It’s still harder to buy vaping products like e-cigs and e-liquid than it is to buy cigarettes in some places around the world even though there’s evidence to suggest that vaping is likely a lot less harmful than smoking is. One of the countries where cigarettes remain more accessible than e-cigs is Australia, where the laws basically say that you can walk into a local store and buy cigs but you can’t buy any vaping products with nicotine in them, assuming you’re of age, that is. If this sounds ridiculous that’s probably because it is.
The Hypocrisy
Cigarettes kill millions of people every year. In the United States alone they kill nearly half a million people per year. In the United Kingdom, e-cigs are everywhere but there are still plenty of people who continue smoking even though Public Health England has recommended that they switch to vaping. It’s a different story in Australia, though.
Australians can buy cigarettes at local stores, which, of course, contain nicotine in the tobacco that they’re made from. Meanwhile, they can’t buy a bottle of vape juice if it contains nicotine, not at a local store anyways. What they can do, though, is go online and buy it from an online store. The store must be based overseas so as to not technically be an Australian company and any e-juice that Australians buy from online stores must be for personal use. So Australians can still buy vaping products with nicotine in them but they have to shop online and wait for delivery, which makes them less accessible than the deadly cigarettes sold in local stores.
Cigarettes Kill
The World Health Organization (WHO) says that over 8 million people die every year from tobacco-related deaths. Second-hand smoke alone accounts for over 1 million deaths annually. These are insanely high numbers. In the US, one in five deaths is attributed to cigarette smoking by the CDC. Again, that’s just crazy.
Anti-Vaping Laws
Recently, some US states banned the sale of vaping products after news circulated about vaping-related illnesses and deaths, which the CDC believes may be linked to something other than e-cigs. To be more specific, they believe it may be tied to THC oil cartridges that have been cut with something called vitamin E acetate. This has basically nothing to do with e-cigarettes and the e-liquid that they use, but e-cigarette products have somehow fallen into the crosshairs of legislators all the same.
If US vapers think they have it bad, think again. In Thailand, it’s illegal to vape and those who get caught can be fined and thrown in jail. Japan isn’t much different with nicotine vaping products having been banned since 2010. Oddly enough, Japan is home to one of the world’s biggest tobacco companies, Japan Tobacco International (JTI). And because tobacco products aren’t banned in Japan, companies like Philip Morris have been able to introduce new tobacco products like their iQOS heat-not-burn device.
Not surprisingly to those of us here at Vape Hawk, the iQOS hasn’t seen nearly the same level of market penetration in vape-friendly countries as it has in Japan where it was first launched.
US Vapers Stocking Up
To avoid the impact of a federal ban on nicotine vaping products, which the US government has said is in the works, vapers across the US have started stockpiling all of the things that they need to continue vaping the flavors that they enjoy. The proposed federal ban, as we understand, is aimed at flavored vaping products, leaving disgusting flavors like menthol and tobacco untouched. While that may not be the case, the interesting part, really the hypocrisy of it all, is that tobacco products will remain untouched while vaping products come under increased regulation. So if you’re in the US and you smoke and plan on continuing smoking then you should come out of all this unscathed from a regulatory perspective, but if you plan on switching to vaping or you already vape then you may be facing a less friendly regulatory environment in the days to come.
