- Vaping is set to be banned in Australia
from January next year.
There's been a lot of controversy around it recently,
but the health minister is still intent
that banning all of the imports of liquid nicotine
is going to be good for Australia.
I want to understand why a proposed ban
on nicotine vaping has got people so worked up,
and why it seems like nobody can agree
about the best way forward for Australia's vaping policies.
There's been a bunch of news recently
about a ban on importing liquid nicotine
that was put forward by Health Minister Greg Hunt.
Hunt is arguing for the ban on the basis
that vaping can make people
who wouldn't smoke otherwise, addicted to nicotine.
Under the new regulations,
Australians could still access vapes
and e-cigarettes with a doctor's prescription,
but anybody found importing liquid nicotine
would cop a fine of up to $222,000.
All of this was scheduled
to be implemented on the first of July,
but basically, after heaps of pressure
from backbenchers, Hunt backed off.
The ban will still come into effect,
just not for another six months,
after the government has had time
to streamline those prescription processes
for smokers who are using them to try and quit.
Legally, the question of vaping in Australia
has always been pretty sketchy.
Across all states and territories,
it's illegal to sell liquid nicotine to begin with.
Despite that fact,
it's still widely available through online orders,
mostly from New Zealand and under the counter sales.
A ban would mean an end to those sales
that the government's kind of turned a blind eye to so far,
but what are the problems with cutting off that supply?
The biggest argument against the ban is the idea
that people use vaping as an alternative to smoking,
or to help them quit it entirely.
There have been heaps of stories in the media recently
about people using vaping to try and kick the habit,
and people are really worried that by getting rid of it,
a lot of those vapers are going to turn back to smoking.
This puts vapers in a really tricky position.
But as for whether or not vaping
actually helps quit smoking and nicotine completely,
there's really no scientific consensus.
Some countries, like the UK,
have seen a real push towards vaping
as a smoking alternative, but opinion is still divided,
and that's largely because the science is too.
Professor Simon Chapman
is a leading tobacco researcher and author.
And he told me that there are other basic reasons
to be skeptical about whether vaping
is the be all and end all for quitting cigarettes.
- [Simon] (indistinct) in Australia at the moment,
daily smoking is about 12.4%.
So it's gone down from 70%, you know, after World War II,
to about 12% today.
So any argument which says people need e-cigarettes to quit,
really has to
address, well, how did the Aussie manage to do it
in all those years before e-cigarettes were invented?
- Dr. Michelle Jongenelis (camera clicks)
also said that her biggest concern
is that keeping vaping around
won't be great news for kids
who haven't tried vaping or smoking yet.
So what about doctors' prescriptions
for people who say they're relying on vaping?
When Hunt pushed the ban back to January,
he said it was partially so the government
could streamline doctors' prescriptions.
The idea being that for people who are currently vaping
to kill their nicotine addiction,
they could go to the doctor
and be prescribed the nicotine liquid
to continue the process of getting off it completely.
But up until this point,
doctors have been really, really hesitant
to say that they'll do it.
There are actually only nine GPs on the
Australian Tobacco Health Reduction Association's list
of known prescribers right now.
That's a huge problem for Hunt's whole scheme.
Jongenelis told me
that there's a good reason doctors
would feel hesitant about prescribing them.
And that's got a lot to do
with the Therapeutic Goods Administration, or TGA.
- For a product to be approved by the TGA,
the manufacturer needs to submit it to the TGA
and say, "We want this product
that we've developed to be approved,
and we believe it has these therapeutic benefits."
And then the TGA goes away,
and they independently assess this product
for whether it is beneficial, and whether it's safe as well.
To date, not one e-cigarette has been submitted
to the TGA for approval.
The reason for this is that the vaping industry
doesn't want e-cigarettes to be seen as therapeutic products
because then they have to abide
by these really strict guidelines.
What the vaping industry wants
is for e-cigarettes to be seen as consumer products,
which are subject to far less restrictions.
- If there's all this evidence stacking up against vaping,
why was the ban pushed back to begin with?
Chapman told me that we should probably
be a bit skeptical here,
because tobacco and cigarette companies
have a vested interest
in keeping vaping around in Australia.
- [Simon] The petition that came up, in recently,
which it saw Greg Hunt delay the implementation
for six months,
was started by a group called Legalize Vaping in Australia.
Now that group are not health experts at all.
I would absolutely amazed if they weren't being funded
by either a major vaping company or companies,
by another tobacco comp.
- With all of this contentious back and forth
about what's right or wrong, what's scientific or not,
I wanted to know, what's the best way forward here?
Jongenelis told me that she believes
what Hunt is trying to do might actually be the best bet
for public health.
- So in terms of changes to policy,
it's interesting, 'cause actually,
a few papers that I've written in recent years,
my one recommendation in pretty much all of those papers
is we need better enforcement at the border.
So I was actually very pleased when that came out
because I do think this is just the one policy thing
that's missing from Australia's really comprehensive
precautionary approach to this.
- People who are relying on vaping right now
to kill their nicotine addictions
are being put in a really difficult situation,
and hopefully there'll be a way out of this
if the government can convince doctors
helping these people out is a good idea.
But other than that, it seems like overwhelmingly,
public health researchers are really celebrating
the move towards a ban.
And on the whole, this could be a good move
for a country that have a pretty great track record
in getting people to kick nicotine.
(gentle lounge music)