AL Gor 24 November 2024
As Pippa Starr states in an X post 29 November 2024 , The AMA is inline to receive a couple of awards themselves.
The "WTF Are They Smoking?" Award and The "Bugga Off Award"
Pippa also quite rightly states "It appears that the @amapresident supports a rampant firebombing black market in Australia that has destroyed businesses, homes, cars, community hubs and lives no less than 154 times across Australia since March last year!".
Perhaps the @amapresident should reconsider her position.
I will elaborate
The recent Dirty Ashtray Award and Exploding Vape Award presented to the Australian Association of Convenience Stores (AACS) and the Australian Taxpayers Alliance (ATA), respectively, have sparked significant debate within public health circles. The Australian Council on Smoking and Health (ACOSH) and the Australian Medical Association (AMA) are rightfully concerned about public health — but it’s also important to understand that the AACS and ATA are not simply industry mouthpieces. Rather, they are pushing for sensible, evidence-based regulations that can better protect public health, reduce harm, and offer consumers more options to make informed choices.
Both the AACS and the ATA have been criticised for advocating policies that some see as benefiting the tobacco and vaping industries. However, it's essential to consider that these organisations are not promoting tobacco use or nicotine addiction. Instead, their primary focus is on ensuring that regulatory frameworks are both fair and effective — and, in the case of the ATA, addressing the black market for vaping products.
AACS: Supporting Practical, Consumer-Focused Policy
The AACS’s primary mission is to advocate on behalf of convenience store owners across Australia, many of whom sell both tobacco and should sell vaping products. Their goal is to support retailers and provide adult consumers with a regulated, safe market for both products.
Critics have focused on the AACS’s refusal to disclose its industry funding to a Senate Inquiry as a negative, but let’s put this in context: transparency is vital, but so is the need to ensure that policy-making does not become overly influenced by ideological positions. The AACS advocates for regulation that aligns with harm-reduction principles, which can make a real difference in reducing smoking rates.
Vaping, as evidence from organisations like Public Health England suggests, is at least 95% less harmful than smoking. The AACS’s position on regulating vaping products is not to encourage nicotine addiction, but to provide adults who are already smoking with a safer alternative. Their stance reflects the desire to strike a balance between protecting consumers from the harms of tobacco and providing them access to safer products.
ATA: Advocating for Safer Alternatives and Black Market Reduction
The ATA's “Bust the Black Market” campaign, which earned the Exploding Vape Award, has been framed as an attempt to push an industry agenda. However, this portrayal misses a key point: the ATA is advocating for the regulation of vaping products to curb the black market and ensure that adult smokers have access to high-quality, regulated alternatives to smoking. The organisation’s calls for treating vaping products “just like cigarettes and alcohol” is a recognition of the fact that nicotine products should be regulated for safety, quality, and accessibility.
The reality is that the vaping black market in Australia has flourished as a result of inconsistent and often overly restrictive laws. By calling for regulation similar to that of tobacco, the ATA is not trying to encourage nicotine use; rather, it is calling for clear, consistent standards that will ensure safer products are available to those who need them most. The ATA’s concerns about the black market are grounded in the idea that unsafe, unregulated products pose a real threat to public health, particularly as vaping becomes a more common tool for smokers trying to quit.
Public health advocates are right to be concerned about youth vaping, but the ATA's stance is about ensuring responsible adult use while keeping harmful, unregulated products off the market. By promoting a regulatory framework for vaping that includes age restrictions and product safety standards, the ATA’s objective is to create a market that promotes harm reduction while reducing illicit sales.
The Bigger Picture: Harm Reduction and Consumer Choice
While ACOSH and the AMA focus heavily on the risks of youth vaping and the potential harms of nicotine, it is essential to take a broader view of the role that harm reduction strategies can play in improving public health. Smoking remains the leading cause of preventable death and disease in Australia, claiming over 20,000 lives each year. Vaping offers a significantly less harmful alternative for adult smokers who have not been able to quit through other means. Banning or over-regulating vaping could have the unintended consequence of pushing adult smokers back to cigarettes, a far more dangerous and addictive product.
The evidence supporting the role of vaping in harm reduction is clear. Leading global health authorities, including Public Health England and the Royal College of Physicians, have endorsed vaping as a safer alternative to smoking. These organizations argue that providing smokers with access to less harmful nicotine products, rather than forcing them to rely on traditional cigarettes, can help save lives.
For the ATA and AACS, the focus is not on promoting vaping or nicotine addiction, but on reducing harm and giving adult smokers a chance to switch to a safer product. Both organizations are advocating for policies that will protect public health while also ensuring that smokers who want to quit have access to viable alternatives.
Regulating with Evidence, Not Ideology
ACOSH and the AMA are passionate about reducing smoking rates and protecting young people from nicotine addiction — and these are worthy goals. However, regulation needs to be guided by evidence, not by ideology. The evidence shows that vaping is significantly less harmful than smoking and that for many smokers, it has been an effective cessation tool.
What the AACS and ATA are advocating for is sensible regulation based on evidence-based public health principles, not ideology. Vaping can be a powerful harm-reduction tool, and regulating it appropriately — through quality control, age restrictions, and safety standards — is the best way to ensure it is used responsibly. By ensuring that vaping products meet high standards, we can protect consumers, reduce the harm caused by smoking, and decrease the demand for illicit products.
A Balanced Approach to Public Health Policy
The AACS and ATA’s positions on vaping regulation should be viewed as part of a larger conversation about practical, evidence-based public health policy. The priority should be protecting adult smokers who are trying to quit, not creating punitive regulations that could backfire by driving people back to traditional tobacco or the black market.
Rather than dismissing the AACS and ATA’s advocacy as self-serving or harmful, we should recognise that they are calling for regulated, safe, and effective harm-reduction options. Vaping is not without risk, but it is far less harmful than smoking, and for many smokers, it offers a much-needed lifeline. Public health policies should be designed to reduce harm, not to take choices away from adults who are trying to make healthier decisions.
Conclusion: Fostering Evidence-Based Public Health
The ongoing debate about vaping and tobacco regulation needs to be grounded in evidence, not fear or ideology. The AACS and ATA are both calling for policies that will help smokers switch to less harmful products while protecting public health and preventing youth access to nicotine. These organisations should not be dismissed for pushing for practical, balanced, and evidence-based regulation. In fact, their advocacy is a critical part of the conversation about how to best reduce the harm caused by smoking and nicotine addiction in Australia.
Public health policy should reflect the best available evidence, and the evidence supports the idea that vaping can be a less harmful alternative to smoking. Let’s focus on sensible, evidence-based solutions that protect public health and support smokers in their journey toward quitting.
I will be voting in favour of The "WTF Are They Smoking?" Award and The "Bugga Off Award" to be awarded to the AMA
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