Be_nice retweeted
The current government wouldn’t know what a KPI is if they tripped over one!
313 firebombings
Increased nicotine use,
as they essentially offset billions of dollars towards organised crime!
Insanity is failing repeatedly, but doubling down on the same failure is Albo syndrome!
South Australia’s latest crackdown raises an uncomfortable question: if previous penalties were insufficient, what evidence shows that dramatically larger ones will succeed?
The government proposes fines of up to $21 million and 130-day closures. But a maximum penalty is only a threat until authorities can detect offending, secure convictions and enforce the consequences. Rohan Pike’s distinction between harsh legislation and effective enforcement deserves an answer.
“Leading the pack” is a political ambition. The public needs measurable reductions in criminal profits, illicit purchasing and smoking. Longer closures may disrupt retailers, but the article provides no assessment of whether their customers quit or simply find another supplier.
The response to excise reform is similarly incomplete. Cheaper legal cigarettes could increase consumption, and that risk requires serious assessment. So does the possibility that the price gap sustains illicit demand. Invoking the tobacco industry does not resolve that economic question.
Nor should reform be assessed as though it consists solely of cheaper cigarettes. Enforcement, taxation, cessation support and regulated alternatives for adults should be evaluated together.
The government is right to reject fining smokers. That recognises that people with nicotine dependence need practical help. The same principle should shape the wider response.
Before celebrating another escalation, publish the resources, targets and evaluation plan. Governments should explain what would count as failure and when they would reconsider. Otherwise, every disappointing result becomes a justification for tougher laws, while the underlying strategy escapes scrutiny.
abc.net.au/news/2026-10-13/l…
Be_nice retweeted
When will Health authorities realize we (Vapers) have already Quit smoking! Stop forcing us to stand next to smokers in little smoke filled rooms. We dont want to die anymore than those who want those stupid laws! Let us live healthy lives with our Vape. Vape IS NOT SMOKE.
Be_nice retweeted
Tax payer funded Australian tobacco control extremists want you to know that excessive taxes on smokes and insane restrictions on vapes and pouches has nothing to do with there being a black market.
Pfff… spits coffee
If that’s what they want us to think, it’s past time we quit funding these lunatics!
abc.net.au/news/2026-10-09/h…
The ABC’s reporting raises a question ACOSH and the organisations behind its joint letter need to answer.
Their letter states: “The illicit trade was not caused by tobacco-control policies.” Yet the ABC reports that law enforcement sources identify the enormous price gap between legal and illegal cigarettes as a driver of the trade, and argue that reducing excise could weaken criminal revenues.
Those positions are difficult to reconcile. Weak enforcement and cheap overseas supply matter. But why dismiss the contribution of policies that make the legal product vastly more expensive?
ACOSH’s own letter describes a low-risk, high-profit market. Surely examining what creates that profit is part of addressing it.
This does not establish that cutting excise alone would solve the problem. It does demand an honest assessment of taxation alongside enforcement, cessation support and accessible, regulated tobacco harm reduction.
Public health loses credibility when it treats questioning a policy as questioning the value of protecting lives. Policies deserve scrutiny precisely because lives matter.
Be_nice retweeted
A 13 year old (during a “life saving” social media ban) is fighting for his life in hospital after being coerced into the illicit tobacco and vapes organised crime firebombing wars.
Weren’t the laws that created this predictable and warned about mess meant to protect the children? 🤦♀️
How many more must die before the unwinnable wack a mole “enforcement facade” ends, in favour of sensible real life saving regulations?
1,10, 10000?
@Mark_Butler_MP @JulianHillMP @AlboMP @AngusTaylorMP @2GB873 @NewsTalk4BC @3AW693
Thanks to “world leading” tobacco control advocates who pushed a dumb Govt into making deplorable policy decisions, we now have a “world leading” firebombing epidemic that is nothing like what Australia has ever endured!
Our youth are coerced into it!
People die, and businesses suffer!
But yeh nah, keeping cig taxes at insane levels and vape bans in place is working wonders apparently! 🤦♀️
@TimWilsonMP @AngusTaylorMP @Anne_Ruston @RossCadell @BenFordhamLive @ALIVEadvocacy
youtu.be/tCYOo7IpWFE?si=r8ar…
Be_nice retweeted
Meet our latest Harm Reduction Hero, Australian physician @AlexWodak, who doesn't mince words about the consequences of his country's current nicotine regulations.
