The headline on this one really says it all, but there is more to the story. A senator in Australia that is quite literally the head of a committee that the Senate launched last year to examine vaping has inadvertently quit smoking with the help of e-cigarettes. The self-proclaimed social smoker, Australian Senator Hollie Hughes, was curious about vaping so she gave it a try and it led her to quit smoking.

Vaping Works & Senator Hughes Now Knows It

A Sydney Morning Herald report indicated that she hasn’t smoked a cigarette in over three months. Wow, who would have thought? Well, us for one. And probably you if you’re a former smoker who now vapes instead. Yeah, as many of us former smokers that have become vapers already know… vaping obviously works.

The Attempt To Ban Nicotine Vaping In Australia

What’s significant about her transition to vaping is that she is the chair of a committee that opened an inquiry into vaping last year after Australia’s health minister attempted to essentially ban the purchase of nicotine vaping products. The way things are in Australia, for those that don’t know, the only legal way Australians can buy any vape products with nicotine in them is to import them for personal use from a company outside of the country. As there are many vape shops online that are based outside of Australia, this isn’t really much of an issue, although Australians do have to wait a bit for their shipments to arrive while many vapers outside of Australia can just walk or drive to a store and buy what they need on the spot. What the health minister tried to do was make it illegal to import any nicotine vaping products, which would have cut off Australia’s hundreds of thousands of vapers, many of whom are almost certainly using vaping to stay off cigarettes.

When the health minister made his move, a lot of people pushed back. Those who pushed back included Hughes, who signed onto an open letter with other politicians that said the attempted ban was rushed. The health minister eventually pulled back and cancelled his ban, but it definitely caused a scare in the Australian vaping community.

Turns Out E-Cigarettes Do Help Smokers Quit

When the Senate decided to open an inquiry into e-cigs, Hughes became the chair of that committee, which means she literally led the effort to examine vaping. Curious about it all, she decided to try vaping and next thing she knew, she was a vaper that no longer smoked cigarettes. In 97 days, she saved over AU$2,500… which probably sounds like a lot because it is. Cigarettes are super expensive in Australia thanks to a tax on them that has consecutively risen for years.

Australia Moves Forward With Prescription-Only Vaping

The government down under is moving towards making nicotine vaping products only accessible with a prescription, but Hughes thinks another route should be taken. She thinks that they should be made as accessible as cigarettes so that smokers can easily switch. In many countries, this is how things are. In the United States, most gas stations it seems carry e-cigs now and smokers can decide to buy them instead of picking up some cigarettes when they walk in. That makes it easy for smokers to switch over because the access is already there. They don’t have to see a doctor who may or may not write them a prescription, they just buy what they need and that’s that. Sadly, this isn’t the case everywhere and vaping products are still less accessible in some areas than cigarettes.

Vaping Should Be Easier Than Smoking

The new prescription-only model won’t start until later in the year, which means there’s still time for the government to move in another direction. Whether or not they actually will is something that we can’t predict, but for the sake of smokers in the country and those who have already switched to e-cigs, it seems like they should make life easier, not harder, for those that want to choose the less harmful option.

According to at least one estimate, there are currently over 500,000 vapers in Australia. In 2017-2018, there were 2.6 million adults that smoked daily. Of course, that figure doesn’t include those who smoke less regularly and it doesn’t include underage smokers. Still, that’s a lot of smokers that could be switching to vaping and the impact on Australia’s economy and the health of Australian citizens could be huge. And with smoking being the leading cause of preventable diseases and death in the country, it seems to make a lot of sense to make it easier for smokers to switch to vaping, not harder.

Vaping In Other Developed Nations Is Much Easier

Not far away from Australia in neighboring New Zealand things are much different. The government of NZ has looked at the science, seen that vaping is a lot less harmful from what research has shown, and has gone ahead and not only made it easy for smokers to buy e-cigs but even taken up a campaign to get them to switch. They’ve even made a website that tells smokers the facts so that they know vaping is a better option than smoking and that they should switch. The UK has taken a similar approach and in many ways has really led the charge for developed nations, pursuing truth in science and creating policy based on the findings of scientific research and analysis.