An open letter sent by 42 Australian and New Zealand scientists that include director and founder of the Australian Tobacco Harm Reduction Association Colin Mendelsohn, to the Australian health minister is about Australia’s ban on vaping and e-cigarettes, excluding those sold under prescription, urging him to reconsider his trade enforcement measures to combat the vaping ‘epidemic‘ that is spreading despite its ban.
A growing number of Australians, young people and teenagers, are insisting on sourcing e-cigarette devices and accessories as well as disposable e-cigarettes from the shops that trade them illegally, creating the issue of the law enforcement that banned them, which stipulates that nicotine, with the exception of that already found in tobacco leaves and in pharmaceutical form, is a Schedule #5 poison.
The review of the above position of the legislation in Australia was carried out in 2019 by a coalition government of the two parties (National and Liberal) rejecting the legalization of nicotine and its embezzlement by fifth-class poison.
The same ban does not exist in New Zealand after a legal battle was won between Philip Morris, which sold and marketed heated tobacco components in its market, and the state, in its favour, ruling in 2018 that the marketing and sale of Heets tobacco sticks was legal as nicotine was already in tobacco leaves, and legalizing vaping, since using heated tobacco is also called vaping.
Last May, Australian Health Minister Mark Butler decided to stop the illegal consumption of e-cigarettes sold under the counter without a prescription by a doctor in Australia by banning already banned products by individual category, specifically banning disposable e-cigarettes and flavours with which the rest are illegally sold and spending extra taxpayers’ funds on anti-vaping campaigns and existing smoking cessation services. So the country’s health ministry informs consumers by repeating that the products it refers to have been banned as part of justifying the “information campaign” it is conducting! Meanwhile, the country’s Department of Health and Social Care is in charge of monitoring the ban on e-cigarettes and vaporizers in the Australian market instead of the Department of Trade and Commerce.
In 2020, after there was widespread online trade of e-cigarettes and vaporizers imported from outside of the country, the window to the law that allowed it was closed and violations began to be prosecuted with customs controls. However, their illegal supply and their trade and use have become disorderly since then until now at an exponential rate from shops as well.
Reacting to Australian Health Minister Mark Butler’s personal panic over the ongoing youth vaping epidemic in his country, which corresponds to a revolution that happened in Britain, 42 Australian and New Zealand health and addiction scientists including the founding director of the Australian Harm Reduction Association, Colin Mendelsohn, sent him the following open letter asking him to reconsider policing and enforcement measures in existing legislation:
Dear Minister,
We are Australian and New Zealand tobacco control and addiction experts with no links to tobacco or e-cigarette companies. We are writing to ask you to reconsider your proposal to further restrict access to nicotine vaping products in Australia. In our view, this approach will have serious and harmful unintended consequences for public health.
Below is a summary of our concerns. Further details are in the Briefing that follows.
The likely outcomes of the proposed changes are:
- The black-market will continue to import and supply unregulated and potentially unsafe nicotine vaping products to adults and young people.
- People who smoke will have greater difficulty legally accessing nicotine for vaping, a far safer alternative.
- Some former smokers who currently vape will return to smoking.
- Uptake of the prescription model will continue to be low.
- Smoking rates will decline more slowly.
- Increased smoking-related death and disease will result, and
- The model will ultimately fail.
A well-designed adult consumer regulatory model is most likely to achieve the two goals we all seek, i.e., making vaping products readily available as a quitting aid for adults who smoke and minimising access by young people.
While measures to protect non-smoking youth are essential, excessive regulation that makes vaping less accessible, less appealing, more expensive or less effective perpetuates adult smoking and increases smoking-related death and illness.
We urge you to reconsider the totality of the scientific evidence and reassess the proposed changes.
We believe the proposed policy is likely to have an overall negative effect on smoking rates and thus on population health as well as Medicare and health-care costs in Australia.
We would be happy to meet with you to discuss in more detail how a risk-proportionate adult consumer model might work to achieve better public health outcomes.
The brief attached to and following the letter, which you can read in full here, states that;
Some have incorrectly framed vaping as a ploy by the Tobacco Industry to “addict a new generation of youth to nicotine”. The black-market disposable vapes being used by Australian youth are exclusively Chinese-manufactured imports. No tobacco company vaping products including disposables are sold illegally in Australia. A small number of tobacco company pod vapes are available on prescription for adult smokers through pharmacies. The tobacco industry did not invent vaping and currently controls only 12% of the vaping market globally by value, according to e-cigarette research company, E-Cig-Intelligence. Vaping is a huge disruptive threat to the sale of cigarettes and tobacco. From a public health point of view, it is a good thing that tobacco companies are transitioning from manufacturing deadly combustibles to reduced risk nicotine products such as vapes.
Bring Back Smoking Freedom 