Australia has become the global village idiot on quitting smoking

When it comes to reducing harms from smoking, Australia finds itself cast as the global village idiot – clinging to policies that perpetuate harm, empower criminals and squander opportunities to save lives.

While we once stood as pioneers in public health, and particularly harm reduction, we are now the cautionary tale.

At present, 66 Australians die every day from the effects of smoking – not from an addiction to nicotine, but from the toxic delivery mechanism of cigarettes. That is 24,000 Australian lives lost each year.

Australia has maintained tight restrictions on the use of vapes, even as other countries use them to help wean smokers off tobacco. Credit: Marija Ercegovac

Australia’s tobacco policy is a paradox of legal sanction and de facto prohibition. Legal cigarettes are taxed at rates so punitive that they have become virtually inaccessible to many, while vaping devices, which offer a far safer alternative, are rendered unobtainable through deliberately restrictive access avenues. The result? One of the most lucrative and violent black markets Australia has seen.

Apart from organised crime – whose fortunes have never been brighter – and a handful of well-intentioned but misguided health groups, nearly everyone else recognises federal Health Minister Mark Butler has made a huge mistake in his approach to controlling tobacco and vapes. His message is that we should continue down the path of prohibition in the vain hope we will eventually get a different result. But the fire bombings continue, and huge profits flow into the pockets of criminal groups.

Around the world, doctors, scientists and governments have embraced harm reduction and acknowledged that prohibition does not and cannot ever work. Instead, the focus has shifted towards making safer nicotine products accessible to adult smokers – most notably, vaping devices. And in countries where these products are promoted, smoking rates have plummeted.

In Britain, the health department actively provides nicotine vaping products to adult smokers, and smoking rates have dropped steeply in the past five years, from 18 per cent to 11.6 per cent.

Britain’s review of international research found “in the short and medium term, vaping poses a small fraction of the risks of smoking”.

Sweden, having championed tobacco harm reduction, now boasts a smoking rate below 5 per cent – a level considered “smoke-free” – and has some of the lowest lung cancer rates in the EU.

Japan, too, has reduced its smoking rate by more than 30 per cent in seven years by allowing a less harmful, smoke-free product – heated tobacco products – to flourish.

New Zealand’s progressive policies on vaping and nicotine have it poised to join Sweden as a smoke-free nation.

The message is clear: when governments allow and encourage safer alternatives, lives are saved and deadly smoking rates decline. They are also not experiencing illicit tobacco wars.

In stark contrast, Australia’s approach has grown ever more draconian. Vaping, the most successful smoking cessation tool on record, is met with the harshest prohibitions.

The policy not only fails to acknowledge international best practice or the science underpinning harm reduction, but also produces perverse, dangerous outcomes: Australians are increasingly turning to black market tobacco and vapes; overall smoking rates are stagnating, even increasing in some disadvantaged communities and preventable deaths continue to mount.

The aftermath of another suspicious fire at a tobacco shop, in Melton South, Melbourne, in May. Credit: Justin McManus

Over a million Australians now use a nicotine vaping device. Despite threats of jail terms and million-dollar fines, most of them are using an unregulated product that has been supplied by the black market. And while it is still safer than smoking tobacco, it is not regulated, and the ingredients and components are unknown. Instead of controlling the market in the interest of public health, the government has ceded it to organised crime.

The lack of common sense and logic in this “war” that is being waged by governments is self-evident. The mere possession of a vape in many states attracts thousands of dollars in fines, and even prison terms. In the ACT, the possession of a nicotine vape means you can be jailed for two years and fined $32,000. This is in a jurisdiction that has legalised the personal use of cannabis and decriminalised the use of other illicit drugs, such as cocaine and heroin. In my home town of Melbourne, we provide a safer injecting facility for people who use heroin, but they could be fined thousands of dollars for using a nicotine vape.

The federal government in its wisdom has this month made it even more difficult to supply a vape legally to an adult, by requiring that vapes meet the standards of medical devices. Most of the vapes entering Australia are from places where manufacturers have little interest in meeting the stringent manufacturing standard. This means the handful of legal vaping devices available have all but vanished.

I gave up smoking seven years ago with the help of vaping. But tobacco had already had its wicked way with me, and I contracted a smoking-related cancer, which led to surgery and a couple of years of treatment. I’m pleased to say I am one of the lucky ones and have now recovered.

It is time for state and federal health ministers to look at what the rest of the world is doing to encourage smokers to move to safer nicotine options and stop pretending we are world leaders. We are wasting bucket loads of money attempting to prevent adults who smoke from accessing a less harmful nicotine product that could actually reduce the market for illicit tobacco.

Fiona Patten was a member of the Victorian Legislative Council from 2014 to 2022 and leader of the Reason Australia party.

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