11 February 2024
by Pippa Starr
A few days ago advocates from the ALIVE Advocacy Movement presented Health Minister Mark Butler an exclusive award attached with a letter and some useful implements (symbolic) to help him put out the fires on the dire crisis he has created in Australia with his draconian laws on tobacco harm reduction products!
(see below)
Since vaping bans were put in place and under this Albo/Butler led anti vaping campaign there have been no less than 218 firebombing incidents that has cost Australian taxpayers and businesses hundreds of millions of dollars right across Australia!
It's been a miracle that there hasn't been more fatalities of the general public, shopowners and nearby residents so far.
The damage to public spaces, child edcucation facilities, medical practices, innocent people's homes and cars has been beyond alarming!
Children have suffered bad smoke inhalation in these firebombing incidents, yet the reason why Butler initiated these insane laws that have led to the extremely dangerous turf wars was apparently to prevent youth uptake from smoke inhalation!
Instead, here we are, over a year into the Labor Govt's prohibition on vapes and not only have black market vapes become easier to obtain than ever before, there is a masive turf war that in essence the health minister created!
Unfortunaetly Butler wasn't present in his office to recieve his outstanding award in person but he has recieved his certificate and letter below, so he has no excuse of understanding the trail of destruction he has left in his path.
Charlie McCracken is a former vape store owner and appreciates what good legal vape businesses have gone through in the last year as they were forced to close under new laws with no compensation, only to watch the black market flourish, often in the same locations as their former legal vape specialist stores!
Darren Isbester & Charlie McCracken are the South Australian delegates for the ALIVE advocacy movement, which is helping Australians understand more about what is really going on in Australia when it comes to vaping and harm reduction.
Director Pippa Starr said,
"We need to bring more awareness and eduction to this issue!
It's past time that Australian's understood more about how vaping and other effective harm reduction methods have helped millions of smokers quit for good!
We aren't funded by any big industry, we are the vapers of Australia and simply demand better for Australian health outcomes!
ALIVE stands for Australia, let's improve vaping education, and there is a hell of a lot of space for improvement right now!
We don't want vapes exposed to never smoking youths, we just want our fair and human rights of harm reduction to become a reality in this country!"
Open letter to The Hon. Mark Butler MP Minister for Health and Ageing
This open letter from the ALIVE Advocacy Movement accompanies the presentation of a
Certificate of Achievement and accompanying items made to you on Thursday 30th January
2025
Mr Butler,
The presentation made to you (or your office staff in your absence), represents many things
that we, the adult ex-smoking vapers and smokers of Australia are compelled to inform you
of:
Firstly, The Fire Blanket represents the “Unintended Consequences” blanket that you,
through misguided legislation, threw over a perceived problem of youth vaping that resulted
in many harms including, but not limited to:
1. Thousands of adult ex-smoking vapers returning to more harmful and deadly
smoking.
2. Adult (over 18) ex-smoking vapers having autonomy and access to their life-saving
products restricted or removed, unable to purchase from pharmacies as promised.
3. Over 216 black market fire-bombings of stores by crime gangs that caused
immeasurable harm to shop owners and collateral damage to stores around them.
4. Financial hardship, anxiety and depression for vaping industry and legal vape shop
owners and their employees unjustly forced to close because of your legislation.
5. Burgeoning black-market sales of unregulated, dubious quality vaping products to
Australians including the youth you sought to protect.
6. Decreases in Tobacco Excise revenue due to increasing black market sales of illicit
tobacco. Less funds for more important government objectives.
7. Increased and unnecessary spending of taxpayer’s money to fight an uncontrollable
black market that shows no sign of diminishing as demand for safer smoking
alternatives and cheaper tobacco cigarettes remains high.
Secondly, The Fire Extinguisher represents the implement that can be used to correct the
farcical mess that you (and those that advise you) have created. The fire extinguisher
contains many corrective ingredients including but not limited to:
A large dose of risk-proportionate, sensible vaping regulation based on Tobacco
Harm Reduction and not on misinformation and the misuse of “The Precautionary
Principle”.
A good dose of common sense and acceptance of the weight of global scientific
evidence, instead of denial. Vaping is undeniably safer than smoking.
A portion of initiative for you to decrease the number of tobacco outlets in Australiathat sell the most harmful products, tobacco cigarettes, products that you enable.
A portion of initiative to decrease the tobacco excise to make legal tobacconists
competitive to the black-market sellers you and your predecessor incentivised.
A dose of advice from ghosts of the past for you to facilitate the return of legal
licensed specialist vape shops (with penalties for underage sales and third-party age
verification). Vape shops whose owners know how to help their adult customers and
save lives as they did in the past, the vape shops that were overwhelmingly not
selling vapes to underaged youth, whether they were within walking distance of
schools or not, mostly not. Vape shops that were dedicated to reducing the harm
from smoking.
8. A reasonable request for compensation to those legal vape shops that were
unceremoniously forced to shut their doors, lost all the value of stock, had to maintain
useless leases, lost their livelihoods and their employees placed on the scrap heap.
9. A large dose of rejection for those money leeching NGO’s, Tobacco Control “experts”
and Tobacco Harm Reduction denialists that rely on government funds, tobacco
sales and ongoing smoking for their livelihoods and relevance. Their grossly
exaggerated claims of harm and dismissal of the benefits of nicotine vaping for
smokers are truly irresponsible, negligent and unjustified. Nicotine addiction is not a
serious health condition unless associated with combustible tobacco cigarette
smoking. Many millions worldwide enjoy or obtain substantial health benefits from the
use of nicotine. Nicotine, when separated from combustible cigarette smoke in
smoke-free nicotine products is not highly addictive or harmful as validated by the
TGA and FDA in the use of nicotine replacement therapies available to anyone over
the age of 12 years from pharmacies and grocery stores. Nicotine is found in the
daily diet of all Australians (tomato, potato, eggplant, cauliflower, peppers and
celery). The brain of humans incorporates nicotinic receptors for many reasons.
