How to Do Public Health Badly: A Case Study in Australian Vaping Laws

As debate rages in the UK about smoking areas in pubs, you might not have noticed Australia’s latest attempt at public health intervention: a sweeping crackdown on vapes. But don’t worry if you missed it; even some Aussies seem a bit confused. In a move that feels more like an overzealous attempt to outlaw anything that remotely resembles smoking, Australia has made it nearly impossible to legally purchase a vape. And the results? Well, let's just say they’ve left a lot to be desired.

Australia has treated vaping as a major public health crisis. They’ve banned heated tobacco entirely—no ifs, ands, or butts about it. And if you want a vape, you’ll need to jump through some serious hoops: get a prescription from a doctor, who is legally obliged to warn you of the dangers, and then try your luck finding a pharmacy that stocks them. Spoiler alert: good luck with that.

The irony here is rich. Vaping, while not risk-free, is widely considered by public health experts—including NICE in the UK—to be far less harmful than smoking. The risks of passive vaping? Practically non-existent. My own GP could only muster up the old “popcorn lung” scare when I asked for a prescription, even though Cancer Research UK confirms there are no documented cases of this condition linked to vaping. Yet here we are, with Australian doctors reluctantly writing prescriptions and pharmacies refusing to stock the very product they’re supposed to be dispensing.

Mario Tascone, COO of Chemist Warehouse, summed up the situation perfectly: “What are the implications for liability down the track? What if we end up finding, like cigarettes, in 30 years' time people have cancers and stuff like that, who’s liable?” Chemist Warehouse, interestingly, has an 8.6% stake in Liber, the only nicotine vape manufacturer in Australia with distribution rights through national pharmaceutical wholesalers. The result? A black market that’s booming.

The absurdity of the situation is hard to ignore. Cigarettes, the real public health menace, are still freely available in Australia, while vapes are being pushed underground. It’s a textbook case of how not to do public health: create a legal pathway that’s almost impossible to navigate and watch as people revert to more harmful alternatives.

Contrast this with a more sensible approach: make cigarettes hard to buy, and vapes easier. The idea is to nudge people towards the less harmful option. But in Australia, the focus seems to be on the delivery method, not the substance. Pharmacies that won’t stock vapes have no issue selling nicotine patches, gums, and pills. The difference? Vaping looks like smoking, and that seems to be enough to get it banned.

Anti-cancer charities and Quit Australia have backed this strange policy, even as they admit there’s no solid evidence linking vaping to significant health risks. This stands in stark contrast to Cancer Research UK, which takes a much more measured stance: yes, vaping isn’t risk-free, but it’s far less harmful than smoking. And if you’re trying to quit smoking, it’s a valid option.

Let’s hope that here in the UK, we continue to legislate based on evidence, not on knee-jerk reactions to things that merely resemble smoking. After all, public health policy should be about harm reduction, not about appearances.