Australia to ban non-prescription vapes in biggest smoking reforms in a decade

- I do see a lot of kids vaping, just like you used to see a lot of underage kids smoking or drinking. The solution there was not to ban cigarettes and alcohol for adults, or require a prescription, it was suitable age-appropriate regulation.

- I would not have seen a doctor to try out vapes. Under this regime, adult vapers like myself will now have to see a doctor, get a prescription which will likely need re-prescribing every 1-3 months, and most doctors won't renew prescriptions over the phone or without charge. My local GP charges me $80 a visit, that's now adding potentially $320-$1k/year to the cost of vaping, not to mention the additional fees that will be charged by pharmacists and whoever the approved vendors will be. (I also expect the approved products to kinda suck and certainly not include the only two flavours of vape that I enjoy.)

- This thing about "big tobacco" somehow being the beneficiaries of Australian vaping seems like nonsense to me -- at least where I live (VIC), the overwhelming majority of vapers use dodgy off-brand imports of disposable vapes that are sold over-the-counter, with nicotine, by unethical tobacco shops (extremely common around my area). For more "sophisticated" vapers who use refillables with hand-mixed flavour and nicotine, the nicotine is imported from somewhere like NZ from a reputable nicotine supplier, the flavours are purchased locally, and the devices are mostly from quality Chinese manufacturers. I have seen maybe 1-2 Juul's in the past five years, but I live in regional Australia so maybe things are different in the city. Overall I think big tobacco seems to have a lot more to gain from vape prohibition here, as do the big pharma companies who sell OTC nic replacement products (e.g. J&J and GSK).

- I have yet to see compelling evidence that vaping carries greater risk than other NRT products, modulo the Acetyl Acetate / "popcorn lung" issues that as far as I can tell originated almost entirely from dodgy THC vapes (very different product to nic vapes).

Personally, I think the better solution here would have been to regulate vapes like cigarettes. They are beneficial to long-term adult smokers who have tried and failed to use other methods to quit. My wife literally tried everything including the crazy prescription anti-nic drugs and never was able to fully quit until switching to vapes.

It's clear there is a huge under-enforcement problem right now (e.g. local shops selling OTC nicotine vapes, which is already illegal, and selling them to kids, also already illegal) but giving them the same regulatory framework as cigarettes, or maybe only allowing chemists to dispense them to 18+ users would have been preferable here.

I love my vape and what it did for me and my friends. I don't really plan on quitting vaping any time soon because based on my readings of the mainstream medical papers, there isn't sufficient evidence of personal risk for me that comes even close to other legal risky things I do like eating fast food and drinking wine.

I just dislike being in a position of now either needing to illegally import, or pay a huge effective tax to the medical/pharmacy industry, to keep vaping, as a responsible adult.

That said, I would support a simultaneous "grandfather" ban on both cigarettes and ALL other nicotine products along the lines of cigarette bans where the products are banned for people 18 and younger, and that ban grows by one year per year. That's a better approach than what Australia is doing.

I'm unsurprised it came to this, you could see the media coverage of vaping growing increasingly shrill / moral panicky over the past years, in contrast to the actual science on nicotine harm, where vapes may be on the "bad" side of other NRT products, but nowehere near the harm of cigarettes. It follows an eerily similar media narrative to what I've seen in other western countries (maybe other countries too, but I mainly read English media).

I would not be surprised at all if both big tobacco and big pharma lobbyists are high-fiving themselves over this.