Had enough of 'experts'

Things will be bad enough after the government doubles the price of vaping in October with its new vape tax without going full prohibition, but the “ban it harder” mentality always seems to prevail. It is this kind of displacement politics that paves the road to anarcho-tyranny. You want to tackle systematic child exploitation in the Midlands? Sorry mate, the best I can do is regulation of vape flavours. 

Australia, as ever, has taken things to tragicomic extremes. In the latest episode of its ongoing tobacco turf war, a gunman opened fire in a Melbourne shisha café this week, injuring a 49 year old man. In Melbourne alone, there have been over 130 arson attacks and several murders since the tobacco and vape market fell into the hands of organised crime. E-cigarettes have always been illegal in Australia and it has the highest cigarette taxes in the world. According to official estimates, between 50 per cent and 60 per cent of tobacco products are now sold on the black market. 

On Thursday, a government minister came up with a brilliant new ruse to put an end to this: banning tobacconists. “Health advocates are doing interesting work”, he said, “asking why our society continues to permit standalone tobacconists.” Would those be the same “health advocates” who got Australia into this mess? The ones who swore on a stack of Bibles that there is no link between tobacco taxes and the illicit trade? The ones who lobbied for e-cigarettes to be banned in the first place and who successfully lobbied for the ban to be extended to nicotine-free vapes and imports for personal use? Sure, let’s hear what those guys have to say. 

 

Read the rest at The Critic. 

Share

Tweet