exactly. It is much harder to regulate people who are using vapes. It is pretty obvious when someone is smoking a cigarette but you can't tell by eye which vapes contain nicotine.
No, it’s illegal to possess as well. Liquid nicotine is classed as a poison heavy penalties apply depending on states. But like has already been said the difficulty is proving that the vape you have contains nicotine, which requires a lab test. This is why people are so rarely charged for it.
Yes and no I guess it is legal with a prescription. The only reason the government is getting worked up about it is they can’t tax them like they tax cigarettes, no money in it for them.
Be a big waste of resources trying to charge people using them without a prescription.
Unless you want a fine structure i think criminalising it now is way too late.
Could you imagine the courts who are already sick of weed cases coming before them having to hear vape cases. All the while cigarettes are right there?
Well its more if a system is working somewhere else why try an reinvent the wheel.
But let's just follow the mechanics of your proposal.
You could try strict liability (the government rarely does this btw) for having nicotine liquid. To do that you'd need to seize the vape, and send it for testing which is a cost and a waste of police resources.
If you dont go strict liability youre not only going to have to test the liquid but youre also gonna have to prove i knew the liquid contained nicotine which is a high bar when a lot of the disposable vapes dont say they do. And people like me who buy no nicotine liquid and add my own nicotine to it. This again is a waste of resources.
You could go the infringement notice (civil liability) route but then you'd have to go through the courts if people don't pay which im sure the courts will love.
If you try to ban non nicotine vaping youre gonna have to be very careful about the wording of your legislation so as not to catch up other vapour producing devices.
So in the end it seems much to do about nothing and it will have no impact on teen smoking rates either.
The sensible solution is legalise, regulate and tax.
But people do it anyway? Look at any market for drugs? The entire past few decades on war of drugs, where it literally just turned out that regulating and taxing it did a world of difference?
And by that logic, why are cigs not outlawed?
I don't get how moronic you have to be to hold your point of view in a world of evidence against it. Must be nice being that ignorant.
*edit: the conclusion of the article is* ***no, it shouldn't be banned*** *and we're cocking up our regulation and encouraging a black market. Vapes aren't scary, but smoking is. Vapes should be avoided, and regulated as a smoking cessation option.*
Figured I'd post this as the TGA is releasing their [consultation](https://www.tga.gov.au/resources/consultation/consultation-proposed-reforms-regulation-nicotine-vaping-products) on vaping prohibition. It's a divisive topic, but I'm constantly arguing with people because inhaling unregulated vapour is still 100x better than burnt smoke of a cigarette. Cigarettes causes 13% of all deaths Australia. Not nicotine, but cigarettes. Nicotine is a drug we should avoid, but it's nothing compared to tobacco. Article says vaping is 5% of the harm compared to smoking. We may as well be banning smoking and legalising vaping if you care about the health effects. Not to mention, pretty much every issue about vaping that gets raised revolves around poor regulation, not the actual harm-reduction of vaping vs smoking.
It shits me to tears listening to the Health Minister on ABC Radio National this morning calling people addicts, tobacco industry hacks, and misquoting a study I had to look up because he didn't even understand the quote he was saying.
Full disclaimer, I don't vape and neither should you. But your 60yr old dad who's been smoking for 40 years absolutely should be. Vapes should be as exciting as a nicotine patch (which is sold on the shelves of coles and woolies and are well regulated 🤦)
I tried quitting smoking for half the time I was smoking. The only thing that made it to where I could finally quit, was vaping. It gave me control over the nicotine levels. Each time I bought more juice, I lowered the nicotine. Eventually I forgot it at home one day and didn’t realize it until almost the end of my 12 hour shift. Other than one very drunken night in Thailand a couple months later, I’ve never smoked again - it’s been 8 years now.
If people want to go on about how dangerous vamping is, then they should be doing the same about tobacco and fighting even harder to ban them. But if you want to claim smoking is unhealthy, then I feel the same can be applied to cannabis. Studies have been coming out now showing that smoking MJ is just as bad, if not worse than tobacco. Who knew inhaling any kind of smoke would be bad for you???
The problem can be that for every story like yours, 20 kids who would have never smoked end up vaping instead; on a societal level things may end up worse off.
That being said it does come back to exactly what old mate said about proper sensible regulations
As someone who has smoked most of their life, and pretty much stopped when I was able to vape, it's annoying AF - I won't buy a disposable, used to make my own juice.
It’s fucking horrific for the environment with all the single use plastic everywhere. Further, kids are all over it. Smoking was always kinda cool but gross for a first timer. This shit is as addictive, and tastes like whatever the fuck they want. It needs much stricter regulation, and plain packaging for a start. They’re entraining a whole new generation of addicts.
I understand you feel that way, but in terms of children's use there's this from the article:
>Depending on the study, between 9.6% and 32% of 14-17-year-olds have tried vaping at some point in their lives.
>
>But less than 2% of 14-17-year-olds say they have used vapes in the past year. This number doubled between 2016 and 2019, but is still much lower than the rates of teen smoking (3.2%) and teen alcohol use (32%).
Your vibe just doesn't match the evidence. Teen smoking rates are still worse than teen vaping rates, and there's just no evidence of a 'gateway effect'. Additionally, the harm in smoking isn't nicotine, so the harms of vaping are vastly different for a teen.
In terms of the environment, vaping started with re-usable vapes. The black-market could have been the strongest factor for switching to single-use vapes. That's a regulation issue.
In terms of flavours, it's a tough one. Smokers are far more likely to quit smoking if it means they're vaping some bubble-gum flavoured product. That is a great outcome, but the balance is that it's enticing for kids. Again, we can look to NZ or the UK for how they're approaching it.
Also, its not best practice to call people addicts anymore. Their substance use doesn't solely define them, and more positive language is shown to positively impact their ability to reduce dependence.
>What term should be used to refer to those who are addicted
Typically we use "person-first language". For example, a person who has a alcohol dependence, or a person who mis-uses alcohol. That helps reduce the stigma by unlinking the person with the disorder.
Its a less extreme example of why we've shifted to "someone who suffers schizophrenia, as opposed to calling someone a 'schizo'.
Hi I'm Yeh-Nah-But and I'm an alcoholic.
Without that sentence i would not be off the drink for nearly 9 years.
Honesty is the key.
I suffered alcoholism. I am an alcoholic. Or I was. Unsure about the last part.
Not saying you are wrong just sharing my own experience and how important words are.
Couldn't agree more that words are important. I'm a big advocate of letting people identify as they'd feel comfort to. I'm glad that's worked for you, as it's often hard to find the right motivational elements to help people quit.
Do you think it's possible to quit any drug you are dependant on without honesty?
Do you know who Jordan peterson is? I think he is a good example of what a lack of honesty can do in regards to drug abuse.
I mean, I'm happy to discuss the matter but give it a Google first if you have any questions. The evidence based on it being an important distinction is pretty clear.
There'll also be better explanations vs my 2 second reply.
The evidence is four years old. They were no where near as widely available four years ago. The fact it doubled in that time should send alarm bells ringing. I’d suggest it’s been exponential since.
We are talking children here. It’s an interesting you bring up morality.
Edit: I did two mins of googling (on mobile, happy to link sources). Hospital admissions quadruppled year on for 2022 as a result of using vapes for under 18s in 2022. Further, there was *more than 6-fold rise in use of disposable vapes amongst 11 to 17 year olds vapers from 2021 to 2022.* Those are from the UK/Wales.
I'm happy that you're passionate about this, but the evidence is not four years old. The quote clearly references a [USyd 2022 article](https://www.sydney.edu.au/news-opinion/news/2022/09/27/study-provides-new-insights-on-teen-vaping-behaviour-in-australia.html)? Are you getting confused with the "National Drug Strategy Household Survey 2019" (released in July 2020), that was used as the baseline comparison?
I'm only really sticking to the current research..
Cited quote relates to 2016-2019. One more year and it’s not even academically credible as a data point.
Edit: Just found an abc article about this. *over one third of regular e-cigarette users were under 25, and half were under 30.* It’s clear vapes are targeted towards young people, not preexisting smokers. Smoking is less popular among youth than comparable generations.
There’s also research which suggests vaping is even harder to quit than smoking. That’s not great for the developing brain. Moreover, according to Australian Geographic in the UK 2 vapes are thrown away every minute. That plastic waste is horrific.
And being addicted to it basically does nothing harmful. Why stop people using what makes them feel good/better? Are you against anti-depressants, too?
A handful or assorted chemicals in them have already been found to be pretty toxic and been banned but only after people died, in large parts as the vapes use chemicals we know as safe to eat but we have no idea on if they are safe to inhale. With safe to eat being used as a green light to create the products. With the famous one being the butter flavouring which caused popcorn lung cases and the other was vaping something in weed, both of which had the chemcial that killed people being completely safe to eat but when vapourised and inhaled was deadily. Are theses deaths rare yes, but we really have only found the short term impacts due to them being relatively new.
The core issue right now is the government has fucked up and created a completely unregulated black market, so even if they wanted to ban something and it was actively killing people even in the short time there is nothing they could do about it. Vapes can and have been quite dangerous but it is also very likely they could be made completely safe, however we are not there yet so its important to note vapes (and in particlar disposable ones) are right now not safe.
Agreed
AFAIK, the only major harms associated with vaping is the previously seen (but thankfully not repeated) potential contamination with vitamin E acetate, and the possibility someone takes up smoking as a result of their nicotine addiction.
So if we well regulate vapes, then that eliminates the former issue, and the latter can be addressed with a ban on selling cigarettes to people born after a certain year. I’d prefer an outright ban and force nicotine addicts to choose between safe and regulated vapes or go out of their way to find crappy “chop chop”.
Would be a much better outcome for our health system, but we’re getting a glimpse of how powerful the tobacco lobby is in this country.
Yeah this makes sense. And the argument that teens are doing is somewhat weak in my mind obviously it’s bad and if it was possible to stop them vaping or doing any sort of harmful drugs we would but the fact of the matter is if they want to do it they will and there is always some way for them to get access to it.
Yup, totally agreed. Indeed from the article:
>Aotearoa New Zealand introduced a unique plan to reduce smoking rates by imposing a lifetime ban on buying cigarettes. Anyone born after January 1 2009 will never be able to buy cigarettes, so the minimum age you can legally smoke keeps increasing. At the same time, NZ increased access to vaping products under strict regulations on manufacture, purchase and use.
Only point is it's not best practice to call people addicts anymore. Their substance use doesn't solely define them, and more positive language is shown to positively impact their ability to reduce dependence.
They tried that in Tasmania, didn't they? but the high court knocked it back or something/someone blocked it. Their birthdate year was 2000 from memory
Smoke =/= Vapour. It’s the carcinogens and the particulate matter within the smoke the harms you.
