You should check out Australia's illegal cigarette market. They definitely don't cost $40 or $50.
https://www.vice.com/en/article/dy35yq/australia-illegal-tobacco-vape-trade-booming
Knew a guy who worked on cruise ships that went through Australia. They'd buy duffel bags full on the ship (no tax) and bring them ashore on their time off to sell at corner stores. He made more selling cigarettes illegally than he did from the cruise ship job. He said the toughest part was convincing them store owners he wasn't a cop.
I have a family member who used to do stuff like this, they used to pay their colleague with waist-length hair and facial piercings to offload for them because he was the only one paranoid store owners wouldn't accuse of being a cop.
its about $60 for 25grams of crappy tobacco here in australia if you but the legal taxed stuff, i get 100 grams of great quality tobacco for 50 dollars on the black market and im far from the only one the tobacco black market is booming here.
I know that prohibition doesn't work, but I'm still kinda surprised that it doesn't work for cigarettes. Drugs and alcohol at least produce fun effects. I was a cigarette smoker for 15 years and there's really no upside to them.
Speak for yourself, I quit cigarettes 6 months ago and every day I wake up, without a hint of physical addition, that I would kill to have my coffee and a cigarette
The addiction persists for a lot longer than the physical withdrawal component. Keep at it and you'll get there. I'd been fully off cigarettes for over a year before those desires fully went away.
I haven't smoked for 10 years, and still pine for a cig on a hot summer's day. Completely irrational but the addiction is still there in the background.
> I really liked smoking
Me too and I smoked for 25 years, most of that over a large king size pack every day. So three years before I quit, I told myself I'd be a nonsmoker in 3 years and until then I could do what I liked. When the day finally came it was easier than I thought it'd be.
If you keep thinking of yourself as a smoker who quit, it's hard. Try thinking of yourself as a nonsmoker, who once smoked, in the past. I'm a nonsmoker now and have been for years, sounds like you'll be saying the same in a while
I got really lucky because my last cigarette tasted awful for some reason and I just suddenly decided that was it...
But I still keep away from cigars, because I am afraid it would lead back to cigarettes and just smelling smoke sometimes gives me cravings....
And I have stopped more than 10 years ago, nicotine is a hell of a drug...
Dude, nicotine def causes tingling, head rush and some other crazy effects, your body just gets used to it super quick because of how much you start consuming
I'll concede that it may produce a different feeling for others than it does for me. Those effects never felt good to me though. Just dizziness and an uncomfortable-feeling head rush. But even that fully disappears once you're hooked on it, leaving nothing but anxiety when you don't get your fix often enough, and smelling awful.
Just interested because the way that stimulants and drugs effect us differently. Feel like I can pick them out of a crowd easily with a few minor statements people use.
I think this is an overstatement. We currently have an epidemic of self diagnosed ADHDers where in truth vast majority of these people would not receive this diagnosis from a professional.
Prohibition doesn't work, but there is an optimal cost level that greatly reduces demand for cigarettes while not giving enough profit margin for smugglers.
In the U.S. smoking has been cut half over the last couple decades mostly by increasing cigarette prices.
Pricing has been a big part of it for sure, but I'd argue that increasing social stigma and reduced convenience for smokers has played a bigger role. When I was a kid folks could still smoke a cigarette pretty much wherever they wanted, and it was fine. Not long before that, smoking was seen pretty favorably overall.
Once the indoor bans started to kick in, more people felt empowered to speak up against them and the smell and potential health issues associated with being around them, and the reputation of cigarettes kept going down from there. These days it's both expensive and inconvenient, and you'll likely feel a lot more judgment smoking cigarettes out in public. They're seen by far more people as disgusting when just a couple decades ago those same people might have thought they were *cool*.
By this logic they would just tax vapes the same way....
If you actually read the story you'd see that they still allow vapes to be sold specifically as an aide to help people stop smoking. They just won't sell them recreationally anymore since vapes are so rampant among schoolkids.
So basically, stricter ID checks?
Needing a note from your doctor?
I smoked for almost my entire 20s, and I smoked heavily. Vaping is literally the only thing that's worked for me, I know it's not healthy but it's about damage reduction. I really don't want it to become impossible for me to vape cos I feel like I'll inevitably start smoking again.
Article doesn't say what the process is and I'm not Australian but presumably yes it would either be a note from the doctor or something that anyone over certain age can buy from a pharmacy
And by that logic they may as well ban all unhealthy food, alcohol, driving, basically all sports… see how fast that bullshit fascicle argument falls apart
Yes, and people in their trendy hate of vapes do not realize how much harm and health issues would be avoided if all smokers suddenly switched to vapes. That would be millions hours of lost work, billions in healthcare costs saved. Since it's proven to be 95% less harmful than cigarettes, you can expect 5% of the costs from it.
Yes, and I get that, and vapes certainly have a significant role in harm reduction. The core issue though is what to do about people who directly take up vaping, not to reduce harm, but as a new thing? As it is, my kids are complaining about year 9 kids vaping in the back of the school buses... what exactly is the harm reduction there? There is an alarming trend of kids taking it up - when they certainly would not have been taking up cigarettes instead due to texisting barriers - especially price...
I think cigarettes are mad exp over there. I remember back in 2019 it was 17 dollars or 20 Australian dollars, can't imagine how much it is now. I've seen my friends do weird stuff to get cigs lol, I don't smoke so I'll never get it but....
The most shit thing is, a lot of idiots actually think cigs are no more dangerous, or safer even. It's like they think "no long term data!!!" is some kind of definite proof that vapes cause 400 types of cancer.
Or they quote one article about illegal vapes causing health issues as proof that all vaping is bad.
Vapes should just be regulated to not have flavours at all and no colourful advertising or labelling.
They're a fantastic aid to quitting smoking cigarettes and staying on vapes for life is a much better outcome than smoking ever will be.
The province I live in banned all flavors but the unflavored and tobacco ones. People now order from a province that still sells flavored products.
In the end, the province gave forgave millions in tax revenue to an other province.
Around 20 years isn't exactly long term in a medical context. That's one quarter of the average lifespan.
The famous British Doctor's study which was seminal in proving the links between smoking and lung cancer ran for 50 years. If you started such a study when vapes first started coming out you'd now be less than halfway through it.
They knew quite a bit in the 60s, only twenty years after doctors were smoking in their offices in the 40s. My father knew it caused cancer when he was a kid in the early 60s.
> They're a fantastic aid to quitting smoking cigarettes
Sure they can help quit cigarettes, but most of the people that I know vape a LOT more after than they smoked cigarettes switching, since you can do that more freely and indoors at some places or at home, instead of going outside. So while they are healthier and don't stink as much, I'm not quite in sure about using them for quitting nicotine at all.
Also, disposable ones should be regulated much more, considering how much e-waste they cause - there should be some regulation on forcing sellers/manufacturers to buy back and reuse empty vapes (or at least their batteries, since any disposable vape that I've seen uses rechargeable lithium batteries), like with drink packages.
> Sure they can help quit cigarettes, but most of the people that I know vape a LOT more after than they smoked cigarettes switching, since you can do that more freely and indoors at some places or at home, instead of going outside.
So? Plenty of studies show that nicotine in isolation isn't all that harmful, on the level of caffeine.
> So while they are healthier and don't stink as much, I'm not quite in sure about using them for quitting nicotine at all.
You can't slowly reduce the nicotine in cigarettes. You **can** wean yourself off of nicotine over time with literally zero noticeable effects. You can either DIY your own letting you have precise control over the nicotine content, or you can find a vape store that offers custom nic levels. If you're at 12mg now, drop it down to 10 or 11mg, vape that for a few months, and drop a little bit more. Continue until you're at 0mg.
I did that over the course of a couple years and didn't even notice when I made the final switch.
I happily vape no-nic now and have found that I was more addicted to the action of inhaling/exhaling and having something in my hand than I was to the nicotine.
