this post was submitted on 08 Mar 2025
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I do not agree with your sentiments to vaping and Australia pandering to larger tobacco companies. Vapes are not nearly as readily available as cigarettes and the regulatory hurdles to approval are restrictive meaning that smaller companies who are not willing to obtain the certification, do not end up on the market. Nicotine content is also highly controll compared to other markets.
I believe the aim was to ban vaping overall, but they saw the wave of legal battles to get to that point and decided on this as a middle ground to save cost/effort. You could argue that putting them in pharmacies aligns them as a "health" product, which is not great...
Also, the increased cost of cigarettes is in itself a harm minimisation measure. The tax is meant to be a motivator to stop people starting or continuing smoking, independent of who they are.
I don't know what could be done better here, what would you suggest?