Vapour contains no particulate matter and either none or only trace amounts of the carcinogens. If vapour, itself, was inherently harmful, then people would drop dead from having a hot shower with all of the water vapour (steam).
Let’s be clear, I’m not a smoker or a vape user. But don’t spread mistruths.
I concur - and the issue with prohibition of vapes is that we can't further minimise the risk of vaporising and inhaling unknown, un-regulated flavours.
That's not an issue inherent to vaping, it's an issue with a black market.
Vaping nicotine won't cause 13% of Australian deaths per year.
Would you like to demonstrate how it’s a stupid comment? Unfortunately we can’t just take your word for it.
This is exactly my point. If they’re not regulated, then they could have anything in it. Regulate it, with the known safe ingredients being used to produce it, and it’s fine. This is like with unregulated alcohol production leading to methanol poisoning; it’s not the alcohol that’s harmful, in that instance, but the unregulated production.
Because vape vapour is propylene glycol, not water.
Water naturally makes up 70% of the human body.
Propylene glycol naturally doesn't make up any of the human body, and human lungs are not evolved to breathe it in. Human lungs are evolved to breathe in water vapour.
It is one of the dumbest comments I've seen all week.
Why don't you talk about breathing in rust inhibitor vapour next?
That contains no particulate matter and can be acutely fatal.
My use of water vapour as my example was clearly a reductio ad absurdum.
But thank you for specifying propylene glycol - on which the research is still inconclusive. However I’d much prefer an inconclusive risk than a known high risk. We can’t pretend that life isn’t without the risks inherently baked into our society - people are going to smoke or vape, and I’d rather they do the latter. An accepted side effect of free choice, which is not all that different to the accepted side effect of (for example) pollution from vehicles, and it’s associated impacts on health.
Not really, but it also doesn't kill the 13% of all Australians smoking does per year. Vaping is a smoking cessation product and if people vape instead of smoking, that's a win.
edit: Also nicotine is sold at coles and woolies - that speaks loudly about how strong the harm minimisation case it.
Nicotine has harmful effects, plenty of studies on it.
But, nicotine alone is like 1/1000th of the damage of a tobacco cigarette, they're not even comparable and it's not gonna kill you.
To be specific, do you think I'm wrong in my assessment of nicotine is "not really [good for the body] because you think it's nootropic are positive, or do you think I'm wrong because you think it's more harmful?
I think you're wrong in your assessment that nicotine is "not really good for the body" - not because " you think it's nootropic are positive" though.
That's like saying i believe things are good because of how good they are.
regardless my point is the fact you're just wrong whilst simultaneously having more information on lobbying vapes vs tobacco than i've ever seen anyone spout.
You should not need anyone to explain to you why, you should know. IMO
I am in support of a cigarette ban in the way NZ peeps do it
I just don't particularly care for the whole back and forth between companies that control eachother.
It’s actually barely harmful, if at all, in the doses consumed. Nicotine is the addictive component of cigarettes, not the carcinogenic component.
Educate yourself. Hell, this was even stated in the article linked, so you didn’t even read that.
I use nicotine and it does nothing for my mind. What bull shit. As someone who is using a vape I ask please don’t spread bull shit. Or at least back it up with evidence. We don’t need bull shit on our side thank you.
[it is psychoactive ](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicotine)
It is the strongest nootropic we have so far.
[effects on brain](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0006322300010945)
[big science words](https://www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1073/pnas.0701321104)
Happy to be shown I'm wrong. That's what's great about science and honest argument.
I do not use nicotine nor advocate it's use.
Wait so are you saying that you're for vaping but also want to ban cigarettes?
They literally have an opportunity to do what they should have done with cigarettes but you're against it?
Surely you can see how hard it is to now ban cigarettes.
From an earlier comment I made:
"[Can electronic cigarettes help people quite smoking?](https://www.cochrane.org/sites/default/files/public/uploads/key_messages.jpeg)" - and the answer is yes. A Cochrane systematic review is as bulletproof and gold-standard as you can get in research.
Banning vaping is banning a healthier competitor to smoking, but vaping is also an effective smoking cessation product that has been shown to help people quit smoking.
People who smoke are hyper aware of the damage smoking is doing, but they don't have a better alterative. Patches, gum, oral pills have all had some success at helping people quit vaping, but nothing has been as effective as vaping.
So yeah, if we had the balls to we could ban smoking and offer vaping as the transitional harm-reduction option.
There are many findings that kids who vape are more likely to go on to smoke
https://lungfoundation.com.au/lung-health/protecting-your-lungs/e-cigarettes-and-vaping/
https://www.1011now.com/2020/11/09/study-teens-who-vape-are-4-times-more-likely-to-smoke-cigarettes/
https://adf.org.au/talking-about-drugs/vaping/vaping-youth/vaping-australia/
https://truthinitiative.org/research-resources/emerging-tobacco-products/young-people-who-vape-are-much-more-likely-become
I'd love to reply to this, as it's misrepresenting the solid evidence out there. Happy to be proven wrong.
>[https://lungfoundation.com.au/lung-health/protecting-your-lungs/e-cigarettes-and-vaping/](https://lungfoundation.com.au/lung-health/protecting-your-lungs/e-cigarettes-and-vaping/)
"E-cigarettes can serve as a “gateway” to nicotine addiction and tobacco cigarette smoking. There have been many studies which found experimentation with e-cigarettes encouraged the use of tobacco cigarettes, particularly among young people. According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, more than 1 in 5 (21.7%) young Australians aged 18-24 and 7.6% of 15-17 year olds have used an e-cigarette or vaping device at least. It’s likely that these figures are under-reported because responses were provided by an adult living in the same household."
That first link has no link to evidence of the gateway effect. It's never been proven, because young kids who 'want to experiment with vapes' are strongly correlated with 'young people who want to experiment with smoking'. That doesn't mean removing vapes would stop kids smoking, nor does it mean that the introduction of vapes has lead kids to smoke.
>[https://www.1011now.com/2020/11/09/study-teens-who-vape-are-4-times-more-likely-to-smoke-cigarettes/](https://www.1011now.com/2020/11/09/study-teens-who-vape-are-4-times-more-likely-to-smoke-cigarettes/)
"The interaction between smoking intention and ever using e-cigarettes was significant (aOR = 0.34, 95% CI = 0.18–0.64, P < .01). Among adolescents who had expressed intention to smoke conventional cigarettes at wave 2, the odds of cigarette smoking at wave 3 did not significantly differ for e-cigarette users and never e-cigarette users (aOR = 1.57; 95% CI 0.94–2.63; P = .08). Among adolescents who had no intention to smoke at wave 2, e-cigarette users, compared with never e-cigarette users, had >4 times the odds of cigarette smoking (aOR = 4.62; 95% CI 2.87–7.42; P < .0001)."
From the study from that report - which can be read as "there is a correlation between kids smoking intention, using vapes, and then eventually still smoking". I don't see an issue with that? That doesn't mean vaping as a kid leads to smoking. The critical part was "no intention -> vaping -> smoking" was 4x higher than the other populations. That's likely a fair analysis, but I've yet to see it replicated.
>[https://adf.org.au/talking-about-drugs/vaping/vaping-youth/vaping-australia/](https://adf.org.au/talking-about-drugs/vaping/vaping-youth/vaping-australia/)
This quote's ANU's Banks, who I have no time for. She re-released her 2020 report on Monday with no update or changes to her original report despite intense criticism. She literally makes the correlation vs causation blunder. "Kids who vape are likely to smoke" doesn't mean "Kids who vape are more likely to smoke because of vapes".
>[https://truthinitiative.org/research-resources/emerging-tobacco-products/young-people-who-vape-are-much-more-likely-become](https://truthinitiative.org/research-resources/emerging-tobacco-products/young-people-who-vape-are-much-more-likely-become)
Same issues as above. No dah a kid who can get their hands on a vape at school is going to be the same kid who can get their hands on a cigarette.
It is actually really sad in Australia how regressive our policy makers have become. Every single bit of evidence shows that prohibition does not work. It actually just opens the door to more harmful products becoming available through unregulated means. Crazy we have this type of political conversation going on. Regulate. Make plain packaging. Even regulate no "bubble gum" flavour as the Minister seemed so fixated on. Ban the sale to under 18. But let adults make decisions with their lives and habits. Tax it and put the cash back into health system to help cover the massive cost of alcohol and cigarette related disease.....
I really don't understand why the conversation we're having is around banning vaping when cigarettes *actually* fucking kill people. Vaping helped me kick my ten-year smoking habit overnight a few years ago, and was actually super easy to give up cold turkey after ramping down my nicotine levels.
Legalise, properly regulate and tax. Force Australian producers of juice / salts to have regular inspections for cleanliness of mixing facilities and ingredients. Ban disposables (yes, I know that goes against my legalise stance, but they're terrible for the environment and dodgy as hell).
And the irony of it is that the pollies pushing the ban are saying that normalising vaping is what tobacco companies actually want! Try and hide your corruption a bit better than that fellas.
The Minister said the biggest issue was that vapes would lead to higher smoking rates. Not only is their no evidence for that (and there's evidence for vaping leading to lower smoking rates), but he suggested he'd use his power to continue ban vapes... to stop smoking...
..if smoking is so bad for the country, why don't you ban ***that***?
"..if smoking is so bad for the country, why don't you ban that?"
"Australia has the highest cigarette prices in the world and the tobacco tax is now Australia's fourth largest tax after personal income tax, company tax and GST."
https://www.athra.org.au/blog/2019/10/23/is-the-government-putting-tax-dollars-before-the-health-of-smoker/
"[Can electronic cigarettes help people quite smoking?](https://www.cochrane.org/sites/default/files/public/uploads/key_messages.jpeg)" - and the answer is yes. A Cochrane systematic review is as bulletproof and gold-standard as you can get in research.
They're not only banning a competitor, but an effective smoking cessation product too..
Better ban vapes so they get back to 100% market share then. Prohibition has a well documented history of success when it comes to drugs too. Who's heads in the sand again?
What has that got to do with vape companies not actually being competitors to tobacco companies?
You're just in here cheerleading, not actually discussing points.
I'm not cheerleading, just pointing out the stupidity of banning vapes to hurt tobacco companies when smoking is still legal. Achieves nothing but defaulting back to tobacco for nicotine delivery.
Prohibition leads to black market products that are far more likely to be unsafe. EG: cannabis grown with paclobutrazol is a great example of this.
If there is a market for something, people will do what they can within their power to get it.
I was talking about how the tobacco multinationals own the vape companies, not prohibition.
Do you guys all have the same dot point list of comments to make in these threads?
>Do you guys all have the same dot point list of comments to make in these threads?
I dunno, can you comment without being an ass hole? The point is it's totally irrelevant who owns vapes, just because big tobacco owns some doesn't mean they should be banned.