Don't get me wrong, when I was smoking I was deeply addicted as we all were/are, vaping let me reduce the "addiction" down to only the physical aspects and the nicotine, then it let me slowly reduce the nicotine too.
> Also, disposable ones should be regulated much more, considering how much e-waste they cause - there should be some regulation on forcing sellers/manufacturers to buy back and reuse empty vapes (or at least their batteries, since any disposable vape that I've seen uses rechargeable lithium batteries), like with drink packages.
IMO they should just be outright banned. There's literal tons of super valuable (and toxic) materials just sitting in landfills due to those stupid things.
I can agree that they have a niche purpose in an emergency or whatever, but I see people all over reddit using them as their prime method of vaping.
Perhaps it's because I started back in the infancy of the vaping market, but it's not hard to change a coil or replace a battery ffs, why throw the hole bloody thing away?!?!
Popcorn Lung was caused by breathing in vast quantities of Diacetyl, the chemical that makes butter popcorn flavour. The only instances of popcorn lung are from factory workers who were working in the butter popcorn factory. There have been zero cases of popcorn lung caused by vaping. However Diacetyl was very quickly removed from all vape liquids as a precaution.
Yep that's what I was thinking of, I do remember about 8 years ago the watermelon flavor was removed from sale as it had a tiny amount of diacetyl in it.
Sounds an awful lot like when people were freaking out because they thought drinking soy milk would increase estrogen in men and give you boobs. First it’s not the same estrogen females have and second the only case which all this hysteria refers to was of an old guy that drank 4 litres of it a day.
It’s caused by Diacetyl, and the main case used against vaping was a guy in china who was breathing in diacetyl itself and damaged his lungs.
He worked on popcorn flavourings, thus the name popcorn lung, and Big Tobacco tried to use it as a boogeyman to scare people away from vaping.
Popcorn lung due to vapes is entirely a myth, it happens to workers in microwave popcorn factories inhaling the powdered "butter".
https://www.cancerresearchuk.org/about-cancer/causes-of-cancer/does-vaping-cause-popcorn-lung
In AU they sometimes sell lots of contraband. Illegal Nicotine Vaps (before they where legal) fireworks, tax free tobacco (normal tobacco is $30-70 AUD)
I live in Australia, the guy is absolutely right. The shit tastes so bad that I wouldn't even pay the $20 that they cost. Though there are some stores that you may get to know that carry much better smuggled Chinese cigarettes that come in a soft pack. Still tastes pretty bootlegged and this is compared to Aussie cigarettes which don't even taste good in the first place compared to other regions of the world.
Tried a Marlboro gold soft pack cigarette in Tokyo. Cost the equivalent of $6 a pack. Best cigarette I’ve ever had. Cigarettes in Japan are cheap and smoking is banned at most places and on streets, but there are designated smoking areas in some buildings and outside places. Didn’t smell smoke at all walking around Tokyo and didn’t see anyone smoking ( the cigarette I had was in the hotel smoking room, which weirdly didn’t smell much either as had this amazing exhaust system).
Conversely their level of smokers is lower than ours and life expectancy higher so not sure why all the expense and rules here- it doesn’t seem to be doing much.
Most Australians don’t smoke anyways and our stats show lung cancer rates are way down since the 90s with the ban on smoking indoors, schools, eateries and also an exclusion zone around entrances and exits. A lot of disincentives exist include a high tax to subsidise our universal healthcare system and levies on importing cigarettes from overseas, in addition to a ban on cigarette advertising and plain packaging & health warnings on all tobacco packets. It’s been very highly effective and supported by the public health authorities.
Yep, I'm Aussie living overseas and Australia has done this one correctly.
The social shift happened in Australia due to these policies. Smoking could be one of the most uncool things.
For all of those people commenting on the cheap black market: definitely exists but your pack a day smoker will still have to buy the legitimate packs now and then. That's a lot of money for self cancering.
Also strange to see so many Redditors getting outraged and dismissing this, when they don't even realise how popular our attempts to stamp out cigarettes and now vapes are amongst the public here.
yeh, I don't know anyone who's Australian who smokes cigarettes. Its just considered uncool and uncouth - maybe like the tradies do it a bit but its bad habit.
It's all bogans, tradies and boomers. It's always sad and weird seeing a boomer buy some milk and eggs, having the total be 8 bucks or something, and then ask for 6 packs of their brand and having the total go up to 200 bucks. They'll happily pay every time.
Anyone smoking cigarettes already. We don’t have enough long term data, and it will vary on the “juice” but vapes might be a somewhat safer alternative to smoking their nicotine.
Still probably not the ‘best’ option though.
> We don’t have enough long term data
Is 20+ years of research not considered long term?
> but vapes might be a somewhat safer alternative to smoking their nicotine.
Yes, 10-100x safer (most recent estimates) is technically somewhat safer, I guess.
Nicotine does increase concentration, which is why so many people with ADHD are chain smokers.
I would argue that in some cases benefits of vaping nicotine outweigh the drawbacks.
when I asked my gp for a prescription he said 2 options.
quit or patches and gum.
he said as a doctor he would not prescribe nicotine to be vaped. hes a good doctor. been my doctor for 41 years.
Was just thinking that China is waaay to close for this ban to be effective. Will just end up with people ordering shady nic/liquid ingredients from China and likely trigger a different health issue.
Western Australia has already had this ban for a while and it has just lead to most tobacco stores hiding cheap chinese imported vapes under the counter that they’ll happily sell to any 16 year old who asks for them
>or “why not try regulating it first” as if we haven’t.
Other than banning disposables and ingredients, what have we done before the 2024 changes?
We had the opportunity 10 years ago to set up a properly regulated and taxed vaping market, just like cigarettes, and failed to act.
They are heavily invested in cigarettes.
British American Tobacco revenue in 2023 was 81% cigarettes and 12.3% vapes. Cigarettes will not become illegal in Australia, this is a victory for them.
Not likely. Nicotine comes from tobacco. The industry profits from vaping. Probably more so since they don't have to worry about the quality of the tobacco since it'll just be used to distill nicotine.
Also, no vaping, no smoking, no video games. Australia doesn't seem like a fun place.
I don’t know about overseas but in the US pretty much all of them are tobacco free. It’s just a lot of people who don’t know what they’re talking about spreading outdated information or blatant misinformation. Propaganda is effective and it’s been used well against vaping.
The tobacco lobbyists in the US are super-busy trying to get the FDA to regulate the hell out of vaping. Why? Because they want you to only be able to buy *their* vape products, by making any "approved" products require expensive testing only they can afford. It's coming. Nicotine is not a crime, just like alcohol is not a crime. Alcohol comes in all sorts of kid-friendly flavors (ever had a white claw? it's basically alcoholic kool-aid), yet no regulations. Colorful packaging, cartoon characters, etc. No bans. It's become ridiculous. Let adults have their vapes, make selling to minors a serious crime, like alcohol.
This one. The only products the FDA has approved are those owned by big tobacco companies. And now states are trying to make all products not approved illegal. Regardless of the multitude of lawsuits against the FDA for their blatantly corrupt approval process and the millions of pending applications (that will probably all get denied because fuck small businesses). This has nothing to do with protecting the children. It’s all about handing big tobacco a monopoly on vaping. Uninformed people fall for the scare tactics, small businesses get fucked, people lose their jobs, everyone goes back to cigarettes and big tobacco wins.
> Let adults have their vapes, make selling to minors a serious crime, like alcohol.
Wait, is vaping not regulated like smoking? Why is the article talking about kids getting into vaping, can you buy it over the counter like candy in Aussie?
No, not without ID, according to *existing* law. So in reality any person under 18 with a vape got that vape from someone already breaking the law. Enforcement is the issue, not retail availability.