“What Australia has done is make itself a poster case for other governments around the world to see what happens when extremism is carried out.”
Learn why he recommends a more pragmatic approach to nicotine regulation and believes there is only one way to interpret the Swedish Experience:
snusforumet.se/en/alex-wodak…
Be_nice retweeted
Simon, I think you’ve accidentally identified the important distinction.
Pharmacies, bottle shops and licensed firearms dealers operate within functioning regulated markets. What Victoria has created around tobacco is an extraordinarily lucrative illicit market, and Victoria Police has explicitly linked the violence to criminal groups fighting for the profits generated by that trade.
So perhaps the critical lesson isn’t simply “govern tobacco shops like pharmacies”.
It is to ask why organised criminals find tobacco so extraordinarily profitable in the first place.
Victoria’s own parliamentary research quoted the National Tobacco Strategy saying organised crime groups exploit the rising cost of legal tobacco to generate illicit profits. Police also described suburban illicit tobacco shops turning over around $1 million annually.
Regulation, licensing, closures and enforcement are absolutely part of the answer, and Victoria has finally strengthened all of them. But regulation deals principally with the risk of operating illegally. It doesn’t by itself remove the enormous financial reward.
That’s the uncomfortable part Simon continually seems determined to talk around.
Bottle shops aren’t being firebombed because rival criminal syndicates aren’t fighting for control of a multibillion-dollar black market in beer.
Perhaps the lesson from alcohol, pharmacies and firearms isn’t that tobacco needs another regulation. Perhaps it’s that successful regulation requires a legal market capable of actually competing with the illegal one.
Be_nice retweeted
Tobacco and vapes black-market harm now extends beyond excise losses, increasing health risks and tobacconist violence to business insurance policy scarcity, plunging property values, lost trade and lack of neighbourhood safety!
Is this what success looks like @Mark_Butler_MP?
Be_nice retweeted
The illicit tobacco market now has a blast radius.
archive.is/2026.09.19-223056…
Small businesses located near tobacconists are reportedly being denied insurance, priced out of adequate cover or offered policies excluding fire damage. They may have no connection to tobacco whatsoever, yet they are carrying the financial risk created by organised crime.
This should change how Australia assesses tobacco policy.
The cost of a failed market is not confined to smokers or lost excise revenue. It spreads to neighbouring retailers, their employees, insurers, emergency services and entire shopping strips.
Strong enforcement is necessary. But repeatedly removing sellers while leaving consumer demand underground creates opportunities for replacements.
A durable response must also shrink the market criminals are fighting over. That requires proportionate taxation and regulated adult access to lower-risk alternatives, supported by product standards and firm youth protections.
When innocent businesses cannot insure themselves because of the shop next door, illicit tobacco is no longer merely a tobacco problem. It is a community-wide policy failure.
Be_nice retweeted
Because it seems most people who dont smoke need to hear this and our #FDA #CDC are suppressing the facts they already know is truth. Just because it looks the same to non smokers, doesn't mean it is comparable to the death cigs cause. That's Disingenuous behavior! And it KILLS!
🤖 Made with AI
Be_nice retweeted
Best commentary I’ve read in yonks. Excellent stuff @PaulrGregoire 👏🏻👏🏻
sydneycriminallawyers.com.au…
Be_nice retweeted
We used to have a legal regulated vaping market that helped hundreds of thousands of Australians to quit smoking for good.
They were mercilessly banned and forced out of business often pushing owners to bankruptcy with no compensation.
The consequences of that has been a thriving multi billion dollar black market where smoking rates increase and other adjacent small businesses can’t get insurance and therefore can’t trade either!
Is this success?
Imagine an Australian shop built around helping adults leave cigarettes behind. A person who has smoked for twenty years walks through the door, speaks to someone who understands the practical challenges of switching, and leaves with a regulated product, clear instructions and somewhere to return if they need help.
@jamomartin @drjoesDIYhealth @JulianHillMP @Anne_Ruston
09algor.substack.com/p/what-…
Be_nice retweeted
I presented at the #misinformation inquiry today, where I argued that the biggest peddlers of misinformation are the government MPs and unelected bureaucrats. Here's a snippet made by @ausvstheagenda. Hope you guys enjoy it!
