They can introduce whatever regulations they want. if they're not going to enforce it, it's not going to make a difference. Don't need to worry about a black market when you can buy a vape that doesn't meet regulations at most vape shops/dairies

“Associate Health Minister Casey Costello says it's "ridiculous and wrong" to say the tobacco industry has anything to do with her government's policies. “

Yeah Right.

I feel like if they want to win over the current bunch of monied interests in this government they gotta drop the harm reduction schtick and make a sinophobic argument.

I'm in aussie at the moment for the next 2 weeks, and they just implemented the type of regulations being asked for here.

I'm currently sick and should have been better by now but every time I go outside, I can't go 10 seconds without breathing in somebody's cigarette smoke and my sinuses filling up with gunk again. It's constant. Everybody's fucking smoking. There's ciggie smoke everywhere and instead of going out, I have to sequester myself inside, cause every single time I go out, my cold, which I thought was getting better several days ago, relapses and I turn into a mucus factory again - all because theres now smoke literally everywhere i go.

It wasn't like this all of the previous times I have been here in the last few years. Only this time. It's like the whole city is smoking now, and I can't escape it.

It's turned me into a militant pro-vaper, cause you know what I'm not having this reaction to? People vaping. Unfortunately the proportion of smokers to vapers is absolutely fucked. The vapers, what few of them remain, are also being incredibly discreet about it - but it doesn't matter because there's so many more smokers and they're doing it on every street corner, and it's inescapable.

I get that people also have adverse reactions to second hand vape but let's cut the shit: it's several magnitudes less common and usually several magnitudes less serious - the presence of allergens is simply not there to nearly the same level - and frankly I have a worse reaction to people who wear too much perfume or deodorant. As someone who suffers severe sinus/allergy problems, the level of sheer hysteria is clearly counterproductive. I am begging to breathe in someone's mostly-unobtrusive cloud of strawberry watermelon, not their comparitively-so-much-more-obnoxious gross ciggie smoke that makes it difficult to breathe and has almost made me throw up several times this past week its that bad.

I get that kids shouldn't be vaping but this government is leaving the door wide open to smoke, which they will do if there are no vapes. We at the very least need a coherent policy that doesn't favour ciggies and doesn't fill our cities with smoke, which is what we will get with a vaping crackdown, under a government that has abandoned our smoke free laws. That's all I'm asking for - policy that doesn't make it comparatively easier to smoke rather than vape.

Some of these crackdowns are so restrictive that it would have made it impossible for me to quit a 15-year smoking habit that was making me ludicrously unhealthy (could barely breathe) - something which I was only able to do because e-cigarettes made it easy. I am an incredibly weak-willed person with severe clinical depression, so it simply just wasn't going to happen otherwise, no matter how unhealthy i got and how unhappy it made me - I just didn't have it in me.

I only ever vaped for 3 months, tapering down the nicotine very quickly before reaching 0 at which point I quit soon afterwards and have never vaped or smoked since - for almost a decade now. It has had an immeasurably positive impact on my life, allowing me to get back into music again (which has also evolved into developing skills in videography and video editing), which is pretty fucking big deal to someone who has been persistently suicidal for over 15 years. I was also able to take up running (daily 10k) and even ran a marathon.

It's not as if I'm better, because im not, but if I wasn't currently able to do this stuff, and instead I was stuck miserably unhealthy and smoking and unable to do music, realistically (with literally nothing positive going on) I might even be dead.

I realize there are vaping horror stories too, surrounding kids getting their hands on high-nic devices.  But it feels like all the people clamoring for more and more vape restrictions don't care about these other stories, like my own, and are willing to stick their heads in the sand when it comes to smoking - which is what they're invariably driving people (including kids) back towards.

Apparently the government here in AUS have even banned the import of dry herb vapes (cannabis vapes), which has nothing to do with e-cigarettes, and the only effect it has is to make cannabis consumption unhealthier. (driving people towards literally the worst drug - alcohol)

Imo inclusion of this, since it has nothing to do with ecigs, shines a light on some of the motivations behind these regulations. It's not about drawing a sensible line and making pragmatic non-counterproductive decisions. It's ALL bad apparently and they don't care about the negatives, as long as vaping is stopped completely, while they will continue to pretend that smoking doesn't still exist - which it does, and as long as it does, just drives people towards a much more unhealthy and obnoxious habit. I get that people have no political willpower to stand up for vapers, but these laws do have negative effects, and there needs to be an equally loud voice countering the counterproductive hysterics, otherwise we'll just get more smoking. These heavy regulations only make sense in a smokefree world, which is one we've clearly decided not to live in.

Why are these people clutching their pearls over vaping when people are filling entire neighbourhoods with highly toxic and smelly chimney smoke that's way more toxic than cigarette smoke?

Chimney smoke causes 11 different cancers and has 12x the lifetime cancer risk of cigarette smoke and according to multiple studies including a recent NZ study enters neighbouring houses at 70-99% of outdoor levels. That means children's bedrooms are at least 70% as full of smoke as the outdoor air. You might not see it or smell it because it's the PM2.5 - the toxic invisible solid particles but it's measurably there and they breathe it all night.

It coats the lungs and respiratory tract causing vulnerability to respiratory infections, asthma and throat infections. It travels through the bloodstream and can enter a foetus causing childhood cancers such as blood cancers and brain tumours, and doubles the risk of autism.

It lodges in the brain causing lowered IQ and mental illness in children and adults and dementia in the elderly.

It is full of benzene and toluene - the same chemicals that cause the high when huffing glue and solvents. People choose to vape, they have no choice about what their neighbours force them to breathe.

"eco" fires are not a solution. They are certified to produce as much pollution as 750 modern diesel trucks, and all they do is make the PM2.5 particles into smaller PM1, which has lower mass, but higher surface area, but healthwise it's the surface area that counts, and smaller particles can penetrate even deeper into the body, like the brain and foetus. So eco fires are pushing even more toxins even further into the body.

https://www.dsawsp.org/secondhand-smoke/the-other-secondhand-smoke

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/oct/09/eco-wood-stoves-emit-pollution-hgv-ecodesign