While Australia’s black market for tobacco has exploded into a multibillion-dollar crisis, policymakers have been misguidedly focusing on regulating non-combustible nicotine products. In fact, there is growing evidence that the current prohibitions are merely strengthening criminal supply lines rather than tackling the root cause of the problem. All of this brings up the question: why does the government continue to ignore the realities of this situation?
Victorian Liberal MP Mary Aldred recently lamented local authorities’ inability to enforce current tobacco laws properly. However, like many of her colleagues, she seems to overlook the fact that criminal networks have become uncontrollable. The Australian government has just released a shocking report estimating that $11.8 billion in tax revenue will be lost next financial year. Black market cigarette sales have expanded from 3.1 billion in 2022 to an estimated 6.6 billion by 2025, possibly reaching 8 billion by 2026.
Spiralling out of control
In Australia, while cigarettes are readily available, obtaining regulated vaping products is a real challenge.
Meanwhile, in Victoria (as across the rest of Australia), a handful of inspectors face an insurmountable task. High taxes and limited legal sales create a commercial opportunity for organised crime, making enforcement impossible. Despite frequent raids and arrests, illegal operations persist, evidence of systemic failures that allow crime to take root instead of stopping it. This is a worldwide pattern: limiting legal access does not reduce demand, but pushes consumers into illegal markets.
What’s especially worrying about this is how new, safer nicotine alternatives, such as vapes, are restricted as much as cigarettes. In Australia, while cigarettes are readily available, obtaining regulated vaping products is a real challenge. Vapers require a prescription and pharmacies to dispense them — a difficult requirement when many pharmacies have openly expressed their disdain for the products and are unwilling to dispense them.
Yet the role of these policies is paradoxical: by enforcing prohibition, authorities undermine their own efforts and nurture illicit networks. Studies published by major health agencies such as Public Health England have consistently found that vaping exposes users to far fewer toxins than smoking. And now, even an Australian paper reported similar findings.
Local study confirms ridiculousness of current tobacco strategy
Published in the Annals of Internal Medicine, the study of disadvantaged smokers found that those who used nicotine vaping devices were also more likely to quit than those using traditional quitting aids such as gums or patches, with 28 percent being smoke-free after six months compared to less than 10 percent of others. This reinforces the potential for vaping as a cessation tool, especially among populations where smoking is more prevalent due to socioeconomic disparities.
Despite these encouraging results however, the Australian regulatory environment continues to view vaping as a predominantly negative threat rather than a public health opportunity. In contrast, New Zealand is taking a progressive approach that sees vaping as a medical issue.
The approval by Medsafe of a vaping cessation treatment marks something of a turnaround in the approach to nicotine use, which has largely been viewed as only a regulatory issue. However, it is more appropriately analysed from a public health perspective. New Zealand’s approach, focusing on the benefits and risks of vaping, represents a step in the right direction for tobacco control policy.
Clinging to a sinking ship
Australia’s failure to recognise important health distinctions is what leads to an erroneous lumping of non-combustion nicotine products in with conventional tobacco. Combustion is where tobacco’s deadly potential lies; so promoting smokers to move to lower-risk alternatives should be at the heart of public health policy, especially in high-prevalence communities.
Smoking is still one of the top three causes of death in Australia, killing over 24,000 people each year. Rather than a punitive approach, policy should be based on research indicating strategies that actually work. A regulatory framework that allows adults access to safer alternatives would indirectly also diminish the need for illegal sales, resulting in less crime and better public health outcomes. The continued expansion of illicit tobacco indicates that regulatory changes are necessary.
