GPs should focus on medicine, not economics

Stuff reports:

The professional body for general practitioners wants stronger restrictions around vaping products – but an anti-smoking charity opposes the move.

Young people aren’t smoking cigarettes at the rates they once did, but school principals and doctors are worried the saccharine scent of vape juice might be filling that nicotine void.

Hence, a call from the Royal College of General Practitioners for New Zealand to only allow the sale of vapes in pharmacies, or through QuitLine. 

You might think that’s the sort of initiative an anti-smoking charity could get behind – but the director of ASH (Action for Smokefree 2025), Ben Youdan, says this sort of restrictive move could do more harm than good. 

It’s an insanely bad proposal.

They are saying that the product that is 19 times more harmful than vaping should be available on demand at retail stores and the product that is 5% as harmful should be only available by prescription.

It would be a public health disaster. It would also turn almost every paper towards the black market.

In Australia this model has seen 88% of vapers using the black market.

Dr Colin Mendelsohn writes:

According to a recent Roy Morgan survey, no more than 12 per cent of vapers have a prescription for nicotine and only 2 per cent of purchases were from a pharmacy – the government’s preferred model. Legal access is complex, onerous, and costly. Perversely, it is far easier to buy deadly cigarettes. Vapers also do not see themselves as patients in need of medicines to stop smoking and have rejected the need to see a doctor.

Did the College of GPs look at the actual data in Australia, before coming up with their proposal?

Predictably, the prohibitionist model has created a thriving black market for illegal, unregulated vaping products that do not comply with Australian standards. Massive numbers of poor-quality devices are being imported from China and are widely sold by tobacconists, convenience stores, online, and on social media. There is no quality control for illegal products and the black market sells freely to children. Criminal organisations are becoming increasingly involved.

Amazing that people think prohibition works despite the thousands of times it has not.

The only way to eliminate an illicit market is to replace it with a legal and regulated market. Nicotine liquid should be an adult consumer product that is sold from licensed retail outlets such as vape shops, convenience stores, tobacconists, and general stores. There should be strict age verification and severe penalties and loss of licence for under-age sales, with strict enforcement.

A regulated legal market is preferable to the black market when it comes to products that only harm the user.