Australia has become the global village idiot on quitting smoking
While we once stood as pioneers in public health and particularly harm reduction, we are now the cautionary tale.
Currently, 66 Australians die every single day from the effects of smoking – not from an addiction to nicotine, but from the toxic delivery mechanism of cigarettes. That is 24,000 Australian lives lost every year.
Australia's tobacco policy is a paradox of legal sanction and de facto prohibition. Legal cigarettes are taxed at rates so punitive that they have become virtually inaccessible to many, while vaping devices, which offer a far safer alternative, are rendered unobtainable through deliberately restrictive access avenues. The result? One of the most lucrative and violent black markets Australia has ever seen.
Apart from organised crime – whose fortunes have never been brighter – and a handful of well-intentioned but misguided health groups, nearly everyone else recognises federal Health Minister Mark Butler has made a huge mistake in his approach to controlling tobacco and vapes. His message is that we should continue down the path of prohibition in the vain hope that we will eventually get a different result. But the fire bombings continue and huge profits continue to flow into the pockets of criminal groups.
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Around the world, doctors, scientists, and governments have embraced harm reduction and have acknowledged that prohibition does not and cannot ever work. Instead, the focus has shifted toward making safer nicotine products accessible to adult smokers – most notably, vaping devices. And in countries where these products are promoted, smoking rates have plummeted.
In the UK, the health department actively provides nicotine vaping products to adult smokers and their smoking rates have dropped steeply in the past five years, from 18 per cent to 11.6 per cent.
Their review of international research found that 'in the short and medium term, vaping poses a small fraction of the risks of smoking'.
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No one should die from a curable disease because of stigma, silence or a missed opportunity. Australia has what it takes to eliminate hepatitis C. We must act with urgency and compassion to make sure no one is left behind.
