The Coalition of Asia Pacific Tobacco Harm Reduction Advocates (CAPHRA) is a vaping lobby group most Australians have probably never heard of. But on 6 April it issued a press statement trying to warn our political parties that if they did not liberalise access to vaping products, perhaps “millions” of voters would turn against them.

That’s right folks. Forget political parties plans to address climate change, the death of the barrier reef, fires, the worst floods we’ve ever seen, asylum seekers being left to rot for 10 years in offshore detention, failure to introduce a national anti-corruption commission, failure to address violence against women and many more big issues. It’s more freedom to vape that CAPHRA thinks will decide our election.

Besides having problems even spelling “cigarettes”, grammatical problems and getting more than all of 138 hits on its latest riveting video published 26 days ago, CAPHRA doesn’t seem to mind publishing easily fact checkable out-of-date nonsense on how badly Australia is allegedly doing in reducing smoking.

Source

Its press release quoted the irrepressible Australian vaping advocate Colin Mendelsohn:

The two national government data sources on smoking prevalence are the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare’s triennial National Drug Household Survey (NDHS) and the Australian Bureau of Statistics National Health Survey.

Here are the data on daily smoking prevalence

2013:(14+): 12.8% (AIHW)

2016:(14+): 12.2% (AIHW

2018 (18+): 13.8% (ABS)

2019 (14+): 11.08% (AIHW)

2021:(18+): 10.7% (ABS)

AIHW source: Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (2020c). Table 2.3: Tobacco smoking status, people aged 14 and over, by sex, 2001 to 2019 (persons). In Chapter 2: Tobacco smoking supplementary tables, National Drug Strategy Household Survey 2019. Canberra: AIHW.

Mendelsohn’s words quoted by CAPHRA appear in his March 15 2022 submission to the Australian Health Department’s National Tobacco Strategy 2022-2030. Strangely, nowhere in his submission does he cite or quote the ABS’s 2021 data which was published  on December 10, 2021, three months before he finalised his submission.  In his submission he compares the average annual falls in smoking prevalence in Australia, England and the USA writing “The annual rate of decline in smoking since 2013 has been 0.3% in Australia, 0.7% in England and 0.8% in the US”.

Had he looked at the average annual decline in Australia across the 4 years 2018-2021, he would have had to write that Australia’s rate declined by an average of 0.775% per year – a figure inconvenient to his “embarrassing failure” narrative. His forecast that it’s “highly unlikely that Australia will reach the ‘new’ target of <10% daily adult smoking by 2025” – in two and a half years from now – will put egg all over his visage if recent declines continue.

Mendelsohn should also have been aware that the way “smoking” is counted in England is different to how it’s counted in Australia. Australia includes cigarette and roll-your-own smokers plus all exclusive users of other combustible tobacco products like pipes, cigars, hookah and shisha, whereas England only counts cigarettes and roll-your-own as “smoking”. England’s full combustible tobacco smoking prevalence will therefore be higher.

The booming use of disposable vapes by Australian school kids which is alarming school principals, parent groups and those in public health seems certain to trigger major revisions to the regulation of vaping products in Australia later this year. If state and territory governments significantly ramp up fines for selling vapes without prescription and put far greater effort into busting and publicising raids on sellers who are currently banking on COVID19-depleted low priority for this, many small businesses will not risk it.

Lesson from New Zealand

New Zealand, following an unsuccessful 2018 challenge by the Ministry of Health over Philip Morris International’s plans to sell the NVP HEETS product, the government was forced to allow the marketing of NVPs, including no age restrictions for purchase, no advertising constraints and no accountability for retailers.

The graph below, using data from New Zealand Action on Smoking and Health, shows what has been occurring with 14-15 year olds’ regular smoking and vaping prevalence in New Zealand. Between 2012-15, overall smoking fell by 21% from 6.8% to 5.5% and by 37% from 17.7% to 11.2% in Māori children.  But after the advent of vaping, the decline changed to a growth of 9% between 2015-19, with Māori smoking rising 21%. While this was happening, regular vaping was rising dramatically: between 2015-2019, the prevalence of regular vaping rose 173% (5.4% to 12%) and by a roaring 261% in Māori children (5.4% to 19.5%).