A Letter to Mark Butler MP: Australia’s Minister for Health

Mr Butler,

With respect I encourage you to read this through to the end, simply because your actions against the vaping and electronic cigarette industry in our country border on NARCISSISM.
Let me begin by reminding you that your education and career experience do NOT make you IN ANY WAY SHAPE OR FORM qualified to make decisions regarding the health of anyone beyond your immediate family. Get out to the suburbs and actually talk face to face with the people of the vaping industry; you know, the ordinary Australians, many of whom whose businesses you have destroyed simply because you don’t know how to properly regulate sales of what is already a LEGAL DRUG…
all while you continue to let ‘Big Pharma’ sell in supermarkets a virtually identical (but much more toxic and less effective) product to children as young as twelve!

Here’s a fact for you:
60% of those Australians who voted for Labor at the last election either smoke tobacco or use an electronic cigarette of some kind on a daily basis.
I say this with all sincerity and bluntness: If you want them to vote for politicians who actually recognise that there’s a better way to solve this issue than by prohibition, you’re best to keep on ignoring the more than one million e-cig users in this country who are screaming at your government right now to act with civility and common sense by LEGALISING LIQUID NICOTINE VAPING NOW!

I quote your most recent public interview about Electronic Nicotine Delivery Systems (ENDS) and retort:

“We are not as a government going to normalise this public health menace.”

Of course you’re not! Why is that a fact? Because you and yours are clueless, you’re taking advice from ALL BUT the very people your ridiculously outdated policy shifts are affecting and you’re blinded by the massive amounts of money the Treasury are losing! You simply cannot accept that an exponentially increasing number of Australians are choosing to quit smoking tobacco by means other than ineffective ‘Big Pharma’ Nicotine Replacement Therapies (patches, gums, mouth sprays and lozenges).

May I remind you that it’s Your Government who is perpetuating ‘this public health menace’. The purely Draconian prescription model implemented by (former) Health Minister Greg Hunt in October of 2021, added to this country’s extraordinary levels of taxation on tobacco products, are the prime creators of the flourishing ‘black markets’ for both illicit tobacco and ‘closed system’ electronic cigarettes, namely ‘disposable’ vapes and pre-filled ‘pod’ devices which, by the way, are NOT “marketed by big tobacco” anywhere in Australia…
simply because current regulations do not allow them to do so!
You need to start asking children to describe where they are getting the e-cigs they’re using, then immediately act against those illicit vendors. A ‘black market’ will fall silent once sellers of illegal products are put behind bars and fined out of existence. Again, blame for the proliferation of that ‘black market’ falls squarely on both State and Federal authorities who have sat on their hands and not bothered to investigate then prosecute illicit vendors.
YOU HAVE NO EXCUSE FOR YOUR LACK OF ACTION IN THAT REGARD!

“it’s no coincidence that the people driving that agenda are tobac­co industry lobbyists because they know this is a pathway back to cigarettes”

Please understand that the tobacco industry are themselves producing electronic cigarettes so they can maintain profits while the world transitions AWAY FROM the deadliness of tobacco smoking! ‘Heat-not-burn’ devices are merely the tobacco industry’s way to keep selling cigarettes and the only reason they are now producing ‘closed system pod’ devices is because people are not interested in buying their carcinogenic garbage.

“(tobacco industry lobbyists) know this is a pathway around the strong action we’ve taken in recent decades to drive down smoking rates.”

Tobacco industry lobbyists are so accustomed to raking in billions of dollars each and every year that they have zero concern for the health of the human population. As for the “strong action” you’ve taken re: smoking rates? Nobody with any knowledge of mathematics or macroeconomics can possibly conclude that increasing the rate of taxation on tobacco products has worked to decrease the number of Australians who smoke by as much as bureaucrats and legislators since 2010 had envisaged. Up until the explosion of the electronic cigarette market in 2020, the ONLY reason smoking rates were slowly falling is that tobacco cigarette prices in this country have become the highest in the Western world; wholly due to successive tax increases. A packet of 40 cigarettes now retails anywhere above AU$50 with the cheapest 25 gram pouch of roll-your-own tobacco selling for that same price. In spite of these price hikes, Australia still lags way behind other developed nations with respect to smoking rates and how they have drastically fallen in those countries.
Why? Simply because for the last decade…
THE AUSTRALIAN FEDERAL GOVERNMENT HAVE BEEN MANAGING THE ISSUE OF TOBACCO HARM REDUCTION COMPLETELY THE WRONG WAY!

“Research only published this week by the Austral­ian National University confirms that you are three times more likely to take up smoking if you vape than if you don’t.”

