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The health minister says tobacco companies are using vaping as a ‘gateway’ to addiction; Reserve Bank expected to give borrowers another reprieve. Follow the day’s news, live
The federal health minister, Mark Butler, will today announce a $234m boost in next week’s budget for tougher regulation of e-cigarettes, including new controls on their importation and packaging.
Speaking on ABC’s Q&A on Monday night, Butler, said that the tobacco industry was trying to create a “new generation of nicotine addicts” through vaping and that he was “determined to stamp out this public health menace”.
Vapes were sold to governments and communities around the world as a therapeutic product to get long-term smokers to quit, to help them quit. It was not sold as a recreational product targeted at our kids, but that’s what it has become.
This is a deliberate strategy by the tobacco industry to create a new generation of nicotine addicts and far from being a pathway out of cigarettes, which is what it was promoted to us as, it is becoming a pathway into cigarettes for younger people. You’re three times more likely to take up smoking if you’ve vaped than if you haven’t. So I’m determined to stamp out this public health menace, because that’s what I think it genuinely is.
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