Marijuana is being legalised, now legalise vaping

Never mind the presidential election. Today saw California, Nevada and Massachusetts join Alaska, Colorado, Oregon, and Washington in legalising marijuana (Arizona rejected it and results in Maine are still being counted). Close to a quarter of all Americans will soon have access to legal cannabis. This is progress.

Meanwhile, e-cigarettes continue to be prohibited in several countries - and the corrupt WHO is currently talking about bans in many more, if reports from Delhi are correct. Two of the prohibitionist countries are Australia and New Zealand. Today, three organisations from these countries produced a report recommending the legalisation of nicotine for e-cigarettes. It's a policy supported by three quarters of Australians and is no more than common sense.

You can read the report here. Here's the conclusion...

The Australian Taxpayers’ Alliance, MyChoice Australia and the New Zealand Taxpayers’ Union recommend that the sale of ENDS and safe quantities of nicotine e-liquids be legalised with appropriate regulations.

The organisations support the development of appropriate regulations which avoid the dangerous error of classifying ENDS similarly to combustible tobacco cigarettes. Were the latter error to occur, a huge opportunity to improve public health, and save thousands of lives, will be wasted. With this in mind, we propose the following regulatory approach.

The Australian Taxpayers Alliance, New Zealand Taxpayers Union and MyChice Australia jointly call for the following actions to optimise the potential of this new and disruptive harm reduction technology:

1. That the Therapeutic Goods Administration to make the right choice to exempt nicotine for the purpose, and that the NZ Ministry of Health changes laws and regulations to favour full retail availability (to adults) of appropriately regulated ENDS;

2. Governments in Australia and New Zealand not miss grasping a public health opportunity through treating vaping like smoking (such as in the are of excise tax); and

3. The introduction of appropriate regulation at federal level to allow adults to choose less harmful alternatives throughout Australia and New Zealand (harmonization of harm reduction).