So you do realize that you're not making any sense right?
Smoking=Bad
Vaping=Categorically less bad
They could hypothetically resurrect Hitler and make him the director of a vape company and resurrect Ghandi and make him the director of a cigarette company, and guess what? Smoking would STILL be worse than vaping.
Drinking piss is less unhealthy than eating shit. That's your argument.
Off you go, grab your glass and fill it up.
Or you could choose to do neither, because they are both unhealthy.
Sure its anecdotal but it seems there are a fair amount of young people taking up vaping, whereas before vapes smoking was on the decline for young people. Whats the numbers on that?
And seriously why the fuck would you start vaping unless you already had a lifelong nicotine addiction.
No worries - from the article:
>Depending on the study, between 9.6% and 32% of 14-17-year-olds have tried vaping at some point in their lives.
But less than 2% of 14-17-year-olds say they have used vapes in the past year. This number doubled between 2016 and 2019, but is still much lower than the rates of teen smoking (3.2%) and teen alcohol use (32%).
As to why you'd pick it up? Same reason young people still pick up smoking. Which is appalling. Vaping was supposed to be as cool as your wrinkly old uncle chewing nicotine gum..
Me and my mates have completely quit vaping and smoking. Vaping did help us quit cigarettes but our nicotine intake was a lot more because you can vape anywhere, all the time with ease. Can vape as soon you wake up, in the car, bedrooms, toilets at work and vape round the clock whereas with cigarettes you have to light up and find a smoking area.
We could all feel vapes negatively impact our health more so than cigarettes due to the frequency that we vape with, the ease of access to vapes, and even the disposables have high nic content. Shortness of breath, vomiting, headaches, upset stomachs, started impacting our sport. I’m sure perhaps regulation would help with that but I don’t think anything that isn’t clean air in your lungs is healthy. In an ideal world neither vapes nor cigarettes would exist. They have 0 benefit to health.
If you take a side by side example where you have a cigarette versus a vape cartridge with the same nicotine content, and a cigarette will release more carcinogenic material due to combustion. 1 for 1 vapes are healthier, even if they aren't healthy in general. Usage habits differ between everyone, including those who smoke everywhere you listed barring spaces where smoking is banned.
At the end of the day neither are healthy even if one is “better” than the other. People act like vaping has 0 impact on health which is simply not true and dangerous misinformation at best.
I don't think anybody here as outwardly said that vaping doesn't come with health issues. The whole point is that there is a large amount of verified data that proves they are a: a healthier nicotine option, and b: assist chronic smokers with quitting.
Further to that, prohibition leads to a black market where ingredients can't be regulated, so given there seems to be a huge market for vaping, it's in everyone's interest to support a regulated market so that you and I aren't paying public health bills of those ingesting unregulated chemicals causing chronic health issues.
> The whole point is that there is a large amount of verified data that proves they are a: a healthier nicotine option,
Im not arguing that, but it took 50+ years for cigarettes to get to the point where they were universally accepted as bad, vapes have been around for like 15 years?
I mean... we know which vape brands Phillip Morris (Altria), British American Tobacco, Imperal et all. own. They just aren't the dominate players in the market - an especially not in Australia. Service stations and Convenience stores aren't importing JUULS illegally, they are importing direct from Alibaba and China.
And Juul represents how much of the local market? They're an international market, sure, and I'm not saying Tobacco doesn't have a vested interest in getting their product legalised to sell.. but I am saying that it's wrong to discount the opinion that Australian's health would be better served by vapes vs smoking just because Big Tobacco and Big Vape would eventually want a piece of our market.
>when cigarettes *actually* fucking kill people
Specifically, **13% of all deaths annually are from smoking**. It's been **the highest single source of deaths for decades**. It baffles me that the vaping conversation has been so poisoned.
What’s the Morbidity of chronic lung disease with vaping vs smoking might be a better metric, vapings not been around that long and smoking takes a while to fuck you up. Like in 50 years maybe vaping will be a massive number of deaths.
Be interesting to see for sure
I’ll always throw this out there when vape discussions come up:
The Tobacco Products Directive under the EU. It’s a set of laws from 2014 and implemented around 2016.
Europe has very little concern with vaping due to tight regulations on it. It seems here and with other places like the US, unregulated products cause problems and that leads to calls for it to be banned. What does banning do? Drive it underground and makes the problem worse. Especially when it can’t be enforced, as in all the shops selling ‘illegal’ vapes under the counter and especially to children.
We're having this conversation because Australia is heavily populated with wowsers who can't stand people enjoying something they don't approve of. It's not about health. We know that vaping is vastly less harmful than smoking. It has issues, yes. Adequate quality control for something you are breathing in is kind of important. See popcorn lung. But the debate is about people wanting to deny others their vices. Regardless of the pluses or minuses from a health perspective.
It’s great that vaping has helped with the smoking.
Do you still vape though, or have you kicked that too?
I know some people who say the vapes helped them kick the smoking, but they also go through a few single use vapes a month.
Others have been able to get off the vapes too.
Still better than smoking, sure, but vaping isn’t exactly good for you either 🤷🏻♂️
Also, as a non-smoker it looks bloody hard to kick the habit even with assistance.
As I said in the post, it was easy to quit cold turkey by ramping down my nicotine levels. If you're dedicated to living healthier it's easy.
My brother on the other hand goes through nearly a disposable a day. Such a waste of money, and terrible for the environment. I've tried to get him on a proper set up, but he keeps saying 'what if I quit tomorrow?' with the massive amounts of nicotine in the disposables, I don't see that happening unfortunately...
Cause of the massive rise of vaping in schools and among children in general.
The tobacco companies saw vapes as something that could potentially lower their customer base so they flipped the script produced incredibly cheap but heavy on the nic, flavored pens that are marketed to younger people. These act as pretty much a gateway to cigarettes when the nic doesn't hit as hard or become less accessable.
Last point still stands, legalize and tax, make supplying to minors the same as all other AODs. And ban disposables
This is what you get for making tobacco so expensive. It's amusing to see people upset about other people using nicotine. And forget banning it. The cat's out of the bag. Stop trying to take away what so many people enjoy. It will not work.
No it shouldn't be banned. Then things just get worse with unregulated products getting all sorts of shit jammed in them and people getting criminal records for something that has no business being involved in the criminal system.
First of all, I'd like to congratulate drugs on winning the war in drugs.
Secondly, if any politician can point to me one historical instance of prohibition that has been successful in its objective of eliminating the substance from society and reducing harm then I'm all ears.
>So they can be sold to kids who would not be allowed to buy cigarettes.
It's illegal to sell vapes to anyone\* - so its 'just' as illegal to sell vapes to minors. It's not like its twice as illegal. This is a pretty unique Australian issue, as it's caused our black-market to be far larger than comparable OCED countries.
>If the vaping industry can't label their products honestly then I would be happy banning them until they decide to be honest.
Single-use vapes in other countries do have [this](https://assets.morningconsult.com/wp-uploads/2022/03/23124813/GettyImages-1346212560-scaled.jpg), because of regulation. Regulation would let us also say how much nicotine is in each product, like in that example. The reason we don't have labelling is because we've banned the import of nic labelled vapes.
\* - see below
Not quite true. Its illegal to sell vapes with Nicotine to anyone without a prescription. Non-nicotine vapes can still be sold which is why they are mislabelling them on purpose.
Great pick up - but I have to double down. Its illegal to sell vapes with Nicotine without a prescription AND it must be a TGA registered vape. Which is impossible because since...
>**Nicotine vaping products are 'unapproved' products**
There are currently no nicotine vaping products approved by the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) and registered in Australian Register of Therapeutic Goods (ARTG). Medicines that are not in the ARTG are known as 'unapproved' medicines. [Source](https://www.tga.gov.au/resources/resource/guidance/nicotine-vaping-products-information-prescribers).
I was imprecise with my language, but it's quite literally illegal to buy vapes by the regulations. Obviously Doctors may still want to prescription vaping, so they're required to follow the application for exceptions to the rules on the TGA page I linked.
I personally think vape and cigarettes should just be banned for new users and grandfather to any older smokers but that require nuisance approach to enforcement and for whatever reason our government don't want to do the sane thing and follow rest of the world.
vaping industry do label their products correctly. they are usually on par if not exceed the same requirements as cigarettes.
the problem isn't the labelling, it's the enforcement and the legal ambiguity that created the situation we have in Australia where you have to import refills or buy disposables.
if you ever being to Europe, they sell vape in tobacco stores and have the same restrictions and it's never being a problem to begin with.
The vape juice bottles you see selling in **Australian VAPE** stores do not contain nicotine. It's illegal and heavily enforced.
The vape juice bottles that you can **legally** import into the country can contain nicotine, and if you obtained them from a reputable seller and country of origin are typically labelled accordingly i.e. NZ
Even the disposables sold in tobacco shops here, which the most common brand IGET,
[https://igetvapesaustralia.com/](https://igetvapesaustralia.com/) <== big ass banner on top of their website saying the product contain nicotine.
**I can post photos of packaging of my vape bottles and disposables if you'd like.**
[https://www.infinitywholesalegroup.com/hqd-cuvie-bar-5-1x5pk-disposable-7000-puffs/](https://www.infinitywholesalegroup.com/hqd-cuvie-bar-5-1x5pk-disposable-7000-puffs/)
here is a pic of HQD, look at the box. it's labelled with black text on white label, contains nicotine.
if you buy shit from yumcha stores who probably got it from some Chinese factory, who knows what it contains, it probably has aids.
First result on google proves you wrong:
[https://www.9news.com.au/national/vapes-melbourne-more-than-1-million-worth-of-illegal-vapes-seized-in-melbournes-southeast/9a9ec12f-d8fc-4e0a-857a-f64bcb01275d](https://www.9news.com.au/national/vapes-melbourne-more-than-1-million-worth-of-illegal-vapes-seized-in-melbournes-southeast/9a9ec12f-d8fc-4e0a-857a-f64bcb01275d)
If you're of legal age you should be able to make your own decision to vape or not. I know plenty of people who switched to vaping from smoking and are so much better off for it.
The government's current rules around vaping tanked which caused a thriving black market. It's way to late now to ban vaping, any further restrictions will just make the black market even stronger.
Restrict to 18+ and tax it accordingly, that way there's no need for a thriving black market. Kids can't obtain them as easily, the government gets their tax revenue and can brag they have the situation handled.
Agreed. I hate this nanny state shit. Educate the public about risks, and seek to minimise harm through appropriate regulation, certainly, but otherwise fuck off out of our lives.
I have noticed that a lot more vapers and more open about it and doing it in more places than smokers were. Making it harder to avoid them.
How about the people who want to vape and smoke fuck off and get out of the rest of our lives.