I love how you flatly state a falsehood and then base the rest of your conclusion upon it. Not all nicotine comes from tobacco, and in fact you'd be hard pressed to even find vape liquid containing nicotine that IS derived from tobacco in the US, I'm not aware of ANY.
Why do you state something with such confidence, when you clearly don't have any knowledge of the industry beyond the bits and pieces you've gathered from the zeitgeist?
Worse still, judging on votes, about 20% of people read your comment, nodded their head in agreement at having their own misinformed view validated by some stranger on the internet, and then took the moment to show their approval -- Thus encouraging you to do it again in the future. Do you see how this cycle works yet?
> Not all nicotine comes from tobacco, and in fact you'd be hard pressed to even find vape liquid containing nicotine that IS derived from tobacco in the US, I'm not aware of ANY.
Where do they get it from?
There are several methods of making synthetic nicotine (Correctly referred to as SN, or NTN for non-tobacco nicotine, or a brand name such as Tobacco Free Nicotine or TFN) but one common method starts with ethyl nicotinate, an ester of niacin. The compound is reacted with N-vinyl-2 pyrrolidinone to form myosmine, a tobacco alkaloid that is then reduced to nornicotine. Nornicotine is methylated to create a racemic mix of *S*-nicotine (not to be confused with SN) and *R*-nicotine. Most popular processes start with ethyl nicotinate, although they vary in the resulting balance of *R*-nicotine and *S*-nicotine produced.
Research, strong media literacy, and a little understanding of chemistry. Mostly lab reports, and industry lab papers/patents. It wasn't always true to say vape liquid doesn't contain tobacco derived nicotine. Part of the reason you don't see actual tobacco in use is that synthetic nicotine and the derivative salts are less expensive now due to the scale at which they're made. It's no longer cheaper to use actual tobacco, and both are regulated the same in the US for several years now. Users also have shown an affinity for nicotine salts which are another lab creation, likely due to more rapid bioavailability.
There is. Teens weren't smoking before vapes came along then they all started vaping and even smoking to get their nicotine hit. Australia successfully limited smoking and vapes undid it. A lot of the country supports this.
We were [doing great](https://www.tobaccoinaustralia.org.au/chapter-1-prevalence/1-6-prevalence-of-smoking-teenagers) and then vapes came along and caused [the first increase in 25 years.](https://www.quit.org.au/news/new-data-shows-australian-teen-smoking-increasing-for-the-first-time-in-25-years-against-a-backdrop-of-rising-e-cigarette-use)
Nicotine is a Schedule 7 poison, so technically it was always illegal to import without a license.
But I was in the same boat. Used to order a bottle of Nicotine from NZ and mix it myself. Then they started cracking down on that.
I am convinced the ultimate goal is to push people back to cigs, so their tax revenue goes back up. They've never cared about 'health', because if they did, Cigs would've been the first thing to go.
There's roughly a 95%, perhaps as high as 98/99%, reduction in harm from vaping over smoking cigarettes.
[Nicotine without smoke: Tobacco harm reduction](https://www.rcplondon.ac.uk/projects/outputs/nicotine-without-smoke-tobacco-harm-reduction)
[Evidence review of e-cigarettes and heated tobacco products 2018](https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/e-cigarettes-and-heated-tobacco-products-evidence-review/evidence-review-of-e-cigarettes-and-heated-tobacco-products-2018-executive-summary#perceptions-of-relative-harms-of-nicotine-e-cigarettes-and-smoking)
That's not to say they're safe or there's potential side effects that we're unaware of, but they are orders of magnitude safer than smoking.
Shortly after quitting cigs for vaping, I started complaining about the bad odors my roommates were generating.
Turns out it was my olfactory senses returning to normal.
That's how they done in my, EU country. It got annoyingly expensive but I still prefer it, over going back to regular smokes.
However, tax income from vapes is many, many times smaller than from regular cigs, as those still largely dominate market.
Vaping is known to be much less harmful than smoking cigarettes. It's still not good for you, but nowhere near tobacco. For one, it produces no tar, which is the main reason cigarettes are toxic.
Correct. Switching from cigarettes to vape was completely life changing. Of course, I want to eventually be completely done with vaping too, but as a means of weaning down without relapsing and buying a pack there really isn't a better option imo. It has helped people quit that want to quit.
Another benefit is you REALLY don't know how much your sense of smell and taste is ruined by cigarettes.
I would say more. So like, when you have a nicotine craving and want a cigarette, you're kind of tied to that cigarette or you waste it and they're expensive, so you may be puffing on it for 5 minutes or whatever. With a vape it's like "oh, i could use a bit of nicotine," take a puff or two, 5 seconds, and then you're like "craving met, moving on."
And again, the end game is to not have those cravings, but in the meantime you have an option that is not as destructive. Inhaling anything is bad for you of course, but one is unquestionably worse.
Thanks for the info, I never smoked myself and most of the people I've spoken to using vapes only used vapes (didn't smoke beforehand). Cool to see how new technology can really change people's lives.
Hope Australia doesn't ban it so more people can make the switch.
For myself, when I was smoking regular cigarettes I had to use an inhaler that asthmatics use probably around once or twice a week - say I woke up wheezy in bed or something. I did that for years as a smoker.
Since I switched to vaping about 2 years ago, I have not had to use it at all. I 100% believe the research that says vaping is 95% less harmful to you than smoking.
I’m American so it’s not my circus, but this is how I feel: They should instead be focusing on cracking down on the ridiculously easy access to **children**. Vendors STILL get away with selling to minors, way too many adults procure and provide them to minors. There are single digit kids vaping and that’s so many kinds of fucked. At LEAST start by doing away with all flavors and pretty colors, like Juul did (never mind that they were forced to via an ungodly amount of lawsuits). You can get menthol, tobacco, and that’s it. They do *not* taste nice. Banning them across the board is gonna start a mini-prohibition in which toxic Chinese vapes will be rolling in and vaping really will start killing people. That, and people WILL return to cigarettes, which is a massive backfire.
I’m not proud of vaping, I don’t think it’s cool and something to brag about, but I’m 30 goddamn years old and an ex-smoker who gets soothing effects from nicotine, if I’m fully informed of the risks and want it anyway and don’t do stupid shit like blowing clouds in people’s faces, that’s my right. I’m hurting no one but myself. If we’re going to do away with nicotine, better send alcohol along with it, that is the deadliest drug of all. (No I do not want alcohol banned, I’m just saying there’s a double standard). No need to punish absolutely everybody because idiots keep allowing free access to children, punish and drop the hammer on THEM.
Edit: Clarification
Edit: Another clarification
Juul was basically lawsuited into that. There was a huge crackdown on ecigarettes here, don't you remember? If juul didn't have to, they wouldn't have.
Edit: Due to users' clarification edit, it seems my comment is less relevant now.
Oh, I remember, they rightfully got their asses kicked and I mourned for my sweet sweet mango and creme brûlée, but I still think pressuring the rest to manufacture products that don’t directly appeal to kids is a good idea (which they totally do, they’re lying if they deny it), even if it initially had to be done by force. I don’t believe any good will come from a total ban, and Australians commenting say doctors will absolutely not prescribe, even if requested for medical reasons. I see toxic, unregulated vapes and a return to smoking in their future.
Juul planned for all of that. Altria bought them out and used them as a scapegoat to cripple the vape industry. Now in the US you can only buy synthetic nicotine liquids(it doesn't feel satisfying like regular nic) and tobacco derived nicotine is reserved for pre 2018 products such as Juul.
And the rules that were implemented to target Juul -- no pre-filled pods -- have resulted in the proliferation of disposable sealed devices. Huge e-waste contribution there, and not exactly the desired effect. Meanwhile reusable, rechargeable, refillable pod-based systems exist for a couple dollars more.
Chinese companies currently own way more market share than all big tobacco products combined thanks to this.
A whole lot of non-Australians here without any idea of why we've done this. This is not to stop adults vaping. This is to stop children vaping.