Odd how they are one of a dwindling few scholastic institutions on the planet who still believes such ABSOLUTE DRIVEL! They certainly didn’t survey Me personally, nor did they contact anyone I know to determine whether their ridiculous notion was indeed accurate. Similar studies undertaken by institutions far larger than the ANU that arrived at a similar UTTERLY NONSENSICAL conclusion have been thoroughly debunked by a combination of proper research, common sense and actually talking to real world people who vape. Nobody in their right mind could possibly believe that a 19 year old who is spending $40 a week on devices which satisfy their nicotine cravings, taste like blueberry muffins, last for five days and are acceptable to their peers would then go to a tobacconist and pay $60 for a packet of cigarettes which satisfies their nicotine craving for just two days, tastes like horse manure with a foul odour to match and that their peers passionately hate!
Oh, and you can tell the numpties at the ANU that if they have the guts to argue the above point with me by detailing how they arrived at their outrageously incorrect summation, they need to drop me a line at:
terinmahsout@gmail.com

Just a brief sidenote about my own vape story: I smoked cigarettes for 36 YEARS before switching full time to nicotine vapes six years ago today 25th April 2023. I have not purchased a packet of cigarettes or pouch of tobacco since then, nor have I ever felt the desire to smoke. I personally know over 50 former smokers who can each tell a very similar tale to mine and over the last decade there have been millions of stories like it which have been shared on every social media platform on the internet, both here in Australia and across the globe.

“That’s why the tobacco industry is such a supporter of vaping. It’s a pathway back. It’s a way of creating a new generation of nicotine addicts.”

Again, not true! There are statistics available from all over the world which PROVE that what you claim is SIMPLY NOT HAPPENING! Get it through your thick skull…
VAPING IS NOT CREATING A NEW GENERATION OF NICOTINE ADDICTS!!!
Again, statistics and survey results prove that you are WRONG!

It is YOUR GOVERNMENT and the Therapeutic Goods Administration who are turning this whole issue into a disgusting mess, by
1. refusing to re-classify nicotine in both base and salt forms as a medicinal product in the EXACT SAME WAY that Canada, the United Kingdom, America and New Zealand have (the TGA are effectively saying that authorities in those countries are stupid);
2. refusing to place freebase/salt liquid nicotine and associated products in the very same retail category as that currently applied to ‘Nicabate’ and ‘Nicorette’ nicotine replacement therapy products (all which contain liquid nicotine) that children as young as twelve years old can buy from their local supermarket without requiring either proof of age or doctor’s prescription;
3. not properly regulating nor even attempting to prevent minors from being able to purchase products which contain nicotine (the number of online vendors, convenience stores, illicit ‘vape shops’ and petrol stations still selling disposable vape devices to this very day pays testament to that);
4. placing all electronic cigarettes into one category whilst there are marked differences between manufacturing quality of vaping methods, user safety, included toxic chemical compounds and ability to re-use/recycle the products;
5. not taking into consideration the mental health of the Australian public, and
6. failing to properly educate the community about tobacco harm reduction methods, especially when call centre staff at ‘Quitline’ have been directed not to include information about liquid nicotine vaping in their advice to smokers.

Mark, it’s high time you understood that you are both out of your depth and completely out of touch with reality when it comes to the issue of nicotine vaping in this country. Your sheer ignorance of your colleagues in New Zealand, America, the United Kingdom and Canada is staggering beyond belief; also, your blind adherence to debunked studies, misinformation, falsified data and ‘facts’ which have long since been disproven is disgraceful at best. Regulations MUST be written to allow Australian adults the same freedoms availed to citizens of those countries above, namely the ability to purchase freebase or salt nicotine over-the-counter for use with safe, properly manufactured electronic cigarette devices. Either that or kill off the Prime Minister‘s desire to “bring manufacturing back to Australia” while watching what could easily be a billion-dollar industry miss its opportunity as a ‘black market’ runs rampant, dodges tax obligations and distributes dangerously toxic products to an uneducated yet long-suffering Australian public. Ask yourself, how good would it be if Australian owned businesses grew tobacco and other plants to produce both liquid nicotine and high quality non-toxic ‘e-liquids’ to Australian and New Zealand Food Safety standards then sold them to the world?

Here endeth the lesson.

With thanks to Hairy™

A Letter To Albo and the ALP

(from a disgruntled working class Australian born male who has not only been following politics closely since the mid-1980s, but casted his primary vote for Labor candidates at every election since 1987)

Please please PLEASE… enough with the RHETORIC!! Seriously, are you lot so blind that you can’t see the things you’re doing right now are what caused you to lose the last three elections? Are you so inept and out of touch with reality that you haven’t recognised the same shitshow which the Liberal-National Coalition are performing today is the one that got them over the line against Kevin Rudd in 2013, then Bill Shorten in 2016 and 2019?

Labor need to do a much more complete job of describing to Australia’s voting public how candidates from Liberals, Nationals and other Conservative-leaning parties

(i) are the ones who have had eight years to make the country a better place for everyone yet have failed by any measure,

(ii) do not have any policies which could help provide a better life for those who are struggling,

(iii) have no understanding of or consideration for climate change in any respect, and

(iv) are demonstrably no longer fit to decide the course of the nation’s future.

What’s painfully obvious to even the most casual spectator, but seemingly not in any way recognised by anyone within the ALP’s media staff, is that the public en masse are fed up to the eye teeth of hearing politicians promise us the world prior to polling day only to then see those promises not kept once the winners are sworn in. Labor need to instead focus every waking moment on broadcasting all available documentary evidence of the LNP’s fiscal mismanagement, their corruption scandals, their capitalist pork-barreling failures and their abhorrently overt disdain for working class Australians.

Simply put, Labor need to concentrate their campaign 100% on explaining why the LNP no longer deserves the right to govern.
Policy announcements and rhetoric such as “Labor will be a better government because we’ll do this, this and this!” only serve to provide the right wing media and the Coalition with cannon fodder. It’s about time the Australian Labor Party started flinging a whole lot more of that ‘shit’ back at the Morrison Government, or else you can expect to spend another three years on the Opposition benches writing poems about
“What if…?”!