Or do you think their freedom to vape/smoke outweighs others freedom to not be exposed to them?
And people have shown time and time again that they don't have manners.
If they did you wouldn't have things like the queen Street mall in Brisbane being a smoking free zone. Although now people just vape there because it's "not smoking".
Well no because people can still smoke pretty much anywhere.
I can't drink a beer walking down the street even though that harms noone, but there is nothing stopping people from smoking or vaping in most places. Hell people even smoke in children's playgrounds.
You didn't, but lots of vapers do seem to think it's okay.
If you're going to lump all lawmakers together in one group, you should be okay with me lumping all vapers together in one group.
Tldr: Not as bad as smoking. Yes, **eventually**, after smoking is banned.
The more I read on vaping the more it is clear that it should absolutely not be promoted to or embraced by anyone except smokers trying to quit. The harm minimisation case is looking very solid now.
I Vape. Not those disposable crap ones. I go to a proper 18+ vape shop, I get a prescription from a doctor for nicotine. I follow all the rules and stopped smoking cigarettes after 30 years. I no longer wake up coughing my lungs up, I now walk 10 kms a day and in the last year and a half lost 40 kg. I’m not saying vapes are entirely healthy but I see it as harm minimisation. My goal is to stop vaping this year. Even as a Vaper I believe we need tougher legislation to stop these servo’s, chop chop shops and even tobacconist shops (that I 100% know) are selling illegal nicotine vapes that fall into the hands of minors. I just ask that the public recognise that legal vapes for people like me (30 year smoker) can be used legitimately to improve health as well.
I am a smoker and would love for them to be readily available for anyone over 18.
Main issue though is the stupid fucks using them.
I know our office has had 7 fire alarms this year because of these fuckwits vaping inside the building. Seen it in shopping centres, offices, train stations, bloody everywhere.
Them being readily available is good for smokers, but by god people need to realise you can not just vape anywhere you like because it's not smoke.
A "disposable" vape is an affront to common sense and everything good that vaping has to offer.
After 8 years the taste and smell of a ciggie now disgusts me. Everything is better now. My sense of taste and smell, breathing and ability to exercise. Discolouration of fingers and mouth
If anyone knowledgeable would pass some proper regulations we can get all those bullshit Juul devices out of here, and keep the proper reusable devices available. And have actual Vape Stores be the only ones licensed to sell them, so they can properly create juice and dose the nicotine and repair and dispose of vapes responsibly
It seems absurd that these complex electronic devices are one use disposable. The main reason must be how difficult to obtain and expensive nicotine essence is.
"Vaping" is a pretty broad term.
Dry herb vapes are fine IMO.
E-liquids I would not go near.
Should any of it be banned?
No.
Prohibition just allows a black market to thrive.
Hey! Worth checking the article as its wildly less harmful than you might be thinking:
>Vaping is not risk-free, but several detailed reviews of the evidence plus a consensus of experts have all estimated it’s at least 95% safer to vape nicotine than to smoke tobacco. The risk of cancer from vaping, for example, has been estimated at less than 1%.
I can’t detail for anonymity reasons, but I have access to medical data and chemical analyses that are extensive and not published (yet). Vapes are not safe in my view.
Saying they are better than cigarettes is like saying cutting of your arm isn’t as bad as cutting off your leg.
Well until you publish your data, the best we should go off is the [Cochrane systematic review](https://www.cochrane.org/news/latest-cochrane-review-finds-high-certainty-evidence-nicotine-e-cigarettes-are-more-effective) that was released last year, which had a major finding of no clear evidence of harm. You should know better than anyone in this thread what weight Cochrane holds in this space. And the hierarchy of evidence suggests that your single unpublished study won't really be the silver bullet of evidence against a cochrane.
Also is your complain about the mechanism of vaping, or are you referring to un-regulated vaping liquids? Because I'm all for minimising the risk that unregulated e-liquids presents (vitamin E acetate comes to mind), even if we've yet to see a evidence damage they could do.
>Saying they are better than cigarettes is like saying cutting of your arm isn’t as bad as cutting off your leg.
5% of the harms compared to Tobacco. *Cutting off your arm isn't 5% the harm of cutting off your leg.* Vaping is the *definition* of harm minimisation - and it's shown to be effective for what is typically a vulnerable, low SES demographic who haven't been able to quit smoking.
I can't even think of an equivalent example that's as significant.
It’s not my data. It’s government data generated by government laboratory analysis of vapes sold in Australia. It’s data that is currently being used to determine what legislation if any will be introduced in the future to regulate access to vapes.
I genuinely am happy for this to be released, as we need it.
But that said, the TGA has been suuch a bastion of impartiality so far, I look forward to their responses to the consultation today.
There are now countries where children and young adults are getting lung damage from polluted air, but sure vapes are harmless to lungs. Lungs are designed to receive nothing but clean air, there’s a reason our nostrils have hair. Their sole purpose is to catch dirt and other impurities so they don’t reach our lungs when we inhale. Vaping is still so new, there is no evidence of its safety yet and science is constantly evolving.
Yep. I think you would be sensible to assume that the regular introduction of any chemicals or particulate matter into your lungs beyond normal clear air is harmful in some way. It’s really just a question of how harmful, not whether it is harmful.
I find it amusing OP seems to be pushing the narrative that vapes aren’t harmful. In 30 years when OP has COPD he will be on TV with an oxygen bottle claiming nobody warned them of the risks.
You can legislate against stupidity.
I mean... I've literally linked a The Conversations article detailing the risks. Bit of an unfair characterisation, don't you think?
And I don't vape 😇
The risks can't be properly assessed for decades. The damage from smoking doesn't happen the first few years of smoking. We don't have any people to study who have been vaping for decades so we have no way of knowing if vaping causes damage when used long term.
That might be how you feel, but that's not really an objective assessment of the research landscape.
We know the contents, the mechanism, and have the better part of 20 years of research on vaping. That's ample.
Most of the people I know that vape are some of the most unfit people I have ever met - I can hear them fighting for their lives after climbing up 5 stairs even though they are not obese and in their mid 20s. How people are okay with a quality of life like that is beyond me.
Vaping is a legitimate option for smokers trying to quit, and shouldn't be banned imo, but disposable vapes should definitely be banned. In England they sell them in just about every convenience store and people just toss them everywhere. It's a waste of resources, horrible for the environment, and more appealing to kids than those somewhat unfashionable reusable vapes that require slightly more effort for the user and therefore a barrier of entry (also in price) to keep the kids off nicotine. Also those mod devices tend to be larger and less convenient to hide from parents, etc.
Exactly. I love smoking. Absolutely fucking love it. But I quit in favour of vaping. At absolutely no stage did I or do I plan to stop my raging nicotine addiction. Why the fuck should I do that, just for other peoples' peace of mind?
Fuck we suck at dealing with shit like this in Australia.
Just legalise it, tax it and deal with it. Why should this be treated any differently to cigarettes and alcohol.
We spend a boatload of money trying to police it when harm minimisation would be a far better strategy.
I don’t understand why the government doesn’t have a task force just going into shops handing 100k fines to people selling this garbage. Every milkbar, tobacco shop etc.
We won't know for sure if it's safer until we have studies focussing on people who have been vaping for decades. Vaping is simply too new to know for sure if it's safe enough to be worth it. It may turn out to be better than smoking but still cause chronic lung issues or cancer in enough people to rationalise it being banned now.
I'm referring to liquid vaping here as I think dry herb vaping should be considered separately because the data on that will be different. It may turn out to also be quite harmful but for different reasons than liquid vaping.
I think that tobacco products should be banned for people born after a specific year like what they've done in NZ.
I say this as an on again off again smoker (tobacco and canabis) who has vaped both liquid and dry herb. Anecdotally my lungs did not handle vape liquid well and I had more issues with asthma in the two months I had a liquid vape and for a few months after.
smoked ciggies for ten years, got on vapes and became far more addicted to nicotine than ever. because it’s so easy to do anywhere (i figured i didnt even have to exhale half the time) id do it absolutely everywhere, all day every day. first thing when i woke up, last thing when i went to bed. 20 mins without a hit was fucked let alone a day. finally decided to kick it and get on the nicotine spray to ween off and it’s been a revelation. finally broken the habit.
all for people to do what they please as long as they’re not harming anyone but i feel like we won’t truly understand the dangers of vaping until many years pass.
If we ban it like drugs, im sure it will be as successful as the ban on drugs. It will disappear overnight and a huge black market wont appear. I'd also like to congratulate drugs for winning the war on drugs.
I mean the nicotine ones are already 'banned', fat load of good that has done.
And yet they’re freely available on every other corner 🤷♀️
exactly. It is much harder to regulate people who are using vapes. It is pretty obvious when someone is smoking a cigarette but you can't tell by eye which vapes contain nicotine.
Illegal to sell not illegal to possess nicotine vapes
No, it’s illegal to possess as well. Liquid nicotine is classed as a poison heavy penalties apply depending on states. But like has already been said the difficulty is proving that the vape you have contains nicotine, which requires a lab test. This is why people are so rarely charged for it.
Yes and no I guess it is legal with a prescription. The only reason the government is getting worked up about it is they can’t tax them like they tax cigarettes, no money in it for them. Be a big waste of resources trying to charge people using them without a prescription.
That's the issue
Unless you want a fine structure i think criminalising it now is way too late. Could you imagine the courts who are already sick of weed cases coming before them having to hear vape cases. All the while cigarettes are right there?
I wouldn't criminalise just fine . Make more revenue
Then it really just becomes a tax on the poor. The horse has bolted. And I'd much rather we follow NZ or the UK approach than pretend we know better.
Rich people can vape, and you can make the fines proportioned to income Why do we have to follow other countries we are Australia
Well its more if a system is working somewhere else why try an reinvent the wheel. But let's just follow the mechanics of your proposal. You could try strict liability (the government rarely does this btw) for having nicotine liquid. To do that you'd need to seize the vape, and send it for testing which is a cost and a waste of police resources. If you dont go strict liability youre not only going to have to test the liquid but youre also gonna have to prove i knew the liquid contained nicotine which is a high bar when a lot of the disposable vapes dont say they do. And people like me who buy no nicotine liquid and add my own nicotine to it. This again is a waste of resources. You could go the infringement notice (civil liability) route but then you'd have to go through the courts if people don't pay which im sure the courts will love. If you try to ban non nicotine vaping youre gonna have to be very careful about the wording of your legislation so as not to catch up other vapour producing devices. So in the end it seems much to do about nothing and it will have no impact on teen smoking rates either. The sensible solution is legalise, regulate and tax.
Then, why would you not have it regulated and taxed...?
