Most young people I know smoke vapes. They start there and then often end up smoking cigarettes as well. They are not buying cigarettes for $50 to $80 a packet from your official distributor; they are picking them up illegally and cheaply.
The stark reality is that the federal and state governments’ approaches to managing vapes and cigarettes is failing, both from a health and crime perspective.
The aim of the government in raising taxes on cigarettes was originally about deterring smokers from buying them; the proceeds from these extra taxes were then supposed to help educate people so they would stop smoking. And it worked. Australia saw a significant drop in smokers, to about 10 per cent of the population. Unfortunately, ‘the use of e-cigarettes tripled between 2019 and 2022–2023,’ according to survey results from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW), and they aren’t getting them legally.
The exorbitant cost of cigarettes, combined with the restriction on vapes, making them only available by prescription, has made a perfect recipe for vapes and cigarettes to be sold cheaply and illegally, creating a bonanza for crime.
Criminal gangs have been firebombing stores throughout the country, including in the Northern Rivers where we have seen shops firebombed in Tweed Heads, Ocean Shores, and Ballina as part of criminal gang turf wars. Then just last week it turned out that a storage shed in Mullumbimby was holding ‘17,120 vapes, more than 1.8 million illicit cigarettes, and 62kg of loose-leaf tobacco’, according to police. And police say at two homes in Mullum ‘five unregistered firearms, $40,000 cash, mobile phones, electronic equipment and assorted illicit cigarettes and vapes were seized’.
The government needs to rethink how it is managing the cigarette and vape market. There is no doubt that smoking is harmful, and smoking remains a leading cause of death and disease in Australia. But there is a real need to remove the market profitability for the criminal gangs in selling them. That means that the government needs to lower taxes on cigarettes and make vapes available under the same regulations as cigarettes, available to anyone over 18 who wants to buy them. This needs to be coupled with effective education campaigns and legislative changes that restrict where vapes and cigarettes can be used.
I would prefer it if my kids, and other young people I know, didn’t smoke vapes or cigarettes, but if they are going to, I’d prefer that it didn’t force them into contact with criminal gangs – but right now the only way for them to get vapes is illegally, and the only way they can afford cigarettes is off the back of a truck.
Aslan Shand, editor
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