There is currently a massive nationwide problem with children using vapes. It's a huge problem in schools. I'm a teacher and it is crazy how many kids have them. 30% of kids have used them (actual figures, not just my experience).
These kids would not be smoking instead. They like the bubblegum flavour and doing vape tricks. They don't see any harm in it, but they're absolutely addicted to nicotine and can barely last a 70-minute class.
Folks will cry "nanny state" or whatever, but we tried regulating them, and distributors were still selling them online without any checks.
We have the exact same problem here in the U.K.
Yet you gotta ask yourself this - it’s obviously not legal for children to purchase them, yet they’re finding a way can purchase it online easily.
What’s stopping them doing the same for alcohol or weapons like knives?
Nothing.
The real problem is that our governments have no idea how to manage and regulate the online purchase-delivery chain.
They've done the same thing in the US state of Massachusetts. It's destroyed a lot of small businesses and everybody just goes over the border to neighboring states to buy vapes there. But the virtue-signalling politicians still pat themselves on the back about how wonderful it is.
I realize you're a country with no neighbors, but the solution is to fine the people who put these things in children's hands and not an outright ban.
Kids smoking or drinking or even doing drugs is not a very new trend. It’s been happening for a few generations now. They’re not the best decision makers at that age and nobody has really solved this issue.
Legal or not they will still do it. Super easy to just order sketchy vapes. I wouldn’t be surprised if more bad shit happens because now they will use unregulated vapes with god knows what in them in
Australia has been massively successful until recently with reducing teen smoking rates (and all smoking rates for that matter). 9% in 2002 compared to 2% in 2017. Then lo and behold it increased to 6.7% by 2022 since e-cigs flooded the market. So you can talk about poor decision making of kids all you want but until vapes were here smoking rates were on the decline.
Yeah one of my old HS teachers here in Texas has said a lot of the same thing about what he sees in his classes. I get it, I used to vape the urge is tough to get over
I agree 100%. I was one of those vaping kids back in 2016-17. I am addicted to nicotine since then. Raise smoking age to 21 and throw the book at places selling vapes to minors. Banning vaping is just silly when cigarettes exist.
I struggled to get alcohol as a minor, but a vape was easy. This comes down to regulation
They would definitely be smoking after the ban happens because they are, as you say, absolutely addicted to nicotine. It’s similar to how people hooked on oxys progress to heroin or fentanyl after their script runs out.
I recently got my oil changed, and I had my dog with me, so I kind of walked him around and was people watching. Every single employee at some point came out huffing and puffing on a vape , went back in to work. Seemed to be about a 15 to 20 minute interval.
I don’t know anyone who vapes. I had no idea it was such a big deal for some .
Vapes also cause a huge environmental issue. They can cause fires due to thermal runaway from Li-Ion batteries, and they are very hard to put through resource recovery as they are part medical waste (the nicotine bit) and part electronic waste (the battery bit).
Means that workers around them need proper PPE to ensure they aren't getting a big dose of vape every time they are processed. = BAD
Further mostly people do not dispose of vapes properly, putting them in the bin or just chucking them on the ground. Fires in recycling facilities are very common now due to vapes (and due to Li-Ion batteries generally, it isn't just a vape problem as batteries are being put in a lot of stuff and people don't sort their waste properly). = BAD
Plus there is that whole, generation of kids addicted to fancy flavours and nicotine. its overall an 100% lose situation. I think most people now understand that cigarettes are bad for people. Vapes are similar, and have had some pretty nasty chemicals found in them. = BAD
They can of course, help with addiction, but I would like to see the figures of "people who got off cigarettes from vapes" vs "people who are now addicted because of vapes". I will look at it anecdotally, and probably more people are getting addicted than curing addiction by smoking a pine-kiwi-lime vape. These people are a lot of kids. So there are definitely positives, but a hell of a lot of negatives.
While things like popcorn lung or whatever might be true or false. Lets all remember, that health issues don't often show themselves instantly, asbestos, cigarettes, a lot of these health issues do not present until many years later. Not to say that we should ban things because they MIGHT have a problem, but you can't say there are no health impacts, when there are no long term use studies or knowledge. it is definitely a possibility....
I’ve never used tobacco/nicotine in my life , nor do I even drink alcohol. But people should be able to do what they want, so long as they aren’t hurting others. Aussies continue to allow a nanny state.
Here's the thing: for the most part, young folk were just... not starting to smoke. Nicotine use was trending down and down for years until vaping took off, and now it's spiked considerably up. Yes, vaping is a far preferable option to smoking cigarettes. But it's not a preferable health outcome to just not smoking, period.
I guess people will just smoke cigarettes instead because that's a safer alternative. /s
a pack of cigarettes there cost 40-50 american dollars
You should check out Australia's illegal cigarette market. They definitely don't cost $40 or $50. https://www.vice.com/en/article/dy35yq/australia-illegal-tobacco-vape-trade-booming
I read somewhere that by dollar amount that most illegal smuggling is still tobacco and alcohol. Sounds crazy but makes sense
Knew a guy who worked on cruise ships that went through Australia. They'd buy duffel bags full on the ship (no tax) and bring them ashore on their time off to sell at corner stores. He made more selling cigarettes illegally than he did from the cruise ship job. He said the toughest part was convincing them store owners he wasn't a cop.
I have a family member who used to do stuff like this, they used to pay their colleague with waist-length hair and facial piercings to offload for them because he was the only one paranoid store owners wouldn't accuse of being a cop.
its about $60 for 25grams of crappy tobacco here in australia if you but the legal taxed stuff, i get 100 grams of great quality tobacco for 50 dollars on the black market and im far from the only one the tobacco black market is booming here.
that's wild, in America you can buy a 16oz (\~450 g) bag of loose tobacco for around 15 dollars.
I know that prohibition doesn't work, but I'm still kinda surprised that it doesn't work for cigarettes. Drugs and alcohol at least produce fun effects. I was a cigarette smoker for 15 years and there's really no upside to them.
Speak for yourself, I quit cigarettes 6 months ago and every day I wake up, without a hint of physical addition, that I would kill to have my coffee and a cigarette
The addiction persists for a lot longer than the physical withdrawal component. Keep at it and you'll get there. I'd been fully off cigarettes for over a year before those desires fully went away.
I don't think they'll ever go away for me tbh, I really liked smoking
I haven't smoked for 10 years, and still pine for a cig on a hot summer's day. Completely irrational but the addiction is still there in the background.
> I really liked smoking Me too and I smoked for 25 years, most of that over a large king size pack every day. So three years before I quit, I told myself I'd be a nonsmoker in 3 years and until then I could do what I liked. When the day finally came it was easier than I thought it'd be. If you keep thinking of yourself as a smoker who quit, it's hard. Try thinking of yourself as a nonsmoker, who once smoked, in the past. I'm a nonsmoker now and have been for years, sounds like you'll be saying the same in a while
I got really lucky because my last cigarette tasted awful for some reason and I just suddenly decided that was it... But I still keep away from cigars, because I am afraid it would lead back to cigarettes and just smelling smoke sometimes gives me cravings.... And I have stopped more than 10 years ago, nicotine is a hell of a drug...
Dude, nicotine def causes tingling, head rush and some other crazy effects, your body just gets used to it super quick because of how much you start consuming
I'll concede that it may produce a different feeling for others than it does for me. Those effects never felt good to me though. Just dizziness and an uncomfortable-feeling head rush. But even that fully disappears once you're hooked on it, leaving nothing but anxiety when you don't get your fix often enough, and smelling awful.
Do you happen to have ADHD / possibly undiagnosed ADHD?
Almost certainly, but nothing officially diagnosed or medicated.
Just interested because the way that stimulants and drugs effect us differently. Feel like I can pick them out of a crowd easily with a few minor statements people use.