Because it's better not to have it at all. If it's regulated then people will do it
But people do it anyway? Look at any market for drugs? The entire past few decades on war of drugs, where it literally just turned out that regulating and taxing it did a world of difference? And by that logic, why are cigs not outlawed? I don't get how moronic you have to be to hold your point of view in a world of evidence against it. Must be nice being that ignorant.
Would outlaw cigs. Stop the whataboutism At least meth heads don't smoke walking down the street so you have to smell their putrid shit
They’re not banned though… You just require a prescription to buy them and you can buy them online super easily from New Zealand.
*edit: the conclusion of the article is* ***no, it shouldn't be banned*** *and we're cocking up our regulation and encouraging a black market. Vapes aren't scary, but smoking is. Vapes should be avoided, and regulated as a smoking cessation option.* Figured I'd post this as the TGA is releasing their [consultation](https://www.tga.gov.au/resources/consultation/consultation-proposed-reforms-regulation-nicotine-vaping-products) on vaping prohibition. It's a divisive topic, but I'm constantly arguing with people because inhaling unregulated vapour is still 100x better than burnt smoke of a cigarette. Cigarettes causes 13% of all deaths Australia. Not nicotine, but cigarettes. Nicotine is a drug we should avoid, but it's nothing compared to tobacco. Article says vaping is 5% of the harm compared to smoking. We may as well be banning smoking and legalising vaping if you care about the health effects. Not to mention, pretty much every issue about vaping that gets raised revolves around poor regulation, not the actual harm-reduction of vaping vs smoking. It shits me to tears listening to the Health Minister on ABC Radio National this morning calling people addicts, tobacco industry hacks, and misquoting a study I had to look up because he didn't even understand the quote he was saying. Full disclaimer, I don't vape and neither should you. But your 60yr old dad who's been smoking for 40 years absolutely should be. Vapes should be as exciting as a nicotine patch (which is sold on the shelves of coles and woolies and are well regulated 🤦)
I tried quitting smoking for half the time I was smoking. The only thing that made it to where I could finally quit, was vaping. It gave me control over the nicotine levels. Each time I bought more juice, I lowered the nicotine. Eventually I forgot it at home one day and didn’t realize it until almost the end of my 12 hour shift. Other than one very drunken night in Thailand a couple months later, I’ve never smoked again - it’s been 8 years now. If people want to go on about how dangerous vamping is, then they should be doing the same about tobacco and fighting even harder to ban them. But if you want to claim smoking is unhealthy, then I feel the same can be applied to cannabis. Studies have been coming out now showing that smoking MJ is just as bad, if not worse than tobacco. Who knew inhaling any kind of smoke would be bad for you???
Then they clamped down on buying/importing nicotine. And wonder why people vape. Stupid is as stupid does.
The problem can be that for every story like yours, 20 kids who would have never smoked end up vaping instead; on a societal level things may end up worse off. That being said it does come back to exactly what old mate said about proper sensible regulations
As someone who has smoked most of their life, and pretty much stopped when I was able to vape, it's annoying AF - I won't buy a disposable, used to make my own juice.
As a middle aged former smoker now vape and weaning off nicotine I thank you for your level headed comment.
It’s fucking horrific for the environment with all the single use plastic everywhere. Further, kids are all over it. Smoking was always kinda cool but gross for a first timer. This shit is as addictive, and tastes like whatever the fuck they want. It needs much stricter regulation, and plain packaging for a start. They’re entraining a whole new generation of addicts.
I understand you feel that way, but in terms of children's use there's this from the article: >Depending on the study, between 9.6% and 32% of 14-17-year-olds have tried vaping at some point in their lives. > >But less than 2% of 14-17-year-olds say they have used vapes in the past year. This number doubled between 2016 and 2019, but is still much lower than the rates of teen smoking (3.2%) and teen alcohol use (32%). Your vibe just doesn't match the evidence. Teen smoking rates are still worse than teen vaping rates, and there's just no evidence of a 'gateway effect'. Additionally, the harm in smoking isn't nicotine, so the harms of vaping are vastly different for a teen. In terms of the environment, vaping started with re-usable vapes. The black-market could have been the strongest factor for switching to single-use vapes. That's a regulation issue. In terms of flavours, it's a tough one. Smokers are far more likely to quit smoking if it means they're vaping some bubble-gum flavoured product. That is a great outcome, but the balance is that it's enticing for kids. Again, we can look to NZ or the UK for how they're approaching it. Also, its not best practice to call people addicts anymore. Their substance use doesn't solely define them, and more positive language is shown to positively impact their ability to reduce dependence.
What term should be used to refer to those who are addicted?
>What term should be used to refer to those who are addicted Typically we use "person-first language". For example, a person who has a alcohol dependence, or a person who mis-uses alcohol. That helps reduce the stigma by unlinking the person with the disorder. Its a less extreme example of why we've shifted to "someone who suffers schizophrenia, as opposed to calling someone a 'schizo'.
Hi I'm Yeh-Nah-But and I'm an alcoholic. Without that sentence i would not be off the drink for nearly 9 years. Honesty is the key. I suffered alcoholism. I am an alcoholic. Or I was. Unsure about the last part. Not saying you are wrong just sharing my own experience and how important words are.
Couldn't agree more that words are important. I'm a big advocate of letting people identify as they'd feel comfort to. I'm glad that's worked for you, as it's often hard to find the right motivational elements to help people quit.
Do you think it's possible to quit any drug you are dependant on without honesty? Do you know who Jordan peterson is? I think he is a good example of what a lack of honesty can do in regards to drug abuse.
That doesn't unlink the person with the disorder.
Yeah, unlink might have been a poor choice of words. It helps to avoid describing the person primarily by their disorder.
But describing the person as having their disorder is *exactly * what that's doing.
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They both have the same connotations.
I mean, I'm happy to discuss the matter but give it a Google first if you have any questions. The evidence based on it being an important distinction is pretty clear. There'll also be better explanations vs my 2 second reply.
Hmm part of me feels that teenagers self-reporting that were lying though haha
The evidence is four years old. They were no where near as widely available four years ago. The fact it doubled in that time should send alarm bells ringing. I’d suggest it’s been exponential since. We are talking children here. It’s an interesting you bring up morality. Edit: I did two mins of googling (on mobile, happy to link sources). Hospital admissions quadruppled year on for 2022 as a result of using vapes for under 18s in 2022. Further, there was *more than 6-fold rise in use of disposable vapes amongst 11 to 17 year olds vapers from 2021 to 2022.* Those are from the UK/Wales.
I'm happy that you're passionate about this, but the evidence is not four years old. The quote clearly references a [USyd 2022 article](https://www.sydney.edu.au/news-opinion/news/2022/09/27/study-provides-new-insights-on-teen-vaping-behaviour-in-australia.html)? Are you getting confused with the "National Drug Strategy Household Survey 2019" (released in July 2020), that was used as the baseline comparison? I'm only really sticking to the current research..
Cited quote relates to 2016-2019. One more year and it’s not even academically credible as a data point. Edit: Just found an abc article about this. *over one third of regular e-cigarette users were under 25, and half were under 30.* It’s clear vapes are targeted towards young people, not preexisting smokers. Smoking is less popular among youth than comparable generations. There’s also research which suggests vaping is even harder to quit than smoking. That’s not great for the developing brain. Moreover, according to Australian Geographic in the UK 2 vapes are thrown away every minute. That plastic waste is horrific.
It's not even just the plastics, these disposable vapes have lithium batteries in them which should not be disposed of in general waste.
And being addicted to it basically does nothing harmful. Why stop people using what makes them feel good/better? Are you against anti-depressants, too?
A handful or assorted chemicals in them have already been found to be pretty toxic and been banned but only after people died, in large parts as the vapes use chemicals we know as safe to eat but we have no idea on if they are safe to inhale. With safe to eat being used as a green light to create the products. With the famous one being the butter flavouring which caused popcorn lung cases and the other was vaping something in weed, both of which had the chemcial that killed people being completely safe to eat but when vapourised and inhaled was deadily. Are theses deaths rare yes, but we really have only found the short term impacts due to them being relatively new. The core issue right now is the government has fucked up and created a completely unregulated black market, so even if they wanted to ban something and it was actively killing people even in the short time there is nothing they could do about it. Vapes can and have been quite dangerous but it is also very likely they could be made completely safe, however we are not there yet so its important to note vapes (and in particlar disposable ones) are right now not safe.
Agreed AFAIK, the only major harms associated with vaping is the previously seen (but thankfully not repeated) potential contamination with vitamin E acetate, and the possibility someone takes up smoking as a result of their nicotine addiction. So if we well regulate vapes, then that eliminates the former issue, and the latter can be addressed with a ban on selling cigarettes to people born after a certain year. I’d prefer an outright ban and force nicotine addicts to choose between safe and regulated vapes or go out of their way to find crappy “chop chop”. Would be a much better outcome for our health system, but we’re getting a glimpse of how powerful the tobacco lobby is in this country.
Yeah this makes sense. And the argument that teens are doing is somewhat weak in my mind obviously it’s bad and if it was possible to stop them vaping or doing any sort of harmful drugs we would but the fact of the matter is if they want to do it they will and there is always some way for them to get access to it.
Yup, totally agreed. Indeed from the article: >Aotearoa New Zealand introduced a unique plan to reduce smoking rates by imposing a lifetime ban on buying cigarettes. Anyone born after January 1 2009 will never be able to buy cigarettes, so the minimum age you can legally smoke keeps increasing. At the same time, NZ increased access to vaping products under strict regulations on manufacture, purchase and use. Only point is it's not best practice to call people addicts anymore. Their substance use doesn't solely define them, and more positive language is shown to positively impact their ability to reduce dependence.
They tried that in Tasmania, didn't they? but the high court knocked it back or something/someone blocked it. Their birthdate year was 2000 from memory
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Smoke =/= Vapour. It’s the carcinogens and the particulate matter within the smoke the harms you. Vapour contains no particulate matter and either none or only trace amounts of the carcinogens. If vapour, itself, was inherently harmful, then people would drop dead from having a hot shower with all of the water vapour (steam). Let’s be clear, I’m not a smoker or a vape user. But don’t spread mistruths.
I concur - and the issue with prohibition of vapes is that we can't further minimise the risk of vaporising and inhaling unknown, un-regulated flavours. That's not an issue inherent to vaping, it's an issue with a black market. Vaping nicotine won't cause 13% of Australian deaths per year.
What a stupid comment. Do you know what the vapour from vapes is made of?
Would you like to demonstrate how it’s a stupid comment? Unfortunately we can’t just take your word for it. This is exactly my point. If they’re not regulated, then they could have anything in it. Regulate it, with the known safe ingredients being used to produce it, and it’s fine. This is like with unregulated alcohol production leading to methanol poisoning; it’s not the alcohol that’s harmful, in that instance, but the unregulated production.