Here endeth the lesson.

With thanks to Hairy…™

Response to Simon Chapman

Mr. Chapman,
You again present yourself as someone who does not accept the intelligence and life experiences of others. On platforms such as ‘Twitter’ (or ‘X’ as it is now known) you have a verifiable penchant for silencing anyone who opposes your beliefs to any degree, even when the evidence you provide in support of your outrageously nonsensical rhetoric has been soundly debunked and while you have NO personal experience whatsoever of the subject being discussed.
Is every food item you consume flavourless and bland? I would suggest No. I have also never seen or read your responses to the following two questions:
1. Have you at any time in your life been a regular consumer of tobacco cigarettes?
2. Have you at any time in your life been a regular user of an electronic cigarette or ‘vape’ of any kind?

With high confidence that your answer to either question would be NO, I hereby demand that you stay out of a debate which ultimately does not concern you. Those within the circle jerk elitist snob self-entitled tight-ass club (such as yourself) care nought for anything except enforcement of rules and regulations for everyone except themselves, while having no place in social issues that are only of interest when the money starts to dry up.
You mention a discussion paper released by the Flavoring and Extracts Manufacturing Association (FEMA). With that in mind, what do you make of products available from here: https://www.drinkscnt.com.au/
namely a ‘scented pod’ placed on the nozzle of a water bottle to give the user the experience of drinking flavoured water without them needing to physically add any level of flavouring compound to the water itself?
Pretty much EVERY ITEM on a supermarket shelf contains some level of ‘flavouring’ or ‘scent’, so why is it perfectly okay for ‘big pharma’ corporation Johnson & Johnson to sell their ‘Quickmist’ NRT products in plain sight from supermarket shelves whilst TGA Regulations exist to prohibit the sale of liquid nicotine? Come on smart ass! Give us a qualified answer to THAT one!

If you’re as good at your ‘job’ as you claim, why are you refusing to publicly debate Dr. Colin Mendelsohn about the issue of electronic cigarettes and vaping? Your refusal to discuss those issues with him openly instead of “hiding behind a keyboard” proves you are not only a weak-minded charlatan but also not in possession of any modicum of ‘common sense’. I myself would heartily accept an invitation to be part of the audience at the event should it ever occur, with a promise to tear to shreds every point of view or argument you could possibly come up with. How would I do that? With VERIFIED AS ACCURATE DOCUMENTARY EVIDENCE, A LIFETIME OF EXPERIENCE, REAL WORLD COMMON SENSE AND HONEST TO GOODNESS LOGICAL THINKING!

As for me knowing the difference between drinking something and inhaling it? I am a 54 years old trades qualified business owner. After smoking tobacco cigarettes for 36 years and vaping for almost seven years I am acutely aware that there are a ridiculously high number of imbeciles like yourself and your fellowes who use unqualified, discredited data and twist it in such ways to suit the narrative of conservative and evangelical extremists. Stooges like yourself don’t even know the difference between vapour and smoke, yet you demand that I accept your puerile explanation of a lifestyle choice that you yourself have NEVER PERSONALLY EXPERIENCED?

You speak of “concentrations”, “toxicology” and the dangers of overdosing, yet you refuse to accept that EDUCATED people who are using properly manufactured devices to consume liquid nicotine are actually ingesting lower mg/ml quantities of the compound than they would ingest from smoking tobacco cigarettes! When pretty much EVERY DOCTOR AND SCIENTIST ON THE PLANET (except you) AGREES THAT NICOTINE IS HARMLESS TO HUMANS WHEN CONSUMED IN SMALL DOSES, I ask you What ever happened to the old adage “Everything in moderation”? Get this into your THICK ONE-DIMENSIONAL HEAD: nicotine is NOT a carcinogen at ANY concentration, whether it is swallowed (from chewing tobacco) or inhaled as a component of a flavoured vapour! People get cancer from smoking tobacco cigarettes NOT because they contain nicotine but wholly due to the presence of at least 100 other chemicals that ARE carcinogenic!

As for proper nicotine vaping I’ve got $1000 in my pocket that says you’ve never researched the differences between disposable vapes and ‘open system’ vape devices. You’re like a back seat passenger in a Melbourne taxi trying to tell the driver how to operate the vehicle and navigate the roads around Carlton when you’ve NEVER
(a) sat behind the wheel of a car let alone driven one,
(b) been to Victoria in person, or
(c) even seen a map of the place at any time in your entire life!

Then we come to the most ridiculous claim that anti-vapers make…
“Vaping leads to smoking”.
Your response to my first submission to your ‘blog infers that you actually read it, so I cordially invite you to read the following below and accept it as an inherent truth:
A person addicted to sugar will NOT EVER stop eating $5 jelly beans and start eating $50 sugar coated dogshit sticks.
Seriously Simon, if you’re so clever, respected and highly educated put your knowledge to the ultimate test by accepting Dr. Mendelsohn’s challenge to debate in a public space the subject of nicotine vaping. If you’re unwilling to do so then crawl back under your bridge and STOP contributing to the detriment of both the physical and mental health of Australians who are sick to death of being persecuted by arrogant well-to-do bureaucrats like yourself, simply because we’ve made life choices which you asshats either don’t agree with or reduce the amount of revenue you collect. We don’t come into Your workplaces or living rooms and tell you how to live, so do us all a favour and concentrate on YOURSELF instead of telling folks (none of whom you would know from a bar of soap) what’s best to consume and how to consume it.
STOP TELLING PEOPLE HOW TO LIVE THEIR LIVES!!! We don’t come up to you from nowhere and tell You what to do, so LEAVE US THE F*** ALONE!!!

