Poor policy practice steers Labor’s prohibition fantasy on vapes

Labor chases the prohibition fantasy on vapes. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman

The Albanese government wanted clear air to bed down its tax cuts and a raft of budget goodies. Senator Payman’s defection to the cross bench has denied the government the opportunity to get on the front foot. Meanwhile, one measure that was introduced on July 1 has slipped into law quietly and with little attention.

The sale of vapes has now been prohibited and as with any prohibition, it has created a powerful black market, a multimillion-dollar enforcement exercise while consigning young people as end users to deal with the tail end of organised criminal syndicates.

As of July 1 vapes can only be legally purchased at a chemist store by prescription. But wait, there was a hasty amendment that has changed the landscape. It is a Greens amendment, supported by Labor that will allow the sale of vapes without prescription only from chemists on and after October 1. This might offer a slightly better regulatory environment, except no one bothered to tell the chemists.

Understandably many pharmacists are miffed. This includes the national employers’ organisation with almost 100 years’ experience representing pharmacists in this country, the Pharmacy Guild of Australia who are loathe to support the cobbled together amendment and believe chemists’ shops in part at least, will start to look a little bit like your standard tobacconist store. Would you like a lava lamp and some incense with your ointment, Sir?

The government, with the support of the Greens has foisted this upon pharmacists without consultation which is poor policy practice at the best of times. But worse, this government and the previous one have through regulatory overreach already created a well developed black market for vapes that has seen budding Al Capones, if not aspiring ‘El Chapo’ Guzmans enrich themselves in a low-risk smuggling exercise where the courts may offer fines and only a limited prospect of incarceration, in the unlikely event they get caught. Hundreds of millions of dollars are being invested by government in enforcement to solve a problem that wasn’t a problem five years ago and is of their own creation.

Such is the degree of criminal activity around tobacco and vape smuggling that a number of tobacco stores have been fire-bombed in Melbourne over the last six months, a sure sign that extortion and standover tactics from criminals is on the rise. Humble store owners are being told to stock illegal vapes or else their business literally will go up in smoke.

Our old friends in the outlaw motorcycle gang caper are doing much of the standover work.

The Albanese government has followed the Morrison government in an exercise that takes a philosophical position that consumer items they don’t like and bear some risk to consumers should be banned. Most certainly it’s a nod to the public health industry who are prohibitionists from way back.

The sale of vapes has now been prohibited and as with any prohibition, it has created a powerful black market. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman

From a legislative viewpoint, it’s a denial of history, as if the 20th Century didn’t happen. The Volstead Act that prohibited the sale and consumption of alcohol, turned those who like a tipple into potential criminals and entrenched organised criminal syndicates like La Cosa Nostra for decades. Narcotic prohibitions have, in many cases, been with us for a century or more – the sale and possession of cocaine was first criminalised across Australia in the 1920s. Now, we have international criminal syndicates that are more powerful and with more cash in hand than governments.

The Calabrian Mafia, ‘Ndragheta who, with their Albanian confrères, control 80 per cent of Europe’s illicit cocaine market, has an estimated annual turnover larger than our biggest public company, BHP Billiton.

Now we have another social ill cast into the prohibition pit and with it, every predictable consequence is coming to pass. The Greens’ amendment which allows the sale of vapes without prescription only by chemists from October 1 might be seen as a step in the right direction but it is, if anything, a case of too little, too late.

Over 90 per cent of Australia’s 1.7 million adult vapers are purchasing their vaping products from the blackmarket. 120 million disposal vapes are imported into Australia each year. Most of them come from China, some from Europe. Contrary to some of the nonsense out from the public healthy industry, these illicit vaes are not manufactured or marketed by Big Tobacco. As these are blackmarket items and not subject to regulation, some will contain more than the usual cocktail of poisons. The AFP scans only 1.5 per cent of all containers that enter the country. We live in a big country with 34,000 kilometres of coastline.

Here we have bad, timid laws that will only increase harm whereas a properly and sensibly regulated environment would see the sale of vapes occur in a similar way to the sale of tobacco products.

Greens leader Adam Bandt. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Martin Ollman

The Greens amendment at least acknowledges that vapes do have a social benefit. There is a large amount of data which shows that vaping is a successful pathway to long term smokers giving up the durries forever and easing off nicotine addictions. My eldest daughter was a smoker. Then she vaped. Now she does neither. The UK government gave serious thought to sending nicotine vapes in the post to long term smokers as a harm minimisation program. In New Zealand vapes can be purchased at retail outlets that sell cigarettes and other tobacco products.

While we don’t want to see the continued rush from teenagers and children to take up vaping, why not simply restrict sales to those under 18?

Why has Australia gone down the well-worn, failed prohibition pathway? The answer, in short, is that the public health industry holds too much sway over policy makers. But if products like gaming, alcohol and tobacco can be regulated, why not vaping?

Seriously, if our legislators can’t find a pathway to regulation of vaping then maybe these lawmakers are in the wrong business and should go and find jobs they can do, tasks that won’t amplify and cause greater harm through their addled interventions.