Australian Vaping Ban In Doubt As Pressure Mounts

Another reason for the backlash was this ban was announced by the health minister without public consultation or even a proper debate by parliament. Does one person have the power to unilaterally make a decision that could ultimately affect the lives of hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people in Australia? We’re not only talking about the hundreds of thousands of vapers here, but we’re also talking about the millions of people that would be affected by second-hand smoke as well if these vapers were pushed back into smoking. This is a national health issue that shouldn’t have been sneaked in at the end of a sitting week and wasn’t even put to the Coalition party room. Talk about trying to steamroll something this important.

More and more government officials are expressing the same opinion as vapers that the proposed regulations are so onerous that no one would be able to follow them, which will basically be pushing people back to smoking. With less than 10 doctors listed on the ATHRA site that are available to provide the required prescription for nicotine importation, the proposed “regulation” is basically an outright ban, and this is why people are treating it as such.

Flimsy reasoning like pharmacists can import and fill nicotine needs have also come under fire because as of September 2020, no pharmacy has been given the proper permits and licenses to import nicotine to fill nicotine e-liquid prescriptions.

What the health minister has forgotten to consider is that effectively banning nicotine e-liquid in Australia will cause a host of problems, vapers going back to smoking being the least of them. That is if people can still afford to go back to smoking. With the latest round of tax increases on tobacco, Australia has officially become the country in the world with the most expensive cigarettes. What’s more likely to happen is that many vapers who do not want to go back to smoking (or can’t afford to go back to tobacco) and smokers who want to quit, will turn to the black market. Then, who is fighting for vapers' right?

In countries where vaping is banned (and even here in Australia), many vapers who cannot source their nicotine e-liquids properly will turn to the black market in the form of Social media post, underground forums, and even word of mouth. And what does this mean? Instead of properly regulating vape products and earning revenue for the government, illegal operations will reap the benefit of smuggling in vape products.

It’s all well and good if the price was the only problem. But what about quality? Without real regulation in the black and gray markets, people will be forced to purchase and consume e-liquids of questionable sources. Remember what happened about a year ago with the wave of unexplained lung disease that was attributed to bootleg cartridges that contained vitamin e acetate? Without proper regulation and the proliferation of a black market, we can expect something like that to happen in Australia, but on a much wider scale. Gone will be the e-liquid manufacturers of care about the purity and quality of their product. They will be replaced by unscrupulous traders who will do anything just to profit off of the needs (in this case, nicotine addiction) of others.  

We could also see the rise in unlabeled nicotine e-liquid bottles being imported into the country and causing accidental nicotine exposure. Since e-liquid with zero nicotine is still allowed, manufacturers may omit marking their products with nicotine levels which may inadvertently expose those who vape without nicotine to various levels of nicotine, essentially defeating the purpose in the first place.

Instead of products being properly marked when they’re brought into the country, it will become a game of hide and go seek where the Australian government will probably spend millions of dollars screening and checking every package of e-liquid coming into the country for possible nicotine content, a real waste of time, resources, and manpower.

I can think of a dozen more problems that a nicotine import ban can cause and not one single REAL reason to ban it as far as smokers and vapers are concerned.

To sum everything up, I think a quote from Dr. Colin Mendelsohn, the chairman of ATHRA, says it all, “It is immoral and unscientific to ban a far safer alternative to smoking, while allowing widespread access to lethal cigarettes which kill up to two-in-three long-term users”.