Letter To Ryan Park MP (NSW Minister for Health)

Mr. Park,
I am a 54 year old business professional who has had just about enough of government’s stupidity and obvious lack of common sense with respect to the issue of electronic cigarettes. I have vaped exclusively for over six and a half years, successfully using pharmaceutical grade liquid nicotine imported from New Zealand in combination with Australian made e-liquids to permanently end a 36 year long tobacco smoking habit overnight.
Let me tell you that the ONLY way you will stop disposable vapes from falling into the hands of children is to ask them directly whereabouts they’re buying the devices from, track down those nefarious merchants and put them behind bars for 12 months, ban all sales of ‘disposable vape devices’ then legalise the sale of pharmaceutical grade liquid nicotine, properly made electronic cigarettes and ANZFS Standard e-liquids from NOWHERE ELSE EXCEPT age-restricted regulated ‘vape shops’. While you’re at it, meet with Brian Marlow (Campaign Director for Legalise Vaping Australia) and Dr. Colin Mendelsohn, both of whom will describe to you in plain English how the Government’s approach to this issue has for far too long been an abject FAILURE. You’re best to also attend a few dedicated vape stores in person, listen to the proprieter’s concerns and understand that We the e-cig using community (ie. 800,000+ Australian voting age adults just like you) do NOT want children to have access to products that are intended for adults-only use.

Tobacco companies have NOT created the ‘black market’. That responsibility falls directly on the incompetent Morrison Federal Government, yet now we see utter foolishness from Health Minister Mark Butler as he ‘doubles-down’ on Greg Hunt’s ridiculously Draconian policies and helps maintain that which could so easily be shut down. As a matter of urgency you need to consult with adult vapers and follow those discussions up by introducing commonsense legislation that legalises sales of pharmaceutical grade liquid nicotine to adults only, just as it is legal in the USA, New Zealand, Canada and the United Kingdom.
STOP PERSECUTING LAW ABIDING ADULTS who are using properly made electronic cigarette devices that they have legally purchased from age-restricted and heavily regulated vape shops whilst State and Federal Governments
(a) ALLOW pharmaceutical companies to openly sell in supermarkets products which contain ingredients IDENTICAL to those found in disposable vapes,
(b) PLACE weak penalties on illegally operating vendors which do NOTHING to deter others from operating with impunity and the same blatant disregard for the Law, and
(c) FAIL to write socially acceptable legislation that would make legal both in NSW and Australia wide a scientifically proven as safe method of smoking cessation which is freely available to adults across much of a world that includes at least three other Commonwealth nations.

Letter to Anthony Albanese from Scott Hewitt

One of my close friends has just sent the following to Anthony Albanese, Australia’s current Prime Minister. If you currently use an electronic cigarette as a way to steer clear of tobacco products, I strongly suggest you compose a similar letter and send it to:

https://www.pm.gov.au/contact-your-pm

To Anthony Albanese,

I have voted for the Labor candidate in my electorate at every local, State and Federal Election since I turned 18 in 1987.
To the issue of ‘vaping’: I DO NOT vape for recreation. I vape nicotine to maintain my dependence on a legal drug in a manner which is far safer and better for my long term health than smoking a cigarette could ever be.
Six years ago I switched permanently from a 36 year long tobacco smoking habit to full time daily use of electronic cigarettes with nicotine. Since then, your predecessors and now Your government have labelled me as a criminal, treated me like an uneducated child and effectively bent over backwards to send me back to that cigarette habit.
Why?
Three reasons:

1. State and Federal legislators are simply unaware of the differences between types of electronic cigarette;
2. The distinct lack of affirmative action by authorities to aggressively prosecute any vendor selling electronic cigarette devices to minors, and
3. The government’s desire to recoup losses incurred by Treasury (less tobacco tax revenue) and ‘Big Pharma’ (less non-prescription products such as patches, gums and mouth sprays being sold).

‘Disposable’ vapes and other ‘closed system’ (ie. pre-filled) devices have taken foothold in our country after the Liberal Government’s implementation of a ‘prescription model’ for liquid nicotine sales to adults. Any perusal of public health statistics prior to October 2021, along with referrals from schools regarding use of electronic cigarettes by children, will indicate the overwhelming failure of that policy considering the marked increase in use of illicit ‘disposable vapes’ by both school aged persons and youth since the policy’s introduction. Sadly, your Health Minister Mark Butler MP has now exacerbated that ‘black market’ (which the Morrison Government brought into existence) by ‘doubling down’ on Greg Hunt MP’s policy and turning it into what is one of the most unsocial and Draconian reforms to ever be submitted to the Australian Parliament.