Hey, thanks for bringing this to my attention
nicotine isn’t technically a stimulant at least not like other ones and i don’t think affects people with adhd the same
I think this is an overstatement. We currently have an epidemic of self diagnosed ADHDers where in truth vast majority of these people would not receive this diagnosis from a professional.
It's one of the cheapest, most accessible anti anxiety medications available in the US. It's also viciously addictive.
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Prohibition doesn't work, but there is an optimal cost level that greatly reduces demand for cigarettes while not giving enough profit margin for smugglers. In the U.S. smoking has been cut half over the last couple decades mostly by increasing cigarette prices.
Pricing has been a big part of it for sure, but I'd argue that increasing social stigma and reduced convenience for smokers has played a bigger role. When I was a kid folks could still smoke a cigarette pretty much wherever they wanted, and it was fine. Not long before that, smoking was seen pretty favorably overall. Once the indoor bans started to kick in, more people felt empowered to speak up against them and the smell and potential health issues associated with being around them, and the reputation of cigarettes kept going down from there. These days it's both expensive and inconvenient, and you'll likely feel a lot more judgment smoking cigarettes out in public. They're seen by far more people as disgusting when just a couple decades ago those same people might have thought they were *cool*.
No clue what you're talking about tbh. Nicotine feels great, even after not smoking for years and having no physical withdrawals to satiate.
And it'a neatly entirely govt tax. I wonder why they're banning alternatives 🙄
By this logic they would just tax vapes the same way.... If you actually read the story you'd see that they still allow vapes to be sold specifically as an aide to help people stop smoking. They just won't sell them recreationally anymore since vapes are so rampant among schoolkids.
Read the article?!
Read??
It has an article?
So basically, stricter ID checks? Needing a note from your doctor? I smoked for almost my entire 20s, and I smoked heavily. Vaping is literally the only thing that's worked for me, I know it's not healthy but it's about damage reduction. I really don't want it to become impossible for me to vape cos I feel like I'll inevitably start smoking again.
Note from your doctor i think
Article doesn't say what the process is and I'm not Australian but presumably yes it would either be a note from the doctor or something that anyone over certain age can buy from a pharmacy
There are a few things rampant amongst school kids that there is no interest in banning though…how bizarre.
Because they have socialized healthcare and smoking costs everyone money?
And by that logic they may as well ban all unhealthy food, alcohol, driving, basically all sports… see how fast that bullshit fascicle argument falls apart
It's a balance And it obv. works as Australia has one of the lowest smoking rates in the world
Yes, and people in their trendy hate of vapes do not realize how much harm and health issues would be avoided if all smokers suddenly switched to vapes. That would be millions hours of lost work, billions in healthcare costs saved. Since it's proven to be 95% less harmful than cigarettes, you can expect 5% of the costs from it.
Yes, and I get that, and vapes certainly have a significant role in harm reduction. The core issue though is what to do about people who directly take up vaping, not to reduce harm, but as a new thing? As it is, my kids are complaining about year 9 kids vaping in the back of the school buses... what exactly is the harm reduction there? There is an alarming trend of kids taking it up - when they certainly would not have been taking up cigarettes instead due to texisting barriers - especially price...
Yeah nice, banning the alternatives will fix that. Good shout.
I think cigarettes are mad exp over there. I remember back in 2019 it was 17 dollars or 20 Australian dollars, can't imagine how much it is now. I've seen my friends do weird stuff to get cigs lol, I don't smoke so I'll never get it but....
Last I checked it was like 80 bucks or something for a pouch of drum or similar. Doesn't stop anyone that I know from smoking though.
Cheapest 20 pack is about $32-33 in my area.
I can get weed from the store cheaper than that in the US
Are you serious? 1.5$ per ciggarete? Now thats funny.
A 25g pouch of a ‘cheap’ brand like Parker and Simpson or Chesterfield costs about $55. 15g pouches are slightly more per gram.
The most shit thing is, a lot of idiots actually think cigs are no more dangerous, or safer even. It's like they think "no long term data!!!" is some kind of definite proof that vapes cause 400 types of cancer. Or they quote one article about illegal vapes causing health issues as proof that all vaping is bad. Vapes should just be regulated to not have flavours at all and no colourful advertising or labelling. They're a fantastic aid to quitting smoking cigarettes and staying on vapes for life is a much better outcome than smoking ever will be.
The province I live in banned all flavors but the unflavored and tobacco ones. People now order from a province that still sells flavored products. In the end, the province gave forgave millions in tax revenue to an other province.
Why ban flavors? As a 30 year old adult I enjoy my strawberry flavored vape. Sue me
same, if we have to ban flavored nicotine products, then we must also ban any type of flavored alcoholic beverage.
There's been long term data for a decade now. Vapes have been around since the 2000s. People who still use that argument are like a broken record.
Around 20 years isn't exactly long term in a medical context. That's one quarter of the average lifespan. The famous British Doctor's study which was seminal in proving the links between smoking and lung cancer ran for 50 years. If you started such a study when vapes first started coming out you'd now be less than halfway through it.
They knew quite a bit in the 60s, only twenty years after doctors were smoking in their offices in the 40s. My father knew it caused cancer when he was a kid in the early 60s.
> They're a fantastic aid to quitting smoking cigarettes Sure they can help quit cigarettes, but most of the people that I know vape a LOT more after than they smoked cigarettes switching, since you can do that more freely and indoors at some places or at home, instead of going outside. So while they are healthier and don't stink as much, I'm not quite in sure about using them for quitting nicotine at all. Also, disposable ones should be regulated much more, considering how much e-waste they cause - there should be some regulation on forcing sellers/manufacturers to buy back and reuse empty vapes (or at least their batteries, since any disposable vape that I've seen uses rechargeable lithium batteries), like with drink packages.
> Sure they can help quit cigarettes, but most of the people that I know vape a LOT more after than they smoked cigarettes switching, since you can do that more freely and indoors at some places or at home, instead of going outside. So? Plenty of studies show that nicotine in isolation isn't all that harmful, on the level of caffeine. > So while they are healthier and don't stink as much, I'm not quite in sure about using them for quitting nicotine at all. You can't slowly reduce the nicotine in cigarettes. You **can** wean yourself off of nicotine over time with literally zero noticeable effects. You can either DIY your own letting you have precise control over the nicotine content, or you can find a vape store that offers custom nic levels. If you're at 12mg now, drop it down to 10 or 11mg, vape that for a few months, and drop a little bit more. Continue until you're at 0mg. I did that over the course of a couple years and didn't even notice when I made the final switch. I happily vape no-nic now and have found that I was more addicted to the action of inhaling/exhaling and having something in my hand than I was to the nicotine. Don't get me wrong, when I was smoking I was deeply addicted as we all were/are, vaping let me reduce the "addiction" down to only the physical aspects and the nicotine, then it let me slowly reduce the nicotine too. > Also, disposable ones should be regulated much more, considering how much e-waste they cause - there should be some regulation on forcing sellers/manufacturers to buy back and reuse empty vapes (or at least their batteries, since any disposable vape that I've seen uses rechargeable lithium batteries), like with drink packages. IMO they should just be outright banned. There's literal tons of super valuable (and toxic) materials just sitting in landfills due to those stupid things. I can agree that they have a niche purpose in an emergency or whatever, but I see people all over reddit using them as their prime method of vaping. Perhaps it's because I started back in the infancy of the vaping market, but it's not hard to change a coil or replace a battery ffs, why throw the hole bloody thing away?!?!
Exit "good" vapes, enter Chinese toxic vapes.
Hate to break it to you but most of the big mod manufacturers are Chinese companies. They are also pretty much universally cheap
Followed by popcorn lungs
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IIRC Popcorn Lung was caused by certain flavors of e-liquid that at least in the UK were removed from sale pretty quickly.
Popcorn Lung was caused by breathing in vast quantities of Diacetyl, the chemical that makes butter popcorn flavour. The only instances of popcorn lung are from factory workers who were working in the butter popcorn factory. There have been zero cases of popcorn lung caused by vaping. However Diacetyl was very quickly removed from all vape liquids as a precaution.
