Nationals’ leader and shadow minister for agriculture, Mr David Littleproud, has announced that the party would push for relaxing Australia’s current approach to vaping, bringing it more in line with the regulatory conditions imposed on cigarettes and other tobacco products.
Mr Littleproud made the comments speaking with ABC News on Tuesday 21 March 2023, noting that the existing policy brought in under the last Coalition government over a year ago had clearly failed to address the issue.
“We have got to put a hand up and say with genuine intent that what [former health minister] Greg Hunt put forward has not shifted the dial, and in fact, has exposed children to this increasing black market for vapes,” Mr Littleproud said.
“And unless we use some common sense and make it easy for the regulators to police and mirror and simulate what is happening with cigarettes, then we will not get the impact we want on cracking down on these black markets.
“The Nationals want to make sure that we protect children because at the moment, we have got an epidemic out there where young children are getting on these things. I have a son, a 15-year-old son who a couple of years ago tried these and was able to get access to them, and while I get where the health professionals come from, I live in the practical reality of the real world.
“These things are on every street corner, and what we need to do is to be able to tighten them up, streamline the regulation, the ones we have got – particularly when they are aligned to cigarettes – and make sure that we make the policing easier for our state and federal agencies to crack down on.”
In the Labor caucus later that day Federal health minister, Mr Mark Butler, was asked about the Nationals’ proposal – and while he acknowledged the existence of a major black market, he noted that Mr Littleproud’s plan closely aligned with the reforms being sought by the tobacco industry.
“The industry has found a new way to develop a generation of nicotine addicts and we will not stand for it,” Mr Butler said.
The Public Health Association of Australia (PHAA) has also blasted Mr Littleproud’s stance, stating that the Nationals’ policy will not only increase the vaping problem, but pointing out that their history of receiving tobacco industry money ‘means they’re irrelevant in any vaping discussion.’
PHAA CEO, Adjunct Professor Terry Slevin declared that the public health community unequivocally rejects and condemns the National Party’s new position on e-cigarettes and vaping.
“It is dangerous and is guaranteed to commit today’s children and future generations of Australians to lifelong nicotine addiction,” Professor Slevin said.
“Tobacco is one of the most available consumer products in the market. It is available in supermarkets, convenience stores, petrol stations, bars, pubs, clubs, and more. This is exactly the model that will make the vaping problem worse, so it is the opposite of the solution we need.
“By being the only major political party in Australian that takes tobacco industry money – at least $276,062 between 2015-16 and 2021-22 from Philip Morris Ltd – the Nationals have ensured its views on this issue are worse than irrelevant.
“It invites the community, and any serious policy makers, to see its pronouncements on tobacco and vaping to be likely to be influenced by the industry which seeks to continue to profit from ill health and nicotine addiction.”
Professor Slevin pointed out that it was the Nationals who worked aggressively within the previous Coalition government to water down the regulation installed when they were part of government – “which they now recognise has failed.”
“We will continue to work with the Australian Government and other entities which are serious about taking genuine, meaningful action to reduce the harms from vaping,” Professor Slevin said.
“These steps should include tougher border controls and banning retail sales of vaping nicotine and supposed non-nicotine products outside a medical prescription model.”
Professor Slevin’s position, and that of many others opposed to vaping, was further supported with the release of a detailed international study led by ANU, which found that vaping is linked to ‘poisoning, immediate toxicity (including seizures) and lung injury.’
Published in the Medical Journal of Australia on 3 March 2023, the study builds on a major 2022 ANU report on e-cigarettes, with additional peer-review and evidence from more than 400 studies and was touted as the most comprehensive review of the health impacts of e-cigarettes to date.
Lead author, Professor Emily Banks from the ANU National Centre for Epidemiology and Population Health, said the review confirms multiple risks of e-cigarettes, particularly for non-smokers and children, adolescents, and young adults.
“Recent evidence shows increasing vaping, especially in children and adolescents, even though it is illegal except on prescription,” Professor Banks said.
“Almost all e-cigarettes deliver nicotine, which is extremely addictive. Addiction is common in people using vapes and young people are especially vulnerable to addiction, as their brains are still developing.”
Other risks identified in the review included poisoning, especially in small children, seizures and loss of consciousness caused by nicotine overdose, headache, cough, throat irritation, and burns and injuries, largely caused by exploding batteries. There was also indirect evidence of adverse effects on blood pressure, heart rate and lung functioning.
Another major risk identified by the study was that young non-smokers who use e-cigarettes are around three times as likely to go on to smoke regular cigarettes, compared to young people who did not use e-cigarettes.
The review found that most use of e-cigarettes is not for smoking cessation – since most smokers who vape continue to smoke and most use in young people isn’t about quitting smoking. While most people who quit smoking successfully do not use any specific products, the review found that e-cigarettes can help some smokers to quit.
“Our lungs are designed to breathe fresh air,” Professor Banks said.
“People using vapes are inhaling a complex cocktail of chemicals. While we know about some of the risks of vaping, the review found that the effects of e-cigarettes on major health conditions like cancer and cardiovascular disease, are unknown.
“The evidence supports Australia’s prescription-only model for e-cigarettes, which aims to avoid use in non-smokers and young people while targeting use for smokers seeking to quit.”
However, even this review has attracted criticism from other medical researchers and a recent review and critical analysis of the study was published an Australian team led by Dr Colin Mendelsohn from the Alcohol and Drug Service, at St Vincent’s Hospital in Sydney.
“In our view, the review failed to achieve its aims because it did not compare the relative risk of the harms of vaping to conventional cigarettes; it did not consider the net public health impact of vaping; it ignored evidence that vaping is effective in smoking cessation; and it confused causation and correlation in interpreting the association between youth vaping and cigarette smoking,” Dr Mendelsohn and his colleagues wrote.
“Banks et al. also used evidential double standards: they were prepared to accept a causal interpretation for the gateway hypothesis based on an association in observational studies but rejected similar evidence from observational studies of cessation.
“More importantly, they adopted a sceptical attitude towards the findings of randomised controlled trials showing that vaping is effective in assisting smoking cessation.”
Their analysis summarised the evidence from the Bank’s report that was inconsistent with the main findings of the review.
“Let us just put this in perspective: you did a study that shows that young people under 18 who get on vapes are three times more likely to get onto cigarettes,” Mr Littleproud said.
“So, if you regulate for under eighteens and take that opportunity away from them and keep the supply chain tight in terms of where it can be sold, then you actually have a long-term solution.
“There is no silver bullet to this. Why not just crack down on the rules that actually are there? Why not say, let us enforce the bans? Let us actually get serious about it. Wouldn’t that work?
“All we are saying is let us streamline the regulatory model to make sure that it mirrors cigarettes because then that makes policing easier. That is a commonsense approach to protect children, to make sure that we have a long-term solution of not just getting people off vapes in the long-term but getting people off cigarettes.”
When asked by The Guardian Australia on Tuesday 21 March 2023 if he had met with leading tobacco control experts and public health experts to discuss the issue, Mr Littleproud noted that the Nationals had ‘met with everybody.’
“There’s a doctor, I can’t remember his name, that’s made representation to us,” Mr Littleproud said.
“But this isn’t about medicine, this is about regulation.”