With that, I strongly suggest you reconsider the implementation of Mark Butler MP’s ban on electronic cigarettes, which will destroy over 5000 legitimate busineses and force Australians back to cigarette smoking, which as you may be aware kills over 22,000 people in this country every year. Come out and talk to people who have actually quit using tobacco products permanently by switching to nicotine vaping. Common sense must be employed here. Either that or you can expect the one million electronic cigarette users in this country to boycott the Labor Party at every election until the end of time.

In closing, I ask for an honest answer to this question:
If properly regulated nicotine vaping is good enough for 15 million+ smokers in the United Kingdom, 10 million+ Canadian smokers and over 1.5 million in New Zealand – when all of those nations have much lower smoking rates than Australia – why can’t the policies enjoyed by people living in those countries be implemented here?

A Letter to Mark Butler MP: Australia’s Minister for Health

Rants by Terin Mah sout

Mr Butler,

With respect I encourage you to read this through to the end, simply because your actions against the vaping and electronic cigarette industry in our country border on NARCISSISM.
Let me begin by reminding you that your education and career experience do NOT make you IN ANY WAY SHAPE OR FORM qualified to make decisions regarding the health of anyone beyond your immediate family. Get out to the suburbs and actually talk face to face with the people of the vaping industry; you know, the ordinary Australians, many of whom whose businesses you have destroyed simply because you don’t know how to properly regulate sales of what is already a LEGAL DRUG…
all while you continue to let ‘Big Pharma’ sell in supermarkets a virtually identical (but much more toxic and less effective) product to children as young as twelve!

Here’s a fact for you:

View original post 1,576 more words

A letter to Dr. Sandro Demaio

Perhaps the greatest obstacles Australia’s vaping advocates are facing are:
1. the widespread misconception amongst government officials and health professionals that most of the harm of smoking comes from nicotine, and
2. the insidious belief that all e-cigs are dangerous.

Nicotine is actually just one of several addictive substances in cigarettes, but in small doses it is not only relatively harmless but also quite beneficial in alleviating stress, anxiety and other mental health issues. In fact, almost all of the harm from smoking comes from the thousands of other chemicals in tobacco smoke, many of which are carcinogenic or highly toxic.

In the last few days, CEO of VicHealth (Victoria, Australia) Dr. Sandro Demaio has been ramping up the amount of DISINFORMATION he’s been spreading with regards to the increased use of e-cigarettes by the country’s youth. His crusade against everything vape is bordering on pathetic stupidity, with a slew of completely erroneous statements about tobacco, the tobacco industry, the e-cig industry and even vapers themselves.
I write this today hoping he reads it, because his fear campaign has to STOP!
We the vaping community are sick of his incessant nonsense!

The government could be putting vapers on notice, with taxes for e-cigarettes on the table. Public Health Expert Dr @SandroDemaio explains if this will lower the number of young people taking up the habit. pic.twitter.com/hS5kImvZPi

— The Project (@theprojecttv) April 12, 2023

I quote from his April 12th 2023 appearance on the Ten Network current affairs show ‘The Panel’ and follow each of his statements with my response.

“make sure we’re stopping the enormous number of single use highly addictive toxic products coming across the border”

Yes! Those of us who are vaping properly want that too! Being dependent on nicotine isn’t all that great, which is why We The Adults Who Vape – many of whom (including myself) that are both older and wiser than you – are so cranky at the conservative voices who want to punish us all for the sake of what a few greedy ripoff merchant criminal scumbags are doing to harm our own children. We agree that ‘disposable vapes’ and ‘pod’ devices which are pre-filled with extraordinarily high concentrations of nicotine should be immediately banned, simply because more often than not they are dangerous and unsafe for the user. Why? They are poor quality devices (which fail to meet any national standard of manufacturing process) filled with unknown quantities of toxic chemicals from unknown origins.

“The tobacco industry, the vaping industry have created this ‘black market’.”

You are incorrect. The ‘black market’ for e-cigs only started to rise from October 1st 2021, when then-Health Minister Greg Hunt formally imposed his unsocial Draconian ‘prescription model’ on Australian adults who were importing liquid nicotine for their own personal use as a ‘workaround’ following the decision by Australia’s Therapeutic Goods Administration to classify liquid nicotine as a Schedule 7 Poison. By the way, those illicit vendors on the ‘black market’ have been selling nothing else except disposable vaping devices and pre-filled ‘pod’ devices; you know, the very same devices children have proven they can quite easily obtain from online retailers who are taking advantage of a distinct lack of oversight from both State and Federal authorities. There are also countless tales of children as young as ten actually importing hundreds of disposable vape devices at a time – the three most popular are IGET Bar, IGET Goat and GunnPod – from international wholesalers for as little as AU$12 each then selling them on the street to their class mates for anywhere above AU$30 each.

So then, WHY is there a ‘black market’? Purely because people who want to give up smoking tobacco cigarettes have been facing great difficulty obtaining a prescription to import liquid nicotine from overseas suppliers based in either the United Kingdom, America or New Zealand. THAT, Sandro, is NOT the fault of either the tobacco industry or the “vaping industry” – it’s actually because there’s only a very small number of GPs willing to write out a prescription – so get your head out of your ass and accept the fact that not only is your declaration of those two entities being responsible for the ‘black market’ incorrect, but also it could put you in serious legal jeopardy considering that you have absolutely no evidence whatsoever to support your egregious indictment.