Be_nice retweeted
Australia's opposition just proposed legalising vapes & nicotine pouches for adults and ending prescription-only access. It's what CAPHRA has argued for years, and we welcome it. #AusPol, #Canberra, #AusHealth bit.ly/4xHCzPD
Be_nice retweeted
#305 Tobacco and Vapes Wars Firebombing 🔥🚒‼️
5 people inside building while it was being torched in Dickson St Melbourne this morning!
Extremely lucky to get out this time but this is getting past the point of insanity!
Govt action needs an emergency response!
Current govt sitting on hands will result in deaths!
news24.com.au/national/crime…
Be_nice retweeted
🏆Congratulations Australia!🇦🇺
We are now the world champions in illegal tobacco and nicotine consumption!
At least 7x more illegal nicotine products are consumed in Australia per person than the world average!
Well done to @Mark_Butler_MP and friends!
Yet he stands in parliament yesterday again and tries to convince us that the AIHW smoking rate survey of less than 0.1% of population accurately depicts Australia’s real smoking rate!
He ignores waste water studies that covers around 50%, the ABS states nicotine use is up 40% since 2017-2025 and various other state focused statistics are ignored!
I’ve crunched the numbers across the board and the most likely real smoking rate in Australia is at least double than what is claimed by AIHW (5.6%).
Meaning that yes smoking rates in Australia have increased above 11%!
@nick_coatsworth @jamomartin @ALIVEadvocacy @AngusTaylorMP @TimWilsonMP @maryaldred @RossCadell @mattjcan
Be_nice retweeted
“‘People will die’ is powerful political rhetoric, Julian, but where is the evidence that a tightly regulated adult vaping market will produce more deaths than the alternative?
Nobody is suggesting we ‘let it rip’. Regulate products, enforce age restrictions, keep them away from children and prosecute illegal sellers. But also acknowledge the evidence: nicotine vaping helps adults quit smoking, and smoking remains vastly more dangerous.
Julian also repeats the claim that young people who vape are ‘five times more likely’ to smoke. There is an Australian observational study behind that figure but ‘five times more likely’ does not mean vaping caused five times as many children to become smokers.
And here is the counterfactual his argument desperately needs to confront: where is the predicted explosion in youth smoking?
Australia experienced a huge increase in youth vaping, yet youth cigarette smoking remains at historically very low levels. Association at the individual level and causation at the population level are not interchangeable.
If vaping really creates smokers on anything approaching the scale implied by ‘five times more likely’, after years of widespread vaping we should be able to see that epidemic in the smoking data.
Where is it?”
Be_nice retweeted
Mr Speaker,
my question goes to @Mark_Butler_MP:
You just claimed that smoking rates have decreased, yet by every considerable measure that is clearly wrong or a lie.
Which one is it?
Either way, you’ve tripled public spending on unsuccessfully enforcing a murderous and extremely dangerous firebombing black market that was created by your governments position on tobacco and vapes, so how many lives must die and how much public money must go up in smoke before you concede?
Be_nice retweeted
abc.net.au/news/2026-09-03/c…
The Coalition’s proposal marks a major shift in Australia’s tobacco debate. But the most important part may not be the excise cut at all.
For years, Australia has pursued two policies simultaneously: making legal cigarettes extraordinarily expensive while making regulated vaping products extraordinarily difficult to obtain. The result has been a huge illicit market supplying both.
The better question is no longer simply, “Should tobacco excise be cut?” It is: “How do we move consumers away from organised crime and, ultimately, away from smoking?”
That requires more than cheaper legal cigarettes. It requires strong enforcement, a competitive legal market and easy adult access to regulated, substantially lower-risk nicotine alternatives.
If the Coalition genuinely combines excise reform with legal regulated vaping, this could be the beginning of something much more important than a tobacco tax cut.
It could be the moment Australia finally recognises that tobacco control, harm reduction and fighting organised crime are not competing objectives.
They are parts of the same solution.
Be_nice retweeted
SURVEY for adult nicotine vapers who quit smoking by vaping.
QUESTION: Since I quit smoking, the number and severity of my lung infections has been...
If you've experienced almost complete cessation of chest infections, please put (E) in the comments.
Please repost 🙏
85%Much lower & less severe
7%little lower/ less severe
6%No change
2%Higher and or more severe
177 votes • Final results
