The rest of the world continues to look the other way, but Australia’s tobacco control catastrophe has become too big to ignore. Incredibly, the Australian Bureau of Statistics now estimates that 80% of the cigarettes smoked last year were bought illegally.
As I wrote for The Critic yesterday…
There is no coming back from this for Australia. It is finished as a legal tobacco market. All it can be now is a cautionary tale for the rest of the world. The tipping point has come and gone. Smokers feel no obligation to pay taxes to a government that vilifies them, and vapers feel no compulsion to obey a law that undermines their health. At some point, the international tobacco companies will pull out of the country and anti-smoking campaigners can celebrate the ultimate Pyrrhic victory. As tobacco duty revenues fall to zero and the turf war escalates, they can pat themselves on the back and congratulate themselves on a job well done. They finally defeated “Big Tobacco”.
Not only has tobacco duty revenue collapsed and violence escalated but nicotine consumption has risen by 40% in the past decade and it is widely anticipated that when official statistics are published later this year they will show a rise in the smoking rate.
The blame lies squarely on the charlatans masquerading as public health experts who opposed the legalisation of vapes and pushed for ever higher tobacco taxes while scoffing at the idea that any of the obvious unintended consequences would come to pass.
In a sensible country, these people would have gone into hiding to live the rest of their lives in disgrace. But since Australia is a clown country, the government invited the arsonists to advise them on how to put out the fire.
Two weeks ago, the Australian Senate held an inquiry into what it calls the ‘Illegal tobacco crisis in Australia’. The risible sociologist Simon Chapman and his brainwashed protégé Becky Freeman, who are more responsible for the black market fiasco than anyone, were invited to give evidence. Anyone hoping for a reckoning was destined to be disappointed. Instead of being publicly shamed, they were asked softball questions and given the opportunity to double down on their failure.
Freeman’s answers, in particular, were jaw-dropping in their brazen denial of reality.
Australia should be really proud of its tobacco control history. We have not lost the policy battle. This is not a policy disaster.
We have less than 10 per cent of people in this country smoking.
Australia’s smoking rate is 11.1% which is higher than the rate in the USA which has much cheaper cigarettes, no plain packaging and no graphic warnings. It is higher than the rate in New Zealand and the UK where vapes are legal, and it is much higher than Sweden and Norway where safer nicotine products, specifically snus, have driven cigarettes to the brink of extinction. And, unlike in Australia, there is no expectation that the smoking rate will go up in these countries, nor do they routinely see convenience stores burnt down by gangsters.
Of course, we're all very concerned that smoking rates are going to rise at the end of this year when the latest data comes out, particularly among young adults, because they've been hit with a double whammy—illicit tobacco, and they were the first group of young people to vape. And, if you vape, you are five times more likely to go on to smoke.
No one on the committee pulled her up on this weapons grade bullshit. She’s obviously accepted that the smoking rate has risen and is getting her excuses in early, but the idea that a rise in vaping must be followed by a rise in smoking is not supported by any evidence in any country ever. Teen vaping “epidemics” in the USA and the UK were accompanied by smoking rates among both adults and minors falling to record lows. The gateway theory has been demolished. It was never more than a prohibitionist lie based on a failure to interpret statistics properly. If Australia manages to engineer a rise in smoking and vaping simultaneously it will be thanks to the unique combination of idiotic policies espoused by Ms Freeman.
It seems that Australia’s political class is still gullible enough to believe the high priests of tobacco control, but the patience of the general population is wearing thin and it is not too late for the rest of the world to use Australia’s ship wreck as a lighthouse.
Outstanding analysis of Australia’s abject failure of smoking/vaping policy. Sky high cigarette excise pushed smokers from unaffordable legal to 2/3 cheaper illegal, unregulated supplies. 95.7% of vaping supply outsourced to black market run by criminals. If tobacco harm reduction is unacceptable, then why aren’t other harm reduction measures unacceptable like car seat belts, motorcycle helmets, needle syringe programs, condoms
I commented something like 15 years ago that Simon Chapman was responsible for the pointless deaths of more Australians than anyone since the dude who decided Gallipolis was a good idea. He may have moved into first place by now.