“It’s a purposeful ploy to get the Australian community and politicians to throw their hands up and say, “let’s just make it a free-for-all””

Again, more fucken LIES! I’ll say this one more time so you (hopefully) get it through your mush filled head:

THE AUSTRALIAN THERAPEUTIC GOODS ADMINISTRATION, FORMER HEALTH MINISTER GREG HUNT AND THE CURRENT FEDERAL GOVERNMENT ARE, AS A COLLECTIVE, WHOLLY RESPONSIBLE FOR THE EXISTENCE OF ‘Black Market Vapes’!!!

“We will end up with another generation addicted to tobacco.”

That is ABSOLUTE FUCKEN BULLSHIT!!!! Any child who is paying $30 to buzz out on strawberry flavoured GunnPods and IGET Bars WILL NOT fork out $50 for a pack of tobacco which is used up in less time, doesn’t give the same sense of euphoria, tastes like a fucken dog turd and is socially unacceptable amongst their peers!!!
For fuck’s sake, will you shove that argument back up the festered ass crack of the psychotic imbecile who thought of it first?

“Here in Australia we have some of the lowest smoking rates in the world.”

Yet again you spew out misinformation! According to World Population Review there are exactly 50 countries with lower per-capita smoking rates than Australia, including New Zealand, Mexico, Norway and Sweden!
Source: https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/smoking-rates-by-country

“We’re a world leader in tobacco control”

Not exactly true, because when it comes to tobacco products, the only reasons less people are buying them is because Australia is one of the two highest taxing nations on earth for tobacco products and vaping is a much cheaper option for getting a nicotine ‘fix’. Australians pay some of the highest prices per pack of 20 cigarettes in the entire world. Who’s the other high-taxing nation? New Zealand.
The only differences between the Kiwis and us is the fact their government
1. allows for pharmaceutical grade liquid nicotine to be sold over the counter,
2. protects minors through strict regulations of the market,
3. applies severe penalties for those found to be selling any kind of product which contains liquid nicotine or ‘nic-salts’ to those persons under 18 years of age,
4. educates their citizens about the dangers of certain products, and
5. most importantly don’t feel the need to unfairly over-legislate.

“There are safer ways of quitting smoking, including patches, chewing gum and other measures.”

Didn’t take long and you’re back to bullshitting us! In attempting to determine the most effective method of quitting the deadly habit researchers at Harvard University concluded that the use of Nicotine Replacement Therapies was highest on the list, yet over the course of the last decade there have been several hundred surveys conducted of both current and former tobacco users who describe NRTs such as gums, mouth sprays, lozenges and patches as being completely INEFFECTIVE and certainly not a permanent solution. I myself once tried Champix to quit, but within 48 hours of experiencing the same severe nausea, restlessness, sleep deprivation and migraine headaches that 98% of varenicline users report having, I returned to cigarettes. Two years after that failure I switched to vaping nicotine infused e-liquid and now, six years later I have not smoked any kind of tobacco product nor do I ever want one again.

“There are pathways in Australia that they don’t have in the UK”

Fucken bullshit! And what might They be exactly, Sandro? Come on, enlighten us as to what’s available to Australian smokers other than a telephone support service, chemical inhibitors (eg. varenicline, bupropion and cytisine) and NRTs such as inhalers and patches! Every one of those quit smoking methods and support services are available to smokers across the entirety of the United Kingdom – which if you’d done your research you’d already know – with many of them provided FREE via England’s NHS ‘Stop Smoking’ service.
Source: https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/stop-smoking-treatments/

“We need to do what’s right for us here in Australia”

Let’s face it, the fucken assholes in Canberra only care about how much money they rake in each year from tobacco excise and profits tax from the multinational pharmaceutical companies, with proof of that fact coming from Federal Treasurer Jim Chalmers just two days ago…
https://www.news.com.au/national/nsw-act/politics/treasurer-jim-chalmers-slams-vaping-explosion/news-story/507143527e513d1f552688ab4ec305eb

Then we get shit for brains self-righteous conservative fucktards like you Sandro, who scare the shit out of the public with utterly false information. Trust me when I tell you this:
The BEST ways to wipe out the ‘black market’ are:
1. DEMAND the TGA immediately reclassify pharmaceutical grade liquid nicotine as a therapeutic medicinal product with EXACTLY the same retail indices as what ‘Nicorette QuickMist™’ mouth spray has… (you know, the regulation which allows that product to be stocked on supermarket shelves even though it contains not only the very same ingredients as a liquid nicotine vape but also hydrochloric acid, trometamol and ethanol),
2. REWRITE tobacco sales legislations so they no longer cover just tobacco but include ANY product which contains liquid nicotine or ‘nic-salts’, and
3. INCREASE penalties for any individual or company that sells to minors any product which contains liquid nicotine or ‘nic-salts’,
then strongly enforce those new regulations and vigorously prosecute offenders as a deterrent.

Here endeth the lesson.

With thanks to Hairy™

Letter to Professor Emily Banks

Professor Banks,

The next time you want to misguide the public by declaring that “vaping leads to smoking”, consider this:

If you could satisfy your own sugar craving by buying $20 sticks of fruit flavoured candy from one shop, at the same time as another shop was selling sugar infused sticks of dogshit for $50 each, would you stop buying fruit candy and start exclusively buying sticks of dogshit?

I WOULD THINK NOT.

