> Especially with the widespread availability of vapes
Don’t worry, we’re tackling that in Australia! Due to a moral panic, vapes are all set to become harder to purchase than actual tobacco!
:facepalm:
Don’t worry, we’re tackling that in Australia! Due to a moral panic, vapes are all set to become harder to purchase than actual tobacco!
:facepalm:
Somewhere in that mess there was a path to making them a good way to really squash that last few percent of people that smoke, at least by moving them onto something a little better even if they never quit, but it’s been missed.
Even then, I’d understand and support making them as hard to get as tobacco, regulated very similarly so when Bob Smoker goes to the servo (gas station) or smoke mart, he can choose the less harmful and less harmful to others path with little effort. Not now though (well later this year), he has to pay for a doctor’s appointment and get an approved therapeutic device prescribed if he wants to vape. Or he can buy cigarettes at the corner.
And the schoolyard mom grapevine apparently has it that vaping is worse than smoking. The clusterfuck is complete, and a great health opportunity was missed.
(For the record I neither vape nor smoke, but I did use the former to quit the latter a little over 10 years ago)
(Edit - oh that thing in New Zealand? The new government scrapped it, I think for reasons of tax revenue. One of the most naked money > lives decisions I’ve seen in recent years)