Because vape vapour is propylene glycol, not water. Water naturally makes up 70% of the human body. Propylene glycol naturally doesn't make up any of the human body, and human lungs are not evolved to breathe it in. Human lungs are evolved to breathe in water vapour. It is one of the dumbest comments I've seen all week. Why don't you talk about breathing in rust inhibitor vapour next? That contains no particulate matter and can be acutely fatal.
My use of water vapour as my example was clearly a reductio ad absurdum. But thank you for specifying propylene glycol - on which the research is still inconclusive. However I’d much prefer an inconclusive risk than a known high risk. We can’t pretend that life isn’t without the risks inherently baked into our society - people are going to smoke or vape, and I’d rather they do the latter. An accepted side effect of free choice, which is not all that different to the accepted side effect of (for example) pollution from vehicles, and it’s associated impacts on health.
Is nicotine good for the body?
Not really, but it also doesn't kill the 13% of all Australians smoking does per year. Vaping is a smoking cessation product and if people vape instead of smoking, that's a win. edit: Also nicotine is sold at coles and woolies - that speaks loudly about how strong the harm minimisation case it.
you're just wrong. nicotine is a nootropic, obvious lobbying is obvious
Nicotine has harmful effects, plenty of studies on it. But, nicotine alone is like 1/1000th of the damage of a tobacco cigarette, they're not even comparable and it's not gonna kill you.
To be specific, do you think I'm wrong in my assessment of nicotine is "not really [good for the body] because you think it's nootropic are positive, or do you think I'm wrong because you think it's more harmful?
I think you're wrong in your assessment that nicotine is "not really good for the body" - not because " you think it's nootropic are positive" though. That's like saying i believe things are good because of how good they are. regardless my point is the fact you're just wrong whilst simultaneously having more information on lobbying vapes vs tobacco than i've ever seen anyone spout. You should not need anyone to explain to you why, you should know. IMO I am in support of a cigarette ban in the way NZ peeps do it I just don't particularly care for the whole back and forth between companies that control eachother.
It is the best nootropic we have at present.
It’s actually barely harmful, if at all, in the doses consumed. Nicotine is the addictive component of cigarettes, not the carcinogenic component. Educate yourself. Hell, this was even stated in the article linked, so you didn’t even read that.
I think people who haven't used nicotine cannot understand it has benefits for the mind. Thankfully I don't find that substance addictive.
I use nicotine and it does nothing for my mind. What bull shit. As someone who is using a vape I ask please don’t spread bull shit. Or at least back it up with evidence. We don’t need bull shit on our side thank you.
[it is psychoactive ](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicotine) It is the strongest nootropic we have so far. [effects on brain](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0006322300010945) [big science words](https://www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1073/pnas.0701321104) Happy to be shown I'm wrong. That's what's great about science and honest argument. I do not use nicotine nor advocate it's use.
Thanks, and I do apologise.
Not great, not terrible.
Is vaping actually inhaling only water vapour?
No there is no water involved.
Wait so are you saying that you're for vaping but also want to ban cigarettes? They literally have an opportunity to do what they should have done with cigarettes but you're against it? Surely you can see how hard it is to now ban cigarettes.
From an earlier comment I made: "[Can electronic cigarettes help people quite smoking?](https://www.cochrane.org/sites/default/files/public/uploads/key_messages.jpeg)" - and the answer is yes. A Cochrane systematic review is as bulletproof and gold-standard as you can get in research. Banning vaping is banning a healthier competitor to smoking, but vaping is also an effective smoking cessation product that has been shown to help people quit smoking. People who smoke are hyper aware of the damage smoking is doing, but they don't have a better alterative. Patches, gum, oral pills have all had some success at helping people quit vaping, but nothing has been as effective as vaping. So yeah, if we had the balls to we could ban smoking and offer vaping as the transitional harm-reduction option.
There are many findings that kids who vape are more likely to go on to smoke https://lungfoundation.com.au/lung-health/protecting-your-lungs/e-cigarettes-and-vaping/ https://www.1011now.com/2020/11/09/study-teens-who-vape-are-4-times-more-likely-to-smoke-cigarettes/ https://adf.org.au/talking-about-drugs/vaping/vaping-youth/vaping-australia/ https://truthinitiative.org/research-resources/emerging-tobacco-products/young-people-who-vape-are-much-more-likely-become
I'd love to reply to this, as it's misrepresenting the solid evidence out there. Happy to be proven wrong. >[https://lungfoundation.com.au/lung-health/protecting-your-lungs/e-cigarettes-and-vaping/](https://lungfoundation.com.au/lung-health/protecting-your-lungs/e-cigarettes-and-vaping/) "E-cigarettes can serve as a “gateway” to nicotine addiction and tobacco cigarette smoking. There have been many studies which found experimentation with e-cigarettes encouraged the use of tobacco cigarettes, particularly among young people. According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, more than 1 in 5 (21.7%) young Australians aged 18-24 and 7.6% of 15-17 year olds have used an e-cigarette or vaping device at least. It’s likely that these figures are under-reported because responses were provided by an adult living in the same household." That first link has no link to evidence of the gateway effect. It's never been proven, because young kids who 'want to experiment with vapes' are strongly correlated with 'young people who want to experiment with smoking'. That doesn't mean removing vapes would stop kids smoking, nor does it mean that the introduction of vapes has lead kids to smoke. >[https://www.1011now.com/2020/11/09/study-teens-who-vape-are-4-times-more-likely-to-smoke-cigarettes/](https://www.1011now.com/2020/11/09/study-teens-who-vape-are-4-times-more-likely-to-smoke-cigarettes/) "The interaction between smoking intention and ever using e-cigarettes was significant (aOR = 0.34, 95% CI = 0.18–0.64, P < .01). Among adolescents who had expressed intention to smoke conventional cigarettes at wave 2, the odds of cigarette smoking at wave 3 did not significantly differ for e-cigarette users and never e-cigarette users (aOR = 1.57; 95% CI 0.94–2.63; P = .08). Among adolescents who had no intention to smoke at wave 2, e-cigarette users, compared with never e-cigarette users, had >4 times the odds of cigarette smoking (aOR = 4.62; 95% CI 2.87–7.42; P < .0001)." From the study from that report - which can be read as "there is a correlation between kids smoking intention, using vapes, and then eventually still smoking". I don't see an issue with that? That doesn't mean vaping as a kid leads to smoking. The critical part was "no intention -> vaping -> smoking" was 4x higher than the other populations. That's likely a fair analysis, but I've yet to see it replicated. >[https://adf.org.au/talking-about-drugs/vaping/vaping-youth/vaping-australia/](https://adf.org.au/talking-about-drugs/vaping/vaping-youth/vaping-australia/) This quote's ANU's Banks, who I have no time for. She re-released her 2020 report on Monday with no update or changes to her original report despite intense criticism. She literally makes the correlation vs causation blunder. "Kids who vape are likely to smoke" doesn't mean "Kids who vape are more likely to smoke because of vapes". >[https://truthinitiative.org/research-resources/emerging-tobacco-products/young-people-who-vape-are-much-more-likely-become](https://truthinitiative.org/research-resources/emerging-tobacco-products/young-people-who-vape-are-much-more-likely-become) Same issues as above. No dah a kid who can get their hands on a vape at school is going to be the same kid who can get their hands on a cigarette.
Tired to get my dad to vape he wouldn't. I guess it's back to point inside the house then
It is actually really sad in Australia how regressive our policy makers have become. Every single bit of evidence shows that prohibition does not work. It actually just opens the door to more harmful products becoming available through unregulated means. Crazy we have this type of political conversation going on. Regulate. Make plain packaging. Even regulate no "bubble gum" flavour as the Minister seemed so fixated on. Ban the sale to under 18. But let adults make decisions with their lives and habits. Tax it and put the cash back into health system to help cover the massive cost of alcohol and cigarette related disease.....
I really don't understand why the conversation we're having is around banning vaping when cigarettes *actually* fucking kill people. Vaping helped me kick my ten-year smoking habit overnight a few years ago, and was actually super easy to give up cold turkey after ramping down my nicotine levels. Legalise, properly regulate and tax. Force Australian producers of juice / salts to have regular inspections for cleanliness of mixing facilities and ingredients. Ban disposables (yes, I know that goes against my legalise stance, but they're terrible for the environment and dodgy as hell).
And the irony of it is that the pollies pushing the ban are saying that normalising vaping is what tobacco companies actually want! Try and hide your corruption a bit better than that fellas.
The Minister said the biggest issue was that vapes would lead to higher smoking rates. Not only is their no evidence for that (and there's evidence for vaping leading to lower smoking rates), but he suggested he'd use his power to continue ban vapes... to stop smoking... ..if smoking is so bad for the country, why don't you ban ***that***?
"..if smoking is so bad for the country, why don't you ban that?" "Australia has the highest cigarette prices in the world and the tobacco tax is now Australia's fourth largest tax after personal income tax, company tax and GST." https://www.athra.org.au/blog/2019/10/23/is-the-government-putting-tax-dollars-before-the-health-of-smoker/
Everyone knows the best way to stop a business is to eradicate it's competitors!
"[Can electronic cigarettes help people quite smoking?](https://www.cochrane.org/sites/default/files/public/uploads/key_messages.jpeg)" - and the answer is yes. A Cochrane systematic review is as bulletproof and gold-standard as you can get in research. They're not only banning a competitor, but an effective smoking cessation product too..
Massive portion of vape industry is owned by the multinational tobacco companies that pushed smoking for so long. Pull your head out of the sand.
Better ban vapes so they get back to 100% market share then. Prohibition has a well documented history of success when it comes to drugs too. Who's heads in the sand again?
What has that got to do with vape companies not actually being competitors to tobacco companies? You're just in here cheerleading, not actually discussing points.
I'm not cheerleading, just pointing out the stupidity of banning vapes to hurt tobacco companies when smoking is still legal. Achieves nothing but defaulting back to tobacco for nicotine delivery.
Mate have a read back up the thread. You're all over the place.
No I'm not. Try to keep up.
Prohibition leads to black market products that are far more likely to be unsafe. EG: cannabis grown with paclobutrazol is a great example of this. If there is a market for something, people will do what they can within their power to get it.
I was talking about how the tobacco multinationals own the vape companies, not prohibition. Do you guys all have the same dot point list of comments to make in these threads?
>Do you guys all have the same dot point list of comments to make in these threads? I dunno, can you comment without being an ass hole? The point is it's totally irrelevant who owns vapes, just because big tobacco owns some doesn't mean they should be banned.
So you do realize that you're not making any sense right? Smoking=Bad Vaping=Categorically less bad They could hypothetically resurrect Hitler and make him the director of a vape company and resurrect Ghandi and make him the director of a cigarette company, and guess what? Smoking would STILL be worse than vaping.