The ONLY WAY today’s youth will be prevented from becoming addicted to nicotine is if governments restrict the sale of ALL nicotine products to those aged 18 years and above, allow Australian adults free access to liquid nicotine (just like it’s available to adults in New Zealand, the United Kingdom and America) then commence an education campaign describing how smokers can successfully quit cigarettes permanently by attending legitimate ‘vape stores’ to learn both how to use properly manufactured e-cig devices safely and how to determine the correct amount of liquid nicotine they should add to their preferred flavour of e-juice.

I started smoking tobacco cigarettes at the age of 12. Why? Because they were freely available to me at that age from several outlets including convenience stores and supermarkets. After six months of solid research into electronic cigarettes and other nicotine replacement therapies such as patches, gums and mouth sprays, I stopped smoking at age 47 (on ANZAC Day 2017 to be precise) and started vaping liquid which contained nicotine. I still to this day vape liquids which contain nicotine simply because I’m addicted to the drug, but I’m actually consuming less nicotine than I would be if I were still smoking. I’m now 53 years old and have not smoked tobacco IN ANY FORM since that day, nor will I EVER smoke tobacco again. Nicotine is a LEGAL DRUG which medical practitioners across the globe have declared is “not harmful in small doses”. Let me put it to you this way: to satisfy my nicotine cravings I would much rather not harm my health by ingesting over 7000 dangerous chemicals – many of which are carcinogenic – via a disgusting, socially unacceptable and inherently more expensive method.

Your most recent public statements about vaping fail to recognise that legitimate vape store owners operating across the country today must, due to state and federal regulations, supply to authorities ingredient lists for the vape juice products they sell. If those juices did indeed contain the “dangerous chemicals” which you so often speak of, how are those stores able to keep selling them? Understand that there are extremely large fines for selling liquid nicotine to any person in Australia. Only the Morrison Government’s legislative changes on October 1 2021 (which allow Australians to import the compound into the country for personal use after providing a doctor’s prescription) keep Australian vapers from kicking in the doors of our civic leaders and demanding we have access to a LEGAL DRUG which is available in other forms (patches, gums, mouth sprays, cigarettes and roll-your-own tobacco) from supermarkets, convenience stores, petrol stations and tobacconist outlets.

You need to wake up to yourself and start talking to us, the 600,000+ Australian adults who vape. The nonsensical gibberish about vaping you have been publishing of late is being shot down in flames on a daily basis by those of us having more common sense than you exhibit. You need to understand that liquid nicotine vaping would save the country’s health system hundreds of millions of dollars annually, simply due to the undeniable fact that tobacco smoking is still the leading cause of death and illness in this country. Imagine being the force behind a drastic reduction in the rates of heart disease, respiratory diseases, strokes and cancers which are directly attributable to the smoking of tobacco products, simply because you have listened to reason and followed the science instead of cherry-picking negatives from discredited studies and debunked theories. Imagine Australian Standards for vape juice and e-cig products which would ensure those wishing to quit smoking had a viable, clinically safe alternative to tobacco cigarettes. Imagine also Australian industries growing tobacco here and producing laboratory quality liquid nicotine for vaping, Australian businesses producing vaping juices to Australian Standards and Australia becoming a world leader of the electronic cigarette industry.

With that, I ask you to please stop your misinformation campaign, come out of your laboratory into the real world, speak with the vaping community in person and discuss with us sensible solutions to this issue instead of hanging from the apron strings of governments beholden to the revenue they collect from tobacco excises.

With thanks to Hairy™…

The Australian Vaping + e-cig Debate

A 2022 review from the Australian National University‘s Centre for Epidemiology and Population Health (commissioned by the Morrison Government) found use of illicit ‘black market’ vapes and imported ‘disposable vape pens’ manufactured in unregulated facilities, most notably those items being sold under the counter and online by many convenience stores, tobacconist outlets, petrol stations and illicit vape store proprieters right at this very moment “increased the risk of multiple adverse health outcomes including poisoning, seizures, burns and lung injury”. Frustrated law enforcement officers, legitimate retailers and e-cig industry stakeholders all say that the illicit trade of ‘disposable vape pens‘ continued to expand amid “bureaucratic buck-passing” between incompetent managers of state and federal government departments.
Bureaucrats and authoritarian figures across Australia need to understand these INHERENT FACTS:

• Legitimate vape store vendors across the entire country DO NOT sell e-cig products which can cause acute lung injury (Why? Because they EDUCATE the customer at time of sale about correct and safe use of the e-cig device being purchased);
• Ingredients lists for every e-liquid stocked by legitimate vape stores MUST be registered with federal and state authorities to prove they do not contain improper amounts of “harmful chemicals” or any amount of liquid nicotine;
• Properly manufactured ‘vape juices’ contain the EXACT SAME INGREDIENTS found in common household food items;
• Vaping nicotine is not (and I stress this) NOT “a pathway to tobacco smoking”, simply because anyone consuming sweet tasting $20 products which their peers approve of is not going to swap those products for ones that their friends are turned off by, that taste like dogshit and cost $50 each;
• We The Vaping Community know without any hint of doubt or prejudice that the federal government is highly reluctant (to the point of combative) to make changes to this country’s archaic and Draconian laws which prevent the sale of liquid nicotine to adults, wholly due to their childish fear of losing billions of dollars in tobacco excise revenue, and
• (you can take this one as Gospel) Former Federal Health Minister Greg Hunt MP’s ‘prescription model’ and the current Federal Government’s lackadaisical approach to the alleged “youth vaping epidemic” are 100% the ROOT CAUSE of the current ‘black market’ for illicit e-cig products.

