Australian madness infects the BBC

It's bad enough reading one-sided anti-vaping polemics without being forced to pay for them

For the past decade, Australian newspaper articles about e-cigarettes have seemed like communiqués from another dimension. The term ‘moral panic’ is over-used, but how else can you describe a situation in which people are so terrified of safer nicotine delivery devices that doctors give their children cigarettes to stop them vaping?

The sale of nicotine e-cigarettes has always been banned in Australia. Prohibition is the default and, along with the highest cigarette taxes in the world, it has led to a huge black market in vapes (and, indeed, in tobacco). It appears that many teenagers are vaping there and what they are vaping is unregulated.

The Aussies could have done what New Zealand did and legalise e-cigarettes. Instead, they doubled down and banned the importation of nicotine vapes for personal use. That didn’t work so they are now banning the sale of all the remaining (i.e. non-nicotine) disposable vapes. Something tells me that won’t work either, but the government is so far down the rabbit hole it can only keep digging.

Their politicians have convinced themselves that ‘Big Tobacco’ is getting a new generation of Aussies hooked on killer vapes with aggressive marketing. It’s a paranoid delusion. There is no e-cigarette marketing in Australia. The products flooding the black market are coming straight from China, not from ‘Big Tobacco’. And insofar as the products are dangerous it is because they are totally unregulated.

Down this road lies madness but if the Australians want to go down it, that’s up to them. I have no plans to go back there. As an Australian reader said to me recently, ‘Go and see a Kangaroo at a zoo. Don't even waste a single dollar on "tourism" of the doomed failed state of what's become of Australia.’

But while the Aussies can go to Hell in whatever handcart they like, I don’t appreciate them pushing their nonsense on the rest of us, as the BBC’s recently appointed Sydney correspondent has done today with an article titled ‘Why Australia decided to quit its vaping habit’.

From the outset, it is clear that the author has spent too long Down Under.

Despite vapes already being illegal for many, under new legislation they will become available by prescription only.

The number of vaping teenagers in Australia has soared in recent years and authorities say it is the "number one behavioural issue" in schools across the country.

And they blame disposable vapes - which some experts say could be more addictive than heroin and cocaine - but for now are available in Australia in every convenience store, next to the chocolate bars at the counter.

Some experts? Do they have names? People say a lot of things. The job of a journalist is to find out which ones are telling the truth.

And if e-cigarettes are illegal, why are they available ‘in every convenience store’? This sounds like an enforcement issue that isn’t going to be solved by more prohibition.

E-cigarettes have been sold as a safer alternative to tobacco, as they do not produce tar - the primary cause of lung cancer.

Some countries continue to promote them with public health initiatives to help cigarette smokers switch to a less deadly habit.

Last month, the UK government announced plans to hand out free vaping starter kits to one million smokers in England to get smoking rates below 5% by 2030.

But Australia's government says that evidence that e-cigarettes help smokers quit is insufficient for now.

If the evidence is insufficient, why are they available on prescription for smoking cessation? It makes no sense. In any case, the evidence is not insufficient. The latest Cochrane Review concluded that there is ‘high certainty evidence that nicotine e-cigarettes are more effective than traditional nicotine-replacement therapy (NRT) in helping people quit smoking’.

Moreover, e-cigarettes are not merely sold as a safer alternative to tobacco. They are a safer alternative to tobacco.

Instead, research shows it may push young vapers into taking up smoking later in life.

The fatal flaw in this research is well understood by people who have eyes to see and the claim that there is a gateway effect is contradicted by the steep decline in smoking rates in countries where vaping has taken off. The only time you will ever see people switching from e-cigarettes to tobacco in large numbers is when ‘public health’ charlatans scare people off vaping or succeed in getting the products banned.

Fuelling the rise is the mushrooming popularity of flavoured vapes designed to appeal to the young.

Is this guy a mind reader? How does he know that vapes are flavoured to appeal to the young? People of all ages prefer ‘flavours’ to so-called tobacco flavour.

These products can contain far higher volumes of nicotine than regular cigarettes, while some devices sold as 'nicotine-free' can actually hold large amounts.

In a regulated market with decent law enforcement, neither of these things would happen.

The chemical cocktail also contains formaldehyde, and acetaldehyde - which have been linked to lung disease, heart disease, and cancer.

Maybe in Australia, son. In Britain we have a long list of ingredients that can’t be used in e-cigarettes. We have our own problems with illegal vapes being sold illegally to people who are under 18, but they are nothing compared to Australia’s.

In 2020, US health authorities identified more than 2,800 cases of e-cigarette or vaping-related lung injury. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found 68 deaths attributed to that injury.

E-cigarette or vaping-related lung injury (EVALI) is a term invented by the CDC to describe a health condition that was caused by illegal THC vapes in the USA. There was a spate of cases in North America in 2019 which ended as quickly as it began once drug dealers stopped putting Vitamin E acetate in the THC oil. It had nothing to do with nicotine e-cigarettes. The author’s failure to mention this suggests that he is not acting in good faith.

"Whichever way teenagers obtain e-cigarettes, they are all illegal, yet it's happening under the noses of federal and state authorities", report author and Cancer Council chair Anita Dessaix said.

Better ban them again, eh? Third time lucky!

In addition to the government's move to ban the import of all non-pharmaceutical vaping products - meaning they can now only be bought with a prescription - all single-use disposable vapes will be made illegal.

The volume and concentration of nicotine in e-cigarettes will also be restricted, and both flavours and packaging must be plain and carrying warning labels.

But these new measures are not actually all that drastic, says public health physician Professor Emily Banks from the Australian National University.

Emily Banks conducted a systematic review for the Australian government which real experts consider to be a joke.

"Australia is not an outlier. It is unique to have a prescription-only model, but other places actually ban them completely, and that includes almost all of Latin America, India, Thailand and Japan."

India is protecting the state-owned India Tobacco Company and Japan is protecting the partially state-owned Japan Tobacco International. What does that tell you about vaping as a rival to smoking? Australians aren’t consciously protecting the tobacco industry. They are just useful idiots. Some low and middle incomes countries have banned e-cigarettes under pressure from the corrupt and incompetent W.H.O. but Australia is an outlier among developed nations and is increasingly a laughing stock.

Health Minister Mark Butler said the new vaping regulations will close the "biggest loophole in Australian healthcare history".

"Just like they did with smoking... 'Big Tobacco' has taken another addictive product, wrapped it in shiny packaging and added sweet flavours to create a new generation of nicotine addicts."

"We have been duped", he said.

Is ‘Big Tobacco’ in the room with you now, Mark? Can you hear it talking to you?

Medical experts agree. Prof Banks argues that the promotion of e-cigarettes as a "healthier" alternative was a classic "sleight-of-hand" from the tobacco industry.

The tobacco industry didn’t invent vapes. The industry didn’t even dip its toes into the e-cigarette market until 2013. No one who produces or sells e-cigarettes in the UK is allowed to make health claims and e-cigarette advertising has always been banned in Australia. And e-cigarettes are a healthier alternative to smoking. A much, much healthier alternative. It is difficult to find anyone, even on the lunatic fringe of tobacco control, who denies this.

The BBC article includes no quotes from anyone who disagrees with the Australian government’s approach. It should never have been published.