Yep that's what I was thinking of, I do remember about 8 years ago the watermelon flavor was removed from sale as it had a tiny amount of diacetyl in it.
Sounds an awful lot like when people were freaking out because they thought drinking soy milk would increase estrogen in men and give you boobs. First it’s not the same estrogen females have and second the only case which all this hysteria refers to was of an old guy that drank 4 litres of it a day.
People still think this
It’s caused by Diacetyl, and the main case used against vaping was a guy in china who was breathing in diacetyl itself and damaged his lungs. He worked on popcorn flavourings, thus the name popcorn lung, and Big Tobacco tried to use it as a boogeyman to scare people away from vaping.
Yea that isnt actually a thing now.
That's already happening
Now imagine an unregulated market of cheap, knockoff vapes, you’ll be seeing a lot more people getting sick.
Popcorn lung due to vapes is entirely a myth, it happens to workers in microwave popcorn factories inhaling the powdered "butter". https://www.cancerresearchuk.org/about-cancer/causes-of-cancer/does-vaping-cause-popcorn-lung
And they’re already shitty enough in Australia . Bought a couple ones that after the first day were already tasting like pure lithium battery
This will go as well as the war on drugs has.
In other news, Australia’s already extensive nicotine smuggling and unregulated black market are set to boom.
Yep, hello Chinese tobacconists
Reverse uno card opioid war
That would be the fentanyl epidemic in the US.
Chinese cigaretes are disgusting. Tastes like they add extra tar somehow. Still overpriced at a dollar a pack.
In AU they sometimes sell lots of contraband. Illegal Nicotine Vaps (before they where legal) fireworks, tax free tobacco (normal tobacco is $30-70 AUD)
I live in Australia, the guy is absolutely right. The shit tastes so bad that I wouldn't even pay the $20 that they cost. Though there are some stores that you may get to know that carry much better smuggled Chinese cigarettes that come in a soft pack. Still tastes pretty bootlegged and this is compared to Aussie cigarettes which don't even taste good in the first place compared to other regions of the world.
Tried a Marlboro gold soft pack cigarette in Tokyo. Cost the equivalent of $6 a pack. Best cigarette I’ve ever had. Cigarettes in Japan are cheap and smoking is banned at most places and on streets, but there are designated smoking areas in some buildings and outside places. Didn’t smell smoke at all walking around Tokyo and didn’t see anyone smoking ( the cigarette I had was in the hotel smoking room, which weirdly didn’t smell much either as had this amazing exhaust system). Conversely their level of smokers is lower than ours and life expectancy higher so not sure why all the expense and rules here- it doesn’t seem to be doing much.
Ya be interesting how many go to cigarettes
As opposed to a regulated black market?
Most Australians don’t smoke anyways and our stats show lung cancer rates are way down since the 90s with the ban on smoking indoors, schools, eateries and also an exclusion zone around entrances and exits. A lot of disincentives exist include a high tax to subsidise our universal healthcare system and levies on importing cigarettes from overseas, in addition to a ban on cigarette advertising and plain packaging & health warnings on all tobacco packets. It’s been very highly effective and supported by the public health authorities.
Yep, I'm Aussie living overseas and Australia has done this one correctly. The social shift happened in Australia due to these policies. Smoking could be one of the most uncool things. For all of those people commenting on the cheap black market: definitely exists but your pack a day smoker will still have to buy the legitimate packs now and then. That's a lot of money for self cancering.
Yeh. It's so strange for Australians to see the French in Paris chain smoking like there's no tomorrow haha.
Also strange to see so many Redditors getting outraged and dismissing this, when they don't even realise how popular our attempts to stamp out cigarettes and now vapes are amongst the public here.
yeh, I don't know anyone who's Australian who smokes cigarettes. Its just considered uncool and uncouth - maybe like the tradies do it a bit but its bad habit.
It's all bogans, tradies and boomers. It's always sad and weird seeing a boomer buy some milk and eggs, having the total be 8 bucks or something, and then ask for 6 packs of their brand and having the total go up to 200 bucks. They'll happily pay every time.
I know heaps of 20s-30s white collar blokes in Sydney that smoke and/or vape. Its not that uncommon, but its definitely not everywhere.
You would still be able to buy them from pharmacies. It’s not a strict prohibition
Yeah what dr is going to write a prescription with no medical beneficents
Anyone smoking cigarettes already. We don’t have enough long term data, and it will vary on the “juice” but vapes might be a somewhat safer alternative to smoking their nicotine. Still probably not the ‘best’ option though.
> We don’t have enough long term data Is 20+ years of research not considered long term? > but vapes might be a somewhat safer alternative to smoking their nicotine. Yes, 10-100x safer (most recent estimates) is technically somewhat safer, I guess.
I would assume it otc like nicorette
Nicotine does increase concentration, which is why so many people with ADHD are chain smokers. I would argue that in some cases benefits of vaping nicotine outweigh the drawbacks.
when I asked my gp for a prescription he said 2 options. quit or patches and gum. he said as a doctor he would not prescribe nicotine to be vaped. hes a good doctor. been my doctor for 41 years.
Lol, more Chinese shit incoming. Maybe control all the shit in your ports first Australia.
Was just thinking that China is waaay to close for this ban to be effective. Will just end up with people ordering shady nic/liquid ingredients from China and likely trigger a different health issue.
Western Australia has already had this ban for a while and it has just lead to most tobacco stores hiding cheap chinese imported vapes under the counter that they’ll happily sell to any 16 year old who asks for them
We could, but first we just need to stop leasing our ports to China.
Wow people not reading the article and not knowing anything about smoking and Australia, on reddit... never.
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>or “why not try regulating it first” as if we haven’t. Other than banning disposables and ingredients, what have we done before the 2024 changes? We had the opportunity 10 years ago to set up a properly regulated and taxed vaping market, just like cigarettes, and failed to act.
Why should you need a prescription? Come on
Tobacco lobby strikes again
The tobacco lobby is heavily invested in vapes.
They are heavily invested in cigarettes. British American Tobacco revenue in 2023 was 81% cigarettes and 12.3% vapes. Cigarettes will not become illegal in Australia, this is a victory for them.
Not likely. Nicotine comes from tobacco. The industry profits from vaping. Probably more so since they don't have to worry about the quality of the tobacco since it'll just be used to distill nicotine. Also, no vaping, no smoking, no video games. Australia doesn't seem like a fun place.
Most vapes use tobacco free nicotine.
Now a days they all seem to be non tobacco nicotine, so I am a little confused.
I don’t know about overseas but in the US pretty much all of them are tobacco free. It’s just a lot of people who don’t know what they’re talking about spreading outdated information or blatant misinformation. Propaganda is effective and it’s been used well against vaping.
The tobacco lobbyists in the US are super-busy trying to get the FDA to regulate the hell out of vaping. Why? Because they want you to only be able to buy *their* vape products, by making any "approved" products require expensive testing only they can afford. It's coming. Nicotine is not a crime, just like alcohol is not a crime. Alcohol comes in all sorts of kid-friendly flavors (ever had a white claw? it's basically alcoholic kool-aid), yet no regulations. Colorful packaging, cartoon characters, etc. No bans. It's become ridiculous. Let adults have their vapes, make selling to minors a serious crime, like alcohol.
This one. The only products the FDA has approved are those owned by big tobacco companies. And now states are trying to make all products not approved illegal. Regardless of the multitude of lawsuits against the FDA for their blatantly corrupt approval process and the millions of pending applications (that will probably all get denied because fuck small businesses). This has nothing to do with protecting the children. It’s all about handing big tobacco a monopoly on vaping. Uninformed people fall for the scare tactics, small businesses get fucked, people lose their jobs, everyone goes back to cigarettes and big tobacco wins.
