RIP Vaping: The Cure For Smoking That (Mostly) Didn’t Work
After nine years of unbridled vaping, the government’s finally coming for your gunnpods.
This week the government announced a crackdown on the sale of vapes across the country, that will restrict the sale of electronic cigarettes to pharmacies along with the introduction of plain packaging used to warn tobacco smokers.
Federal Health Minister Mark Butler put it bluntly. “Vaping was sold to governments and communities around the world as a therapeutic product to help long-term smokers quit,” Butler told the National Press Club.
“It was not sold as a recreational product – especially not one for our kids. But that is what it has become: the biggest loophole in Australian history.”
While alternative legislation proposed by a convenience store industry group and members of The Nationals Party* earlier this year argued that vapes should be taxed and regulated like other tobacco and alcohol products – a move which would see the government gain approximately $300 million per year in tax revenue – the Federal government has sided with medical advocates who warned that crackdowns were crucial to curbing Australia’s renewed interest in smoking.
Love it or hate it, vaping as you know it is about to change.
“I Originally Thought It Would Help Me Quit Smoking”
The new Federal Government health initiative will see all single-use disposable vapes (pictured) being banned in Australia
Tom* tells Junkee that he picked up vaping during the 2020 lockdown. “I originally thought it would help me quit smoking,” he said. “It definitely did not and only made me more reliant on nicotine.”
“There’s a level of accessibility to vaping… I even managed to get away with it in a bathroom on an international flight.”
“I’ve been telling myself I should quit vaping, but that still hasn’t happened. There’s a level of accessibility to vaping, both in buying them, and also the fact that I can get away with doing it inside the house and at gigs. I even managed to get away with it in a bathroom on an international flight.”
While Tom’s sympathetic to the looming plight convenience stores across the country will ultimately face as vape sales are banned, he ultimately welcomes the crackdown as a necessarily evil.
“I think the crackdown on vapes might be what I need to actually quit altogether,” Tom adds. “If this crackdown takes away this accessibility, then it might be time to go cold turkey.”
“Now I’m Addicted To Vaping And It’s So Much More Full On”
Colloquially, many will remember having vaping pitched to them as a ‘healthier’ alternative to old-fashioned analog smoking. Little were we to know that this is highly debatable in professional circles – those sweet-smelling clouds of vapour have been recorded to contain heavy metals such as nickel and tin along with other cancer-causing chemicals.
India Mark was a smoker who fell into the trap of using vapes to quit the habit. “Smoking felt like a part of my identity in a gross, shameful way,” she says. “Vaping has helped me quit cigarettes altogether. I never crave cigarettes like I used to, but now I’m addicted to vaping and it’s so much more full on.”
India Mark’s (second from left) band The Economy wrote a song about the modern nicotine guilt called “Started Smoking To Quit The Vape”. Photo Credit @jezplayer
India’s band The Economy wrote a song about the situation titled “Started Smoking To Quit The Vape”. Set to speed-metal drumming and vicious guitar tones, the song documents the Catch-22 that many young people in Australia find themselves in. But if nicotine addiction is stressful for young adults, spare a thought for those who were introduced to vaping in high school, a public health challenge that has reached endemic proportions.
“I feel for younger kids who pick up vaping,” India adds. “The nicotine levels are so insane in disposable vapes.”
$63 Million Campaign To Stop Australians From Vaping
Ahead of the looming 2023 federal budget, the government has confirmed it will spend $63 million on a public health campaign to “discourage Australians from taking up vaping and smoking”. Despite arguments about whether vaping is healthier than smoking, or if really is an effective tool for those seeking to quit nicotine, experts urge that preventing younger generations from taking up smoking in the first place is the most crucial issue.
Nonetheless, like scenes in Puberty Blues of people smoking cigarettes in high-school bathrooms, the prolific adoption of vaping across the country might end up defining the pre and post-lockdown years of this millennia’s second decade. And sadly, with an entrenched black market of electronic vapes along with growing consumer demand for electronic cigarettes, putting this lapse in public health policy behind us will probably be much harder than anticipated.
Charles Rushforth is a staff writer at Junkee. Follow him on Twitter.