What is going wrong with Australia’s anti-smoking policy?

There is a lot to love about Australia: beautiful scenery, upbeat citizens, even their ashes retaining cricket team deserves our respect, despite the controversy. But it’s fair to say that their anti-smoking policies have all the sophistication of a wild animal at a tea party.

Looking at the Data

I came across a graph on Twitter that shows that despite Australia’s “no-nonsense” stance towards smoking, they are underperforming compared to the UK, the US, and neighbouring New Zealand when it comes to reducing smoking.

If anything, quitting cigarettes seems to have stagnated in Australia over the last few years as the rest of the English-speaking world and beyond move towards “smoke-free” generations.

Here is a simple spreadsheet to make it easier to compare the data –

Australia wants us to believe they are a world leader in tobacco control. They want us to believe their hardline stance works. But, then, why are their policies so ineffective when measured against other countries?

Striking a balance

As the economist Thomas Sowell once said, “There are no solutions, only trade-offs.” Any public policy should find the balance between stopping people from causing harm to others while still respecting the rights of the individual.

Loudmouth crank Simon Chapman’s paper Tobacco Control Advocacy in Australia: Reflections on 30 Years of Progress starts with an incredible quote from a Philip Morris Australia Corporate Affairs Planning Document from 1992, which states:

It doesn’t seem that things have gotten much better since 1992, at least in terms of the hostility that anti-tobacco groups have toward smoking.

This should go without saying, but the tobacco industry from previous generations was out of control. They misled the public, withheld information, and used their power and money to exert undue influence. Most importantly, their actions killed people.

However, as many others have pointed out, modern anti-smoking advocates seem to have borrowed the Big Tobacco playbook. It’s not an exaggeration to say that misinforming the public about vaping and nicotine pouches has and will continue to cost lives.

It didn’t have to be that way. Not every government or health body looked at vaping and saw it as tobacco in disguise. However, many ostensible public health crusaders in Australia have gone to great lengths to exaggerate the dangers of vaping, embarrassing the country on the global stage.

Essentially, Big Tobacco and Big Anti-Tobacco are symbiotic. If tobacco dies, so too do whole scientific careers, speaking engagements, well-capitalised advocacy groups, and so on. It is within the interest of these people to lie to the public and pretend that vaping is an epidemic on par with smoking, even if it’s at the cost of their integrity.

Why prohibition doesn’t work

Anti-tobacco activists are fond of claiming that without their brave work, history will repeat itself. Presumably, their knowledge of history doesn’t stretch back to the early 20th century when the US, Canada, Iceland, Finland, and Russia dabbled with alcohol prohibition.

Friedrich Hayek got this right in his 1944 book The Road to Serfdom when he argued that central economic planning was a threat to both the individual and individualism itself. The Australian government’s e-cigarette and nicotine pouch bans are already pushing people toward either black-market products or back toward cigarettes. As they say, history repeats itself first as tragedy, second as farce.

Conclusions

The emergence of vapes and nicotine pouches over the last 15 years or so is an example of everyday citizen-driven solutions to smoking. These movements spread through word of mouth because they worked. Yes, advertising money and tobacco companies eventually arrived at the party, but they just exacerbated a trend of swapping smoking for less harmful alternatives.

The train is already rolling. It’s time for control freaks like Mark Butler and the useful idiots who support his bizarre policies to get out of the way.