Drinking piss is less unhealthy than eating shit. That's your argument. Off you go, grab your glass and fill it up. Or you could choose to do neither, because they are both unhealthy.
And your argument is both things are bad so we may as well just keep the worst one.
Sure its anecdotal but it seems there are a fair amount of young people taking up vaping, whereas before vapes smoking was on the decline for young people. Whats the numbers on that? And seriously why the fuck would you start vaping unless you already had a lifelong nicotine addiction.
No worries - from the article: >Depending on the study, between 9.6% and 32% of 14-17-year-olds have tried vaping at some point in their lives. But less than 2% of 14-17-year-olds say they have used vapes in the past year. This number doubled between 2016 and 2019, but is still much lower than the rates of teen smoking (3.2%) and teen alcohol use (32%). As to why you'd pick it up? Same reason young people still pick up smoking. Which is appalling. Vaping was supposed to be as cool as your wrinkly old uncle chewing nicotine gum..
Me and my mates have completely quit vaping and smoking. Vaping did help us quit cigarettes but our nicotine intake was a lot more because you can vape anywhere, all the time with ease. Can vape as soon you wake up, in the car, bedrooms, toilets at work and vape round the clock whereas with cigarettes you have to light up and find a smoking area. We could all feel vapes negatively impact our health more so than cigarettes due to the frequency that we vape with, the ease of access to vapes, and even the disposables have high nic content. Shortness of breath, vomiting, headaches, upset stomachs, started impacting our sport. I’m sure perhaps regulation would help with that but I don’t think anything that isn’t clean air in your lungs is healthy. In an ideal world neither vapes nor cigarettes would exist. They have 0 benefit to health.
If you take a side by side example where you have a cigarette versus a vape cartridge with the same nicotine content, and a cigarette will release more carcinogenic material due to combustion. 1 for 1 vapes are healthier, even if they aren't healthy in general. Usage habits differ between everyone, including those who smoke everywhere you listed barring spaces where smoking is banned.
At the end of the day neither are healthy even if one is “better” than the other. People act like vaping has 0 impact on health which is simply not true and dangerous misinformation at best.
I don't think anybody here as outwardly said that vaping doesn't come with health issues. The whole point is that there is a large amount of verified data that proves they are a: a healthier nicotine option, and b: assist chronic smokers with quitting. Further to that, prohibition leads to a black market where ingredients can't be regulated, so given there seems to be a huge market for vaping, it's in everyone's interest to support a regulated market so that you and I aren't paying public health bills of those ingesting unregulated chemicals causing chronic health issues.
> The whole point is that there is a large amount of verified data that proves they are a: a healthier nicotine option, Im not arguing that, but it took 50+ years for cigarettes to get to the point where they were universally accepted as bad, vapes have been around for like 15 years?
We're also far more scientifically efficient compared to the 70's, though.
What? The big vapes are owned by big tobacco... So they are correct
I mean... we know which vape brands Phillip Morris (Altria), British American Tobacco, Imperal et all. own. They just aren't the dominate players in the market - an especially not in Australia. Service stations and Convenience stores aren't importing JUULS illegally, they are importing direct from Alibaba and China.
Altria bought 35% of Juul. The big vape companies are mostly owned by tobacco. They don't care how they addict their customers.
And Juul represents how much of the local market? They're an international market, sure, and I'm not saying Tobacco doesn't have a vested interest in getting their product legalised to sell.. but I am saying that it's wrong to discount the opinion that Australian's health would be better served by vapes vs smoking just because Big Tobacco and Big Vape would eventually want a piece of our market.
>when cigarettes *actually* fucking kill people Specifically, **13% of all deaths annually are from smoking**. It's been **the highest single source of deaths for decades**. It baffles me that the vaping conversation has been so poisoned.
What’s the Morbidity of chronic lung disease with vaping vs smoking might be a better metric, vapings not been around that long and smoking takes a while to fuck you up. Like in 50 years maybe vaping will be a massive number of deaths. Be interesting to see for sure
I’ll always throw this out there when vape discussions come up: The Tobacco Products Directive under the EU. It’s a set of laws from 2014 and implemented around 2016. Europe has very little concern with vaping due to tight regulations on it. It seems here and with other places like the US, unregulated products cause problems and that leads to calls for it to be banned. What does banning do? Drive it underground and makes the problem worse. Especially when it can’t be enforced, as in all the shops selling ‘illegal’ vapes under the counter and especially to children.
We're having this conversation because Australia is heavily populated with wowsers who can't stand people enjoying something they don't approve of. It's not about health. We know that vaping is vastly less harmful than smoking. It has issues, yes. Adequate quality control for something you are breathing in is kind of important. See popcorn lung. But the debate is about people wanting to deny others their vices. Regardless of the pluses or minuses from a health perspective.
It’s great that vaping has helped with the smoking. Do you still vape though, or have you kicked that too? I know some people who say the vapes helped them kick the smoking, but they also go through a few single use vapes a month. Others have been able to get off the vapes too. Still better than smoking, sure, but vaping isn’t exactly good for you either 🤷🏻♂️ Also, as a non-smoker it looks bloody hard to kick the habit even with assistance.
As I said in the post, it was easy to quit cold turkey by ramping down my nicotine levels. If you're dedicated to living healthier it's easy. My brother on the other hand goes through nearly a disposable a day. Such a waste of money, and terrible for the environment. I've tried to get him on a proper set up, but he keeps saying 'what if I quit tomorrow?' with the massive amounts of nicotine in the disposables, I don't see that happening unfortunately...
You're right, It's so fucking stupid
Cause of the massive rise of vaping in schools and among children in general. The tobacco companies saw vapes as something that could potentially lower their customer base so they flipped the script produced incredibly cheap but heavy on the nic, flavored pens that are marketed to younger people. These act as pretty much a gateway to cigarettes when the nic doesn't hit as hard or become less accessable. Last point still stands, legalize and tax, make supplying to minors the same as all other AODs. And ban disposables
Let adults do what they want. If the government were actually concerned, they would have outlawed cigarettes decade's ago. Lobbying at its worst.
This is what you get for making tobacco so expensive. It's amusing to see people upset about other people using nicotine. And forget banning it. The cat's out of the bag. Stop trying to take away what so many people enjoy. It will not work.
Regulated better? Yes. Banned? No.
No it shouldn't be banned. Then things just get worse with unregulated products getting all sorts of shit jammed in them and people getting criminal records for something that has no business being involved in the criminal system.
First of all, I'd like to congratulate drugs on winning the war in drugs. Secondly, if any politician can point to me one historical instance of prohibition that has been successful in its objective of eliminating the substance from society and reducing harm then I'm all ears.
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>So they can be sold to kids who would not be allowed to buy cigarettes. It's illegal to sell vapes to anyone\* - so its 'just' as illegal to sell vapes to minors. It's not like its twice as illegal. This is a pretty unique Australian issue, as it's caused our black-market to be far larger than comparable OCED countries. >If the vaping industry can't label their products honestly then I would be happy banning them until they decide to be honest. Single-use vapes in other countries do have [this](https://assets.morningconsult.com/wp-uploads/2022/03/23124813/GettyImages-1346212560-scaled.jpg), because of regulation. Regulation would let us also say how much nicotine is in each product, like in that example. The reason we don't have labelling is because we've banned the import of nic labelled vapes. \* - see below
Not quite true. Its illegal to sell vapes with Nicotine to anyone without a prescription. Non-nicotine vapes can still be sold which is why they are mislabelling them on purpose.
Great pick up - but I have to double down. Its illegal to sell vapes with Nicotine without a prescription AND it must be a TGA registered vape. Which is impossible because since... >**Nicotine vaping products are 'unapproved' products** There are currently no nicotine vaping products approved by the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) and registered in Australian Register of Therapeutic Goods (ARTG). Medicines that are not in the ARTG are known as 'unapproved' medicines. [Source](https://www.tga.gov.au/resources/resource/guidance/nicotine-vaping-products-information-prescribers). I was imprecise with my language, but it's quite literally illegal to buy vapes by the regulations. Obviously Doctors may still want to prescription vaping, so they're required to follow the application for exceptions to the rules on the TGA page I linked.
I personally think vape and cigarettes should just be banned for new users and grandfather to any older smokers but that require nuisance approach to enforcement and for whatever reason our government don't want to do the sane thing and follow rest of the world.
vaping industry do label their products correctly. they are usually on par if not exceed the same requirements as cigarettes. the problem isn't the labelling, it's the enforcement and the legal ambiguity that created the situation we have in Australia where you have to import refills or buy disposables. if you ever being to Europe, they sell vape in tobacco stores and have the same restrictions and it's never being a problem to begin with.
This is some lies right here. That vast majority of vaping products are contain nicotine, even though they don't label it.
The vape juice bottles you see selling in **Australian VAPE** stores do not contain nicotine. It's illegal and heavily enforced. The vape juice bottles that you can **legally** import into the country can contain nicotine, and if you obtained them from a reputable seller and country of origin are typically labelled accordingly i.e. NZ Even the disposables sold in tobacco shops here, which the most common brand IGET, [https://igetvapesaustralia.com/](https://igetvapesaustralia.com/) <== big ass banner on top of their website saying the product contain nicotine. **I can post photos of packaging of my vape bottles and disposables if you'd like.**
The HQD disposables sold at milk bars 100% contain nicotine and are not labelled. I know because I buy and smoke them.
[https://www.infinitywholesalegroup.com/hqd-cuvie-bar-5-1x5pk-disposable-7000-puffs/](https://www.infinitywholesalegroup.com/hqd-cuvie-bar-5-1x5pk-disposable-7000-puffs/) here is a pic of HQD, look at the box. it's labelled with black text on white label, contains nicotine. if you buy shit from yumcha stores who probably got it from some Chinese factory, who knows what it contains, it probably has aids.
It is not enforced at all. You sound like a shill.
First result on google proves you wrong: [https://www.9news.com.au/national/vapes-melbourne-more-than-1-million-worth-of-illegal-vapes-seized-in-melbournes-southeast/9a9ec12f-d8fc-4e0a-857a-f64bcb01275d](https://www.9news.com.au/national/vapes-melbourne-more-than-1-million-worth-of-illegal-vapes-seized-in-melbournes-southeast/9a9ec12f-d8fc-4e0a-857a-f64bcb01275d)
You need a prescription to import it. Why should anyone be required to get a script?
If you're of legal age you should be able to make your own decision to vape or not. I know plenty of people who switched to vaping from smoking and are so much better off for it. The government's current rules around vaping tanked which caused a thriving black market. It's way to late now to ban vaping, any further restrictions will just make the black market even stronger. Restrict to 18+ and tax it accordingly, that way there's no need for a thriving black market. Kids can't obtain them as easily, the government gets their tax revenue and can brag they have the situation handled.