“Do You Know What You’re Vaping?”
Propylene glycol (‘PG’) is an active ingredient in over 90% of toothpastes sold in supermarkets and retail stores across the globe today. Vegetable glycerin (‘VG’) is an active ingredient in 75% of all confectionery, whilst also present in other food products such as processed cheese slices, carbonated soft drinks and most packaged sliced bread. If government ministers, public health officials and dumb journalists are going to keep on scaring the public about vaping while every e-liquid sold in an Australian vape shop contains the very same PG, VG and natural flavourings derived from fruit and plant leaves, they should also tell people not to brush their teeth with toothpaste because it contains (as they so eloquently put it) “the same ingredients found in nail polish remover”. Next, Kraft ‘Singles’ sliced cheese should be taken from supermarket dairy shelves, TipTop ‘Wonder White’ bread removed from retailers everywhere while soft drinks such as ‘Fanta’ and ‘Mountain Dew’ must also be banned.
With consideration to the current misinformation and fear campaigns against all forms of vaping being run by state health authorities of late, a large majority of the 700,000+ legitimate vapers across the country today are fed up with how we are being ostracised and effectively treated like criminals, simply because we want a healthier and more cost effective solution to managing our dependence on what is a LEGAL DRUG!

Here’s what I believe Mark Butler MP (Federal Health Minister), imbeciles-in-overpaid jobs like Dr. Sandro Demaio (CEO of VicHealth), Amber-Jade Sanderson (WA Health Minister) and other state or territory health ministers need to do with the utmost of urgency:

1. IMMEDIATELY make liquid nicotine legal by forcing the Therapeutic Goods Administration to categorise liquid nicotine and ‘nic-salts’ as therapeutic medicinal products;
2. Allow adults to purchase liquid nicotine and restrict sales to only registered vape stores or pharmacies, namely places where tobacco smokers can freely visit in person to be properly educated about what vaping actually is and how to vape safely;
3. Immediately cease the sale of Nicorette / Nicabate sprays, lozenges, patches and gums from supermarkets and make them only available to adults from either chemist outlets or the tobacco counter where tobacco products are sold from today;
4. Create Australian Standards for both the chemical composition of e-liquids and all associated e-cig products to ensure not only product quality but also that those liquids do not contain anything except reliably sourced food grade propylene glycol and vegetable glycerine, food grade flavourings and pharmacy grade liquid nicotine distilled from tobacco plants grown right here in Australia;
5. Educate the community with Public Service Announcements that explain how parents need to be more vigilant, then change the whole “Do You Know What You’re Vaping?” campaign to, “Where Did You Get That Vape?” and describe why vapes that don’t meet Australian Standards are dangerous;
6. Create a ‘Hotline’ that parents can call to identify (‘name and shame’) the criminals who are selling imported disposables and ‘pod’ vapes to children via social media sites such as TikTok, Facebook, WhatsApp, WeChat etc. then act immediately on those submissions, and
7. Get more inspectors on the streets and physically track down the scumbags who are avoiding their federal and state tax obligations by importing disposable vape pens and illegally selling them to kids both online and under the counter from petrol stations and convenience stores run primarily by Pakistani, Indian, Asian and Middle Eastern crime gangs.

Lastly, the wording of the current retail laws for tobacco products needs to be changed to read, “all products containing liquid nicotine or ‘nic-salts'”. Remember that it’s illegal for cigarettes and roll-your-own tobacco to be sold to minors, yet children as young as 12 can easily buy nicotine replacement therapy products such as patches, sprays, gums etc. simply by walking through a self-serve checkout at their local Coles or Woolworths supermarket. Minors will find it much more difficult to get any kind of tobacco product or ‘nicotine vape’ product once restrictions on where those items can be sold are put in place and strongly enforced by government regulatory authorities, namely the A.C.C.C. and State Police.
Pretty simple really!

With that, I’m demanding the bureaucrats and other misinformed improperly educated loudmouths – most of whom have NEVER SMOKED A CIGARETTE IN THEIR ENTIRE LIFE – get off their asses, come out and talk to the legitimate vape vendors, talk to the people who have used vaping to successfully quit cigarettes for good and…
DO SOMETHING POSITIVE FOR A CHANGE! 🤓

More About The Orange Faced Shitcunt

There’s two things which I can’t understand:

1. Why is Donald J Trump leader of a political party when he does not have a place in Congress or hold any seat of public office?
2. What power or control do those loyal to him believe he has which would force them to do his bidding in fear of reprisals from the man himself?

Seriously, if Trump came up to me and demanded I do some completely ridiculous thing for him, I’d
(a) tell him to go fuck himself, and
(b) demand he either make me do it himself or send his goons around to try and make me.

Those sucking Trump’s cock are obviously doing so because he has something on them which could either send them to jail or see them lose millions of dollars. Why do I believe that? Because if you weren’t ever in any way corrupt or criminal and the cunt offered You money to do something for him, knowing what the world knows about his history would you trust him to pay up? I fucken bet you wouldn’t!

With Thanks to Hairy…™