Nicotine does not cause cancer or brain damage in adult humans, if it did, there
would have been millions of humans worldwide suffering brain damage from smoking
from young ages, including Albert Einstein, but the evidence shows no such thing.
9. A huge dose of advice for your advisers regarding Goebbelsian use of words like
“weed killer”, “radiator fluid”, “nail polish remover”, “bug spray”, “Rat poison”, “EVALI”,
Popcorn Lung”, “Gateway to smoking”, “whole new generation addicted to nicotine”.
These words are spoken without qualification or quantification and are purely
designed to exaggerate, demean and demonize nicotine and tobacco harm
reduction, they are anti-health, inflammatory, and are not backed up by any
substantial proof or evidence. Worldwide statistics show no sign of a gateway from
vaping to smoking, as vaping prevalence increases, smoking decreases, most
studies on this subject do not prove causation, only correlation. Nicotine vaping has
probably diverted many youths away from harmful tobacco cigarette smoking, a
gateway out of smoking, a public health win. There is no such thing as Popcorn Lung
in relation to vaping or even in relation to smoking where Diacetyl content is
hundreds of times larger. EVALI was a short-lived catastrophe in the USA regarding
illicit THC vapes that were adulterated with Vitamin E Acetate causing the death of
68 users, not related to nicotine vaping. We hope that this kind of rhetoric by
responsible government members and NGO’s can cease immediately. We would be
very happy to discuss or debate any of these issues with you or your advisers.
10. A huge dose of rejection for the nicotine abstinence farce known as the World Health
Organisation and FCTC treaty that leeches Australian taxpayer dollars and is untrue
to its own Articles regarding Tobacco Harm Reduction or Harm Minimisation.
11. A particularly large dose of advice to stay out of Australian adults’ (over 18 years)
lives and cease imposing your will on their rights, freedoms and autonomy. Removing
autonomy for 4 million voting smokers and vapers, your aspiration for prohibition
(which has never worked) and your negligence of duty of care to those smokers and
vapers is anti-health, you are seen as authoritarian, arrogant and dictatorial in large
amount.
12. An invitation to watch the documentaries “A Billion Lives”, “You Don’t Know Nicotine”
and “Vaping Demystified”, all available on the Alive Advocacy Movement website, if
you are genuinely seeking the truth about reducing harm from the tobacco cigarettes
that your government enables. Not only enables but makes far more accessible than
the tobacco harm reduction safer alternative.
13. An invitation to read the reports by Public Health England and the Royal College of
Physicians regarding e-cigarettes and nicotine vaping and properly understand them.
14. A portion of intestinal fortitude to help you aspire to the achievements of the UK,
Sweden and New Zealand, among others, regarding tobacco harm reduction and
reduced smoking prevalence, particularly in consideration of Australia’s ongoing
failed National Tobacco Strategy goals, slow smoking prevalence rate declines and
illicit tobacco turf wars. Australia still has nearly 2 million smokers that need more
urgent help, so government and public health messaging should reflect the
opportunity that tobacco harm reduction presents. The truth about nicotine and
vaping should be promulgated in a way that results in far greater and faster positive
health outcomes.
15. An invitation for you to listen closely and widely to the lived experiences of Australia’s
adult ex-smoking vapers whose testimony validates their success in quitting smoking,
subsequent health improvements and increased longevity, instead of succumbing to
the ideological aspirations and misinformation of the tobacco control industry and
others that advise you. There was a time, in your book, when you showed some
empathy for the baby boomer generation, yet they are the ones you are hurting now,
needlessly.
16. A measure of history to remind you, Mr Butler, that vapes were not introduced to
governments and communities around the world as “therapeutic devices to help
hardened smokers quit”, they were in fact introduced to governments and
communities around the world as “A SAFER ALTERNATIVE TO SMOKING”, and
they still are today. They are not “therapeutic” because they were not designed to
cure or alleviate any illness, if they were, they would be on the Therapeutic Goods
Administration register of therapeutic goods, the ARTG, and they simply are not.
Therefore, the agency that should oversee vaping is the ACCC for consumer
products, not the TGA.
17. A serving of reality to remind you, Mr Butler, that nicotine vaping is the most popular
and effective smoking cessation aid in the world today, it is not going anywhere, and
that nicotine vaping has resulted in better health for millions and has caused zero
substantiated deaths in users in over 20 years of use and 114 million users
worldwide. In contrast, your anti-vaping, anti-nicotine zealots, NGO’s and tobacco
control “experts” in public health have presided over around 20,000 deaths of
Australian smokers every year, year on year, despite all the taxpayer funding they
leeched from government.
18. A reminder that when you” think of the children”, please remember that their smoking
parents and families could be living longer and happier, their nicotine vaping parents
and families are living happier and longer with them due to the harm reducing
alternatives they found, that cost them less and cost the government nothing, thereby
increasing their health, wealth and longevity. Think of the children.
As stated previously we welcome an invitation from you to discuss the matters raised in this
letter with some urgency as Australian smokers continue to die prematurely and ex-smoking
vapers are returning to deadly tobacco cigarettes.
We wish you good luck in your future endeavours.
Charlie McCracken, Pippa Starr, Darren Isbester
For, and on behalf of the ALIVE Advocacy Movement and the adult ex-smoking vapers and
smokers of Australia. www.aliveadvocacymovement.com