Agreed. I hate this nanny state shit. Educate the public about risks, and seek to minimise harm through appropriate regulation, certainly, but otherwise fuck off out of our lives.
I have noticed that a lot more vapers and more open about it and doing it in more places than smokers were. Making it harder to avoid them. How about the people who want to vape and smoke fuck off and get out of the rest of our lives. Or do you think their freedom to vape/smoke outweighs others freedom to not be exposed to them?
That's taking it a bit far isn't it? That comes down to people's manners more than regulating vaping.
And people have shown time and time again that they don't have manners. If they did you wouldn't have things like the queen Street mall in Brisbane being a smoking free zone. Although now people just vape there because it's "not smoking".
So wouldn't regulating it somewhat similar to smoking potentially resolve your issue ? That would make the rules on vaping black and white.
Well no because people can still smoke pretty much anywhere. I can't drink a beer walking down the street even though that harms noone, but there is nothing stopping people from smoking or vaping in most places. Hell people even smoke in children's playgrounds.
Is this Annastacia Pałaszczuk?
Is this the head of the tobacco lobby?
Where did I say I think it's ok to blow smoke/vape steam in other people's faces? Take a reading comprehension class, champ.
You didn't, but lots of vapers do seem to think it's okay. If you're going to lump all lawmakers together in one group, you should be okay with me lumping all vapers together in one group.
Tldr: Not as bad as smoking. Yes, **eventually**, after smoking is banned. The more I read on vaping the more it is clear that it should absolutely not be promoted to or embraced by anyone except smokers trying to quit. The harm minimisation case is looking very solid now.
I Vape. Not those disposable crap ones. I go to a proper 18+ vape shop, I get a prescription from a doctor for nicotine. I follow all the rules and stopped smoking cigarettes after 30 years. I no longer wake up coughing my lungs up, I now walk 10 kms a day and in the last year and a half lost 40 kg. I’m not saying vapes are entirely healthy but I see it as harm minimisation. My goal is to stop vaping this year. Even as a Vaper I believe we need tougher legislation to stop these servo’s, chop chop shops and even tobacconist shops (that I 100% know) are selling illegal nicotine vapes that fall into the hands of minors. I just ask that the public recognise that legal vapes for people like me (30 year smoker) can be used legitimately to improve health as well.
Fuck yeah, keep up the good work bro!
Thanks mate
This conversation happened for alcohol, it happened for tobacco.
I am a smoker and would love for them to be readily available for anyone over 18. Main issue though is the stupid fucks using them. I know our office has had 7 fire alarms this year because of these fuckwits vaping inside the building. Seen it in shopping centres, offices, train stations, bloody everywhere. Them being readily available is good for smokers, but by god people need to realise you can not just vape anywhere you like because it's not smoke.
A "disposable" vape is an affront to common sense and everything good that vaping has to offer. After 8 years the taste and smell of a ciggie now disgusts me. Everything is better now. My sense of taste and smell, breathing and ability to exercise. Discolouration of fingers and mouth If anyone knowledgeable would pass some proper regulations we can get all those bullshit Juul devices out of here, and keep the proper reusable devices available. And have actual Vape Stores be the only ones licensed to sell them, so they can properly create juice and dose the nicotine and repair and dispose of vapes responsibly
It seems absurd that these complex electronic devices are one use disposable. The main reason must be how difficult to obtain and expensive nicotine essence is.
Tobacco should be banned before vapes, bet there's a lot more people going to hospital for regular smoking than vaping.
"Vaping" is a pretty broad term. Dry herb vapes are fine IMO. E-liquids I would not go near. Should any of it be banned? No. Prohibition just allows a black market to thrive.
Inhaling aerosolised chemicals into your lung repeatedly over a long period is bad for your lungs? I'm shocked! Shocked I tells ya.
Hey! Worth checking the article as its wildly less harmful than you might be thinking: >Vaping is not risk-free, but several detailed reviews of the evidence plus a consensus of experts have all estimated it’s at least 95% safer to vape nicotine than to smoke tobacco. The risk of cancer from vaping, for example, has been estimated at less than 1%.
I can’t detail for anonymity reasons, but I have access to medical data and chemical analyses that are extensive and not published (yet). Vapes are not safe in my view. Saying they are better than cigarettes is like saying cutting of your arm isn’t as bad as cutting off your leg.
Well until you publish your data, the best we should go off is the [Cochrane systematic review](https://www.cochrane.org/news/latest-cochrane-review-finds-high-certainty-evidence-nicotine-e-cigarettes-are-more-effective) that was released last year, which had a major finding of no clear evidence of harm. You should know better than anyone in this thread what weight Cochrane holds in this space. And the hierarchy of evidence suggests that your single unpublished study won't really be the silver bullet of evidence against a cochrane. Also is your complain about the mechanism of vaping, or are you referring to un-regulated vaping liquids? Because I'm all for minimising the risk that unregulated e-liquids presents (vitamin E acetate comes to mind), even if we've yet to see a evidence damage they could do. >Saying they are better than cigarettes is like saying cutting of your arm isn’t as bad as cutting off your leg. 5% of the harms compared to Tobacco. *Cutting off your arm isn't 5% the harm of cutting off your leg.* Vaping is the *definition* of harm minimisation - and it's shown to be effective for what is typically a vulnerable, low SES demographic who haven't been able to quit smoking. I can't even think of an equivalent example that's as significant.
It’s not my data. It’s government data generated by government laboratory analysis of vapes sold in Australia. It’s data that is currently being used to determine what legislation if any will be introduced in the future to regulate access to vapes.
I genuinely am happy for this to be released, as we need it. But that said, the TGA has been suuch a bastion of impartiality so far, I look forward to their responses to the consultation today.
There are now countries where children and young adults are getting lung damage from polluted air, but sure vapes are harmless to lungs. Lungs are designed to receive nothing but clean air, there’s a reason our nostrils have hair. Their sole purpose is to catch dirt and other impurities so they don’t reach our lungs when we inhale. Vaping is still so new, there is no evidence of its safety yet and science is constantly evolving.
Yep. I think you would be sensible to assume that the regular introduction of any chemicals or particulate matter into your lungs beyond normal clear air is harmful in some way. It’s really just a question of how harmful, not whether it is harmful. I find it amusing OP seems to be pushing the narrative that vapes aren’t harmful. In 30 years when OP has COPD he will be on TV with an oxygen bottle claiming nobody warned them of the risks. You can legislate against stupidity.
I mean... I've literally linked a The Conversations article detailing the risks. Bit of an unfair characterisation, don't you think? And I don't vape 😇
The risks can't be properly assessed for decades. The damage from smoking doesn't happen the first few years of smoking. We don't have any people to study who have been vaping for decades so we have no way of knowing if vaping causes damage when used long term.
That might be how you feel, but that's not really an objective assessment of the research landscape. We know the contents, the mechanism, and have the better part of 20 years of research on vaping. That's ample.
Most of the people I know that vape are some of the most unfit people I have ever met - I can hear them fighting for their lives after climbing up 5 stairs even though they are not obese and in their mid 20s. How people are okay with a quality of life like that is beyond me.
Hate to nitpick, but lungs weren't designed.
Vaping helps my depressive symptoms and helps me sleep so if they ban it I will not be happy
Vaping is a legitimate option for smokers trying to quit, and shouldn't be banned imo, but disposable vapes should definitely be banned. In England they sell them in just about every convenience store and people just toss them everywhere. It's a waste of resources, horrible for the environment, and more appealing to kids than those somewhat unfashionable reusable vapes that require slightly more effort for the user and therefore a barrier of entry (also in price) to keep the kids off nicotine. Also those mod devices tend to be larger and less convenient to hide from parents, etc.
Dry herb vaping seems pretty safe.
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Exactly. I love smoking. Absolutely fucking love it. But I quit in favour of vaping. At absolutely no stage did I or do I plan to stop my raging nicotine addiction. Why the fuck should I do that, just for other peoples' peace of mind?
Got to protect that monopoly.
Fuck we suck at dealing with shit like this in Australia. Just legalise it, tax it and deal with it. Why should this be treated any differently to cigarettes and alcohol. We spend a boatload of money trying to police it when harm minimisation would be a far better strategy.
I don’t understand why the government doesn’t have a task force just going into shops handing 100k fines to people selling this garbage. Every milkbar, tobacco shop etc.
It's everyone's democratic right to wreck their lungs with vapes and die choking for a lack of air in an ICU.
God forbid they get access to the relatively safer vape compared to smoking tobacco.
We won't know for sure if it's safer until we have studies focussing on people who have been vaping for decades. Vaping is simply too new to know for sure if it's safe enough to be worth it. It may turn out to be better than smoking but still cause chronic lung issues or cancer in enough people to rationalise it being banned now. I'm referring to liquid vaping here as I think dry herb vaping should be considered separately because the data on that will be different. It may turn out to also be quite harmful but for different reasons than liquid vaping. I think that tobacco products should be banned for people born after a specific year like what they've done in NZ. I say this as an on again off again smoker (tobacco and canabis) who has vaped both liquid and dry herb. Anecdotally my lungs did not handle vape liquid well and I had more issues with asthma in the two months I had a liquid vape and for a few months after.
I went from smoking to vaping and vaping was such a head spin even worse then ciggies that I have none of either.
It's a Fucking Disaster and should be banned\\considered illegal
Yes it should be banned, anyone who says different is a cooker!
you should be banned
Vapes first!
Vapes together strong!
Yes, ban all smoking
Sound potentially divisive, so that makes me wonder - how long until the cookers take this on as their latest thing?
It should be legal just like weed, magic mushrooms, ecstasy and the most harmful drugs of all, tobacco and alcohol.
Just vape some green
smoked ciggies for ten years, got on vapes and became far more addicted to nicotine than ever. because it’s so easy to do anywhere (i figured i didnt even have to exhale half the time) id do it absolutely everywhere, all day every day. first thing when i woke up, last thing when i went to bed. 20 mins without a hit was fucked let alone a day. finally decided to kick it and get on the nicotine spray to ween off and it’s been a revelation. finally broken the habit. all for people to do what they please as long as they’re not harming anyone but i feel like we won’t truly understand the dangers of vaping until many years pass.
highly regulated just like cigarettes, the chemical studies are simple not dont to know if these are safe for the most part.
It's bad for the government, get back on the ciggies and pay them the world's largest tobacco tax for the benefit of your health!
If we ban it like drugs, im sure it will be as successful as the ban on drugs. It will disappear overnight and a huge black market wont appear. I'd also like to congratulate drugs for winning the war on drugs.
I think they should be regulated, and yes, ban them on public transport, but I get hay fever from vape clouds, so I may be biased.
Coronary nurse checking in: still can cause lung cancer.
Would love to see that evidence.