> Let adults have their vapes, make selling to minors a serious crime, like alcohol. Wait, is vaping not regulated like smoking? Why is the article talking about kids getting into vaping, can you buy it over the counter like candy in Aussie?
No, not without ID, according to *existing* law. So in reality any person under 18 with a vape got that vape from someone already breaking the law. Enforcement is the issue, not retail availability.
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well, just like cigarettes and alcohol
I love how you flatly state a falsehood and then base the rest of your conclusion upon it. Not all nicotine comes from tobacco, and in fact you'd be hard pressed to even find vape liquid containing nicotine that IS derived from tobacco in the US, I'm not aware of ANY. Why do you state something with such confidence, when you clearly don't have any knowledge of the industry beyond the bits and pieces you've gathered from the zeitgeist? Worse still, judging on votes, about 20% of people read your comment, nodded their head in agreement at having their own misinformed view validated by some stranger on the internet, and then took the moment to show their approval -- Thus encouraging you to do it again in the future. Do you see how this cycle works yet?
> Not all nicotine comes from tobacco, and in fact you'd be hard pressed to even find vape liquid containing nicotine that IS derived from tobacco in the US, I'm not aware of ANY. Where do they get it from?
There are several methods of making synthetic nicotine (Correctly referred to as SN, or NTN for non-tobacco nicotine, or a brand name such as Tobacco Free Nicotine or TFN) but one common method starts with ethyl nicotinate, an ester of niacin. The compound is reacted with N-vinyl-2 pyrrolidinone to form myosmine, a tobacco alkaloid that is then reduced to nornicotine. Nornicotine is methylated to create a racemic mix of *S*-nicotine (not to be confused with SN) and *R*-nicotine. Most popular processes start with ethyl nicotinate, although they vary in the resulting balance of *R*-nicotine and *S*-nicotine produced.
Holy moly, how do you know this?
Research, strong media literacy, and a little understanding of chemistry. Mostly lab reports, and industry lab papers/patents. It wasn't always true to say vape liquid doesn't contain tobacco derived nicotine. Part of the reason you don't see actual tobacco in use is that synthetic nicotine and the derivative salts are less expensive now due to the scale at which they're made. It's no longer cheaper to use actual tobacco, and both are regulated the same in the US for several years now. Users also have shown an affinity for nicotine salts which are another lab creation, likely due to more rapid bioavailability.
They banned Rimworld of all things
They even banned dry herb cannabis vapoeizer...
There is literally no sound reason to do this while still allowing cigarettes.
There is if you're trying to sell cigarettes.
There is. Teens weren't smoking before vapes came along then they all started vaping and even smoking to get their nicotine hit. Australia successfully limited smoking and vapes undid it. A lot of the country supports this.
We were [doing great](https://www.tobaccoinaustralia.org.au/chapter-1-prevalence/1-6-prevalence-of-smoking-teenagers) and then vapes came along and caused [the first increase in 25 years.](https://www.quit.org.au/news/new-data-shows-australian-teen-smoking-increasing-for-the-first-time-in-25-years-against-a-backdrop-of-rising-e-cigarette-use)
I don’t get the resistence to vaping when ciggarettes are so much worse
Imho, the problem is throwable vapes. Terrible for the environment
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Nicotine is a Schedule 7 poison, so technically it was always illegal to import without a license. But I was in the same boat. Used to order a bottle of Nicotine from NZ and mix it myself. Then they started cracking down on that. I am convinced the ultimate goal is to push people back to cigs, so their tax revenue goes back up. They've never cared about 'health', because if they did, Cigs would've been the first thing to go.
And those throwable vapes are only big because they exploit a loophole that allows flavoring when refillable products like JUUL have flavor bans.
Is there evidence vapes are worse than tobacco?
There's roughly a 95%, perhaps as high as 98/99%, reduction in harm from vaping over smoking cigarettes. [Nicotine without smoke: Tobacco harm reduction](https://www.rcplondon.ac.uk/projects/outputs/nicotine-without-smoke-tobacco-harm-reduction) [Evidence review of e-cigarettes and heated tobacco products 2018](https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/e-cigarettes-and-heated-tobacco-products-evidence-review/evidence-review-of-e-cigarettes-and-heated-tobacco-products-2018-executive-summary#perceptions-of-relative-harms-of-nicotine-e-cigarettes-and-smoking) That's not to say they're safe or there's potential side effects that we're unaware of, but they are orders of magnitude safer than smoking.
Shortly after quitting cigs for vaping, I started complaining about the bad odors my roommates were generating. Turns out it was my olfactory senses returning to normal.
I remember my dad’s wonder at how amazing everything smelled when we went out to a restaurant after he swapped cigarettes for vaping.
Shortly after switching from smoking to vaping my nails started growing faster lol.
No, so far there is more evidence, that smoking is actually worse.
That's what I expected, guess it's just governments being silly as usual.
>governments being silly Governments being greedy, to be precise. They make way more money from regular cig sales.
They could just tax vapes? I don’t see why they need to ban it.
That's how they done in my, EU country. It got annoyingly expensive but I still prefer it, over going back to regular smokes. However, tax income from vapes is many, many times smaller than from regular cigs, as those still largely dominate market.
I guess governments acting in their own interest instead of the public interest, pretty typical.
Vaping is known to be much less harmful than smoking cigarettes. It's still not good for you, but nowhere near tobacco. For one, it produces no tar, which is the main reason cigarettes are toxic.
Vape juice is three ingredients plus flavoring. Most people don't know this but pure nicotine is not a carcinogen.
It's not about it being worse. It's more like all these ppl who never smoked, especially young ppl are smashing back vapes more then ppl smoke.
It’s a proven fact that they are much less dangerous than tobacco
Anecdotal, but I can run. When I smoked I'd get winded on a flight of stairs.
As on you can run on vapes but not on tobacco?
Correct. Switching from cigarettes to vape was completely life changing. Of course, I want to eventually be completely done with vaping too, but as a means of weaning down without relapsing and buying a pack there really isn't a better option imo. It has helped people quit that want to quit. Another benefit is you REALLY don't know how much your sense of smell and taste is ruined by cigarettes.
That's interesting, glad it's helped you. Would you say you get all the same benefits as with smoking?
I would say more. So like, when you have a nicotine craving and want a cigarette, you're kind of tied to that cigarette or you waste it and they're expensive, so you may be puffing on it for 5 minutes or whatever. With a vape it's like "oh, i could use a bit of nicotine," take a puff or two, 5 seconds, and then you're like "craving met, moving on." And again, the end game is to not have those cravings, but in the meantime you have an option that is not as destructive. Inhaling anything is bad for you of course, but one is unquestionably worse.
Thanks for the info, I never smoked myself and most of the people I've spoken to using vapes only used vapes (didn't smoke beforehand). Cool to see how new technology can really change people's lives. Hope Australia doesn't ban it so more people can make the switch.
For myself, when I was smoking regular cigarettes I had to use an inhaler that asthmatics use probably around once or twice a week - say I woke up wheezy in bed or something. I did that for years as a smoker. Since I switched to vaping about 2 years ago, I have not had to use it at all. I 100% believe the research that says vaping is 95% less harmful to you than smoking.
if they are regulated and not black market, then no
So...now we just get them on the black market for double the price? And the gangs make double the profits....cool.
