The Sequel: Prohibition Strikes Back

Alan Gor 19 October 2025

If you thought the first production of Australia’s “Public Health Theatre” was wild, buckle up for the sequel, which is even more unbelievable. The curtains never really closed. The actors just changed costumes, the script got a rewrite, and the same mistakes kept playing out.

This time, the show is darker, louder, and far more expensive. It’s called Prohibition Strikes Back.

Scene One: The Pharmacy Fantasy

When the government banned vape sales, they promised a “medical model.” You’d still be able to get vapes legally, they said, through pharmacies, with a doctor’s prescription.

It sounded reasonable enough at the time. A controlled system, prescriptions for safety, and pharmacists ensuring quality. On paper, it was the perfect balance between regulation and access.

But in reality, it was a fantasy.

Doctors don’t want to prescribe vapes. Most don’t have the training or confidence to discuss nicotine alternatives, and many are simply unwilling to invite controversy. Some fear being labelled as enablers of addiction. Others just don’t want to be dragged into a political fight disguised as a health issue.

Pharmacies, meanwhile, want nothing to do with it. They’ve watched the public backlash and the mixed messages from health authorities. Stocking vapes, they’re told, could put them at odds with the government’s anti-vaping stance. So they quietly avoid the issue altogether.

And then there’s the Therapeutic Goods Administration, the body meant to ensure clarity and safety. It has created a “Notified Vape List” that’s supposed to include only approved, medical-grade products. But on that list appear familiar names, including iGet, one of the very brands the government claims to have banned. It’s like outlawing beer, then quietly approving Heineken as a prescription-only beverage.

So now, Australia has a legal pathway that doesn’t work and an illegal market that’s thriving. The system punishes the honest while rewarding the criminal. What was meant to be a medical safeguard has become a bureaucratic maze.

The pharmacy model was never a solution; it was a smokescreen.

Scene Two: The Rise of the Black Market

The black market loves prohibition. It thrives on scarcity, confusion, and desperation.

When you remove legal, regulated options, you don’t eliminate demand. You just hand it to people who don’t care about laws, safety standards, or age limits.

Across the country, that’s exactly what’s happening. Teens can buy vapes from corner stores and car boots. Adults can find them online or through encrypted chat groups in minutes. Entire Telegram channels operate like underground supermarkets, offering every flavour and strength imaginable, no ID checks, no taxes, no oversight.

Police and customs officers are stuck playing catch-up. Every warehouse raid makes the news, but the victories are hollow. For every shipment seized, two more slip through. For every illegal retailer shut down, another opens around the corner. It’s not enforcement, it’s whack-a-mole on a national scale.

And through it all, the government keeps pretending that it’s “winning the fight.”

But this isn’t a fight against crime, it’s a business plan for it.

Prohibition has created a billion-dollar black market overnight, empowering smugglers, organised crime, and street dealers. The government’s tough talk doesn’t weaken them; it makes them stronger. The harder they squeeze, the bigger the underground economy grows.

That’s not protection. That’s policy failure, plain and simple.

Scene Three: The Consumer Blackout

While politicians, lobbyists, "academic advisors," and media commentators pat themselves on the back, the people most affected by all this, the consumers, are completely shut out.

Vapers, ex-smokers, and small business owners have no voice in this debate. The government holds endless “public health consultations,” but somehow the public itself is never invited. Decisions are made in echo chambers filled with the same experts who helped create this mess in the first place.

When people in public health finally start talking to real consumers, it will change everything they think they know about harm reduction. They’ll realise that the official messaging, the slogans, the scare campaigns, and the moralising won’t help people quit. It will shame them. It will isolate them. It will reinforce stigma instead of support.

But that lesson hasn’t reached Canberra. Instead, the narrative remains dominated by people who’ve never smoked, never vaped, and never experienced what it’s like to be trapped between dependence and condemnation.

The result is a system built on arrogance, not empathy. It’s not collaboration, it’s control. And it’s ordinary Australians who pay the price.

Scene Four: The Data Disappearing Act

Every good sequel needs a cover-up.

When the data doesn’t fit the story, the story simply changes.

The Roy Morgan report originally revealed that smoking among young adults had increased after the vaping ban. But soon after, the findings were rephrased. Words like “increase” and “rise” quietly disappeared, replaced with more neutral language like “shift in behaviour.”

Then came the AIHW’s own figures, showing that smoking rates among 18–24-year-olds had also begun to rise again. This should have sparked a national debate and a serious review of whether prohibition was backfiring. Instead, the findings were ignored by most of the mainstream press.

Why? Because the narrative that “tough laws are working” is too politically valuable to lose.

So the spin continued. The numbers were downplayed. The headlines stayed cheerful. The public was told everything was under control, while the evidence said the opposite.

This isn’t transparency. It’s narrative management, the deliberate reshaping of facts to fit ideology. The kind of manipulation that turns research into propaganda and silences any discussion that doesn’t serve the script.

Australia deserves better than this kind of deception.

Scene Five: The Human Cost

Behind every press conference, every photo op, and every speech about “protecting young Australians,” real people are living with the consequences of this policy.

Some ex-smokers worked hard to quit, but now find themselves back on cigarettes because their preferred vape is banned. Some adults used nicotine to manage anxiety, ADHD, or chronic pain, and now have to buy unsafe, unlabelled products from the black market.

Some parents genuinely want to protect their children but have been misled into supporting laws that make the situation worse. There are doctors afraid to speak up because dissenting voices are labelled “pro-vape” or “industry aligned.”

And there are countless Australians who just want to be treated like adults who want safe, regulated access to something that helps them live longer and healthier lives.

Instead, they’ve been criminalised, stigmatised, and ignored.

This isn’t public health. It’s punishment and control. It’s moral theatre with real human casualties.

Final Scene: The Reckoning

Every show eventually ends, and this one is losing its audience fast.

The Australian public is starting to see through the performance. Smoking rates are creeping back up. The black market is booming. Trust in public health is eroding. Even within the medical community, quiet voices are beginning to question whether the country has gone too far down the path of prohibition.

Real public health doesn’t silence people. It listens to them. It learns from them. It treats adults like adults, not children in need of punishment.

If the government truly cared about protecting Australians, it would stop acting and start governing. It would regulate vapes properly through licensed retailers, with ID checks, product standards, lab testing, and consumer oversight. It would build trust instead of fear.

Because no matter how long this performance runs, the truth will always make its way back into the light.

The longer it plays, the higher the price becomes for everyone of us. STAY TUNED FOR THE THIRD AND FINAL PART - The Rebellion