Australia risks losing ‘war on nicotine’ in same way as war on drugs as illegal tobacco sales explode

Authorities should take a ‘harm reduction’ approach, removing excise for a period and making vapes more available, experts argue

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Australia is now waging a “de facto war on nicotine” that is doomed to fail in the same way as previous prohibition-style policies, experts say, amid a growing debate about how to respond to an explosion in the illicit tobacco trade.

As health experts warn against changes that would undermine decades of fighting to bring down smoking rates, James Martin, a criminology lecturer at Deakin University, and Edward Jegasothy, an epidemiologist at the University of Sydney’s School of Public Health, have called for a major overhaul in how we tax tobacco and regulate vaping products.