shortly after Butler’s horrible and misguided vape prohibition legislation collapsed like a house of cards, Simon Chapman breathlessly described him as a “visionary health minister,” as if Butler were Joan of Arc or Moses incarnate.
I didn’t realise the bar on being a visionary had been lowered quite to this degree. Is merely being capable of basic forward planning enough to warrant that label now? Does that mean that New Caledonian crows — who famously store tools for later use— are visionaries now, too? Will they be pecking their way onto a Labor ticket in the future? I have so many questions.
Before Butler’s unsuccessful politicking, credible thinkers like Dr Colin Mendelson and Dr Alex Wodak warned the Health Minister that he was handing the market on a platter to organised criminals. What’s more, they made it crystal clear that the MP’s rash policies would undo years of progress in smoking cessation among Aussie citizens.
Yet Butler would not be deterred. Dismissing the concerns of anyone outside a small cadre of probitionist lunatics, he pushed on.
Butler wanted to make vapes prescription only. He also wanted citizens to be criminalized for mere possession of a vape, alongside implementing rules around flavour limitations and plain packaging. However, the ALP’s slender majority meant they needed the help of either the Coalition or the Greens to push the bill through the Senate.
Sadly, the Greens obliged. However, they did so with a few amendments that watered down Butler’s “vision”. Australians would be able to access vapes via pharmacies, but without prescriptions. When the Pharmacy Guild heard about these plans via a press release, their vice president stated, “We were gobsmacked, and after picking our jaws from the floor, we questioned why we were not involved in the conversation on this very, very important issue.”
Shortly after, Simon Chapman responded to claims that this was effectively a back-door ban because it would still put a lot of friction between Australians and vapes, suggesting:
As I said at the time, it’s obvious that making a product pharmacy-only makes it harder to get. For starters, the concentration of pharmacies is far lower than convenience stores, especially in more remote areas. Similarly, the operational hours of pharmacies are shorter.
In major Australian cities, 97% of people have a pharmacy within 2.5km. That drops to 66% for more rural locations. However, the same data suggests that just over 4 in 10 pharmacies are open for a full day on Sundays.
More importantly, in recent days, The Telegraph reported that only 1% of dispensaries even stock vapes, which shows just how bad a betrayal of consumer rights this policy is.
The sad fact is that if someone needs to buy a vape, they’ll walk or drive past a lot of convenience stores that sell cigarettes. If it’s a Sunday or it’s late at night, buying a pack of cigarettes might be their only way to access nicotine.
In the end, no one was happy with this legislation; not Butler, nor the Australian citizen, nor the pharmacies who seem unwilling or uninterested in being the sole provider of these products.
In other words, the only thing that stopped Bulter from doing maximum damage was his own incompetence and inability to marshall political support.
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Consequentialism and Australian vape policy
Consequentialism is a type of ethics that judges the morality or “goodness” of an action based on its consequences. In other words, the intent of your actions is less important than the outcomes.
While Butler justifies his actions with well-worn fluff, such as “protecting the kids” or saying that vapes are “addicting whole new generation,” what will ultimately determine the wisdom of his actions are health outcomes for all Australian citizens.
The negative consequences of putting vapes behind the pharmacy counter are:
- Making these products less accessible or inaccessible to people who live far away from participating pharmacies.
- Pushing vapers to buy vapes from unregulated black market sources.
- Nudging vapers back to deadly cigarettes, often from the black market, due to excessively high excise duties on legal cigarettes.
- Removing the only safe ways of consuming nicotine means teens are more likely to take up cigarettes.
The positive consequences are:
- Some vapers might give up nicotine cold turkey.
- Some youth might never use vapes, a product that causes minimal harm.
When you balance the positive and negative consequences against each other, the minuscule benefits are outweighed by considerable harm, suffering, and inconvenience for the adult population.
On the one hand, the Chapmans and Butlers of this world tell us how “evil” Big Tobacco preys on the youth with hyper-addictive nicotine. On the other hand, they treat the victims of these supposed crimes with total contempt. It’s a strange inconsistency that is uncomfortably close to victim blamming.
Adult vaper’s health is a sacrifice that Butler is prepared to make. Only time will tell, but when the 2024 data comes in, there is a very strong chance that smoking rates will rise in Australia. At the same time, neighbouring New Zealand will continue to power towards a “smoke-free” society, mainly because of its sensible policies around harm reduction products.
Part of the watered-down deal that the Greens struck with the ALP promised a review of this legislation in three years’ time. Stagnant or rising smoking prevalence would provide objective proof that these policies didn’t work. Even comparatively slow smoking prevalence drops should suffice.
In some rare moments of introspection, Butler might try to justify what he did and bleat about unintended consequences. He must not be allowed to do this. His policies are not some step into the unknown; they’ve been tried and failed elsewhere. The consequences have been clear to Butler and his ilk, but they just don’t want to hear it.
Pouch use on the rise in Australia?
A new paper published in Drug and Alcohol Dependence titled Patterns of nicotine pouch use among young Australiansis the result of a 1,600-person anonymous online survey. The findings are pretty surprising, with the headline news suggesting that one in four young Australians used nicotine pouches between April and June 2024 and 19% saying they’ve used a pouch within the last 30 days.
If you think those numbers seem ridiculously high, you’re probably right. Sure, pouches are having a moment, but these figures seem off. Indeed, the methodology was questionable and, in all likelihood, not representative in the slightest.
However, the author, University of Melbourne associate professor Michelle Jongenelis, hasn’t let that stop her from making policy recommendations off the back of this skewed survey, stating, “Nicotine pouches are illegal, but of concern in our research is that we do have these retailers that have now started selling these products illegally to adolescents and young adults.”
By the way, in Jongenelis’s world, young adults can be as old as 39. While I personally find it comforting to suddenly be within touching distance of young adulthood all over again, it does show that Australia’s appetite for banning harm-reduction products will not stop with vaping, and that data can and will be conveniently reframed to keep the carousel running.
Final thoughts
Tobacco control is prone to characterise vapes and pouches as some kind of Big Tobacco whack-a-hole, or in the case of Becky Freeman’s David Brent-esque metaphor, “like the Hydra from Greek mythology – cut off one head, another two grow in its place.” These clumsy hottakes speak to a broader misunderstanding of many things, chief among them human nature.
The thing is, humans like stimulants, and nicotine use is a symptom rather than a cause of these preferences. You can make vapes unbelievably difficult to get, and all it will do is force teens and adults to use the black market, back to smoking, or, in the case of the above survey, to try unregulated nicotine pouches.
It’s all a total mess. Instead of following the success of Sweden and New Zealand, or to a lesser extent, the UK and the US, the Australian Health Minister is hell-bent on implementing “world-leading” anti-smoking policies that will produce world-trailing results.
So, if you’ll allow me to borrow and modulate a Senator Llyod Bentsen jibe from a 1988 vice presidential debate:
“Health Minister, I served with Joseph Grimaldi; I knew Joseph Grimaldi. Joseph Grimaldi was a friend of mine. Health Minister, you’re no Joseph Grimaldi.”
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