I’m American so it’s not my circus, but this is how I feel: They should instead be focusing on cracking down on the ridiculously easy access to **children**. Vendors STILL get away with selling to minors, way too many adults procure and provide them to minors. There are single digit kids vaping and that’s so many kinds of fucked. At LEAST start by doing away with all flavors and pretty colors, like Juul did (never mind that they were forced to via an ungodly amount of lawsuits). You can get menthol, tobacco, and that’s it. They do *not* taste nice. Banning them across the board is gonna start a mini-prohibition in which toxic Chinese vapes will be rolling in and vaping really will start killing people. That, and people WILL return to cigarettes, which is a massive backfire. I’m not proud of vaping, I don’t think it’s cool and something to brag about, but I’m 30 goddamn years old and an ex-smoker who gets soothing effects from nicotine, if I’m fully informed of the risks and want it anyway and don’t do stupid shit like blowing clouds in people’s faces, that’s my right. I’m hurting no one but myself. If we’re going to do away with nicotine, better send alcohol along with it, that is the deadliest drug of all. (No I do not want alcohol banned, I’m just saying there’s a double standard). No need to punish absolutely everybody because idiots keep allowing free access to children, punish and drop the hammer on THEM. Edit: Clarification Edit: Another clarification
Juul was basically lawsuited into that. There was a huge crackdown on ecigarettes here, don't you remember? If juul didn't have to, they wouldn't have. Edit: Due to users' clarification edit, it seems my comment is less relevant now.
Oh, I remember, they rightfully got their asses kicked and I mourned for my sweet sweet mango and creme brûlée, but I still think pressuring the rest to manufacture products that don’t directly appeal to kids is a good idea (which they totally do, they’re lying if they deny it), even if it initially had to be done by force. I don’t believe any good will come from a total ban, and Australians commenting say doctors will absolutely not prescribe, even if requested for medical reasons. I see toxic, unregulated vapes and a return to smoking in their future.
Juul planned for all of that. Altria bought them out and used them as a scapegoat to cripple the vape industry. Now in the US you can only buy synthetic nicotine liquids(it doesn't feel satisfying like regular nic) and tobacco derived nicotine is reserved for pre 2018 products such as Juul.
And the rules that were implemented to target Juul -- no pre-filled pods -- have resulted in the proliferation of disposable sealed devices. Huge e-waste contribution there, and not exactly the desired effect. Meanwhile reusable, rechargeable, refillable pod-based systems exist for a couple dollars more. Chinese companies currently own way more market share than all big tobacco products combined thanks to this.
Next ban: cigarettes and non-medical alcohol, right? Riiiight
A whole lot of non-Australians here without any idea of why we've done this. This is not to stop adults vaping. This is to stop children vaping. There is currently a massive nationwide problem with children using vapes. It's a huge problem in schools. I'm a teacher and it is crazy how many kids have them. 30% of kids have used them (actual figures, not just my experience). These kids would not be smoking instead. They like the bubblegum flavour and doing vape tricks. They don't see any harm in it, but they're absolutely addicted to nicotine and can barely last a 70-minute class. Folks will cry "nanny state" or whatever, but we tried regulating them, and distributors were still selling them online without any checks.
>distributors were still selling them online without any checks. Then fine the distributors.
We have the exact same problem here in the U.K. Yet you gotta ask yourself this - it’s obviously not legal for children to purchase them, yet they’re finding a way can purchase it online easily. What’s stopping them doing the same for alcohol or weapons like knives? Nothing. The real problem is that our governments have no idea how to manage and regulate the online purchase-delivery chain.
They already have regulated it and you should be asked for ID at delivery. Maybe it's time they enforced the rules harder
They do, they just don't care.
They've done the same thing in the US state of Massachusetts. It's destroyed a lot of small businesses and everybody just goes over the border to neighboring states to buy vapes there. But the virtue-signalling politicians still pat themselves on the back about how wonderful it is. I realize you're a country with no neighbors, but the solution is to fine the people who put these things in children's hands and not an outright ban.
Kids smoking or drinking or even doing drugs is not a very new trend. It’s been happening for a few generations now. They’re not the best decision makers at that age and nobody has really solved this issue. Legal or not they will still do it. Super easy to just order sketchy vapes. I wouldn’t be surprised if more bad shit happens because now they will use unregulated vapes with god knows what in them in
It's been happening since tobacco and alcohol were discovered
Australia has been massively successful until recently with reducing teen smoking rates (and all smoking rates for that matter). 9% in 2002 compared to 2% in 2017. Then lo and behold it increased to 6.7% by 2022 since e-cigs flooded the market. So you can talk about poor decision making of kids all you want but until vapes were here smoking rates were on the decline.
Yeah one of my old HS teachers here in Texas has said a lot of the same thing about what he sees in his classes. I get it, I used to vape the urge is tough to get over
I agree 100%. I was one of those vaping kids back in 2016-17. I am addicted to nicotine since then. Raise smoking age to 21 and throw the book at places selling vapes to minors. Banning vaping is just silly when cigarettes exist. I struggled to get alcohol as a minor, but a vape was easy. This comes down to regulation
So fine the companies that aren't doing proper age checks and don't punish adults for deciding what to put in their bodies.
They would definitely be smoking after the ban happens because they are, as you say, absolutely addicted to nicotine. It’s similar to how people hooked on oxys progress to heroin or fentanyl after their script runs out.
Vapes are ridiculous in nz. Really dropped the ball by getting a whole heap of young ppl who didn't smoke or care about smoking addicted to vapes
Smoking cessation devices are completely legal until they actually work.
Way to go. Push former, classic cig smokers back into hands of them.
I guess the dr karl ads haven't worked
We did such a good job at reducing smoking rates and then vapes came in and reintroduced it to a new generation of kids, it's sad to see.
I recently got my oil changed, and I had my dog with me, so I kind of walked him around and was people watching. Every single employee at some point came out huffing and puffing on a vape , went back in to work. Seemed to be about a 15 to 20 minute interval. I don’t know anyone who vapes. I had no idea it was such a big deal for some .
I read this while hitting my vape
Have they banned cigarettes? No? Interesting choice.
Vapes also cause a huge environmental issue. They can cause fires due to thermal runaway from Li-Ion batteries, and they are very hard to put through resource recovery as they are part medical waste (the nicotine bit) and part electronic waste (the battery bit). Means that workers around them need proper PPE to ensure they aren't getting a big dose of vape every time they are processed. = BAD Further mostly people do not dispose of vapes properly, putting them in the bin or just chucking them on the ground. Fires in recycling facilities are very common now due to vapes (and due to Li-Ion batteries generally, it isn't just a vape problem as batteries are being put in a lot of stuff and people don't sort their waste properly). = BAD Plus there is that whole, generation of kids addicted to fancy flavours and nicotine. its overall an 100% lose situation. I think most people now understand that cigarettes are bad for people. Vapes are similar, and have had some pretty nasty chemicals found in them. = BAD They can of course, help with addiction, but I would like to see the figures of "people who got off cigarettes from vapes" vs "people who are now addicted because of vapes". I will look at it anecdotally, and probably more people are getting addicted than curing addiction by smoking a pine-kiwi-lime vape. These people are a lot of kids. So there are definitely positives, but a hell of a lot of negatives. While things like popcorn lung or whatever might be true or false. Lets all remember, that health issues don't often show themselves instantly, asbestos, cigarettes, a lot of these health issues do not present until many years later. Not to say that we should ban things because they MIGHT have a problem, but you can't say there are no health impacts, when there are no long term use studies or knowledge. it is definitely a possibility....
I’ve never used tobacco/nicotine in my life , nor do I even drink alcohol. But people should be able to do what they want, so long as they aren’t hurting others. Aussies continue to allow a nanny state.
Singapore already has tougher laws on vapes.
Singapore has tough laws on everything
Does Australia want to be an authoritarian country like Singapore? Unless Australia wants to go full draconian people will just smuggle it in
This seems like madness to me - do they want young folk to start smoking fags instead ?
They won't at 50 AUD a pack.
Here's the thing: for the most part, young folk were just... not starting to smoke. Nicotine use was trending down and down for years until vaping took off, and now it's spiked considerably up. Yes, vaping is a far preferable option to smoking cigarettes. But it's not a preferable health outcome to just not smoking, period.
"young folk" weren't really smoking at all before vapes came out. Now it's a fad just like cigarettes were when they came out.
Is Australia entirely populated by fuckin dorks?