Simon’s latest argument is revealing because, underneath all the rhetoric, he actually concedes much of the problem his critics are describing.
He accepts that Australia has a huge illicit tobacco and vape market. He accepts that cheap illicit cigarettes have destroyed much of the price deterrent created by excise. He accepts that enforcement was inadequate for years. He accepts that organised crime has become deeply embedded in the market. And he accepts that enforcement now has to be dramatically intensified.
Yet somehow none of this causes him to seriously question the policies that helped create the extraordinary economic opportunity criminals are exploiting.
His argument on tax is particularly strange. Nobody needs to claim that reducing excise will magically make illicit tobacco disappear. James Martin and others are making a much simpler economic argument: reduce the enormous price differential and you reduce one of the incentives driving consumers towards the black market and criminals into supplying it.
Simon responds that criminals could simply lower their prices further.
Of course they could. But that doesn’t mean price is irrelevant. If it did, Simon would also have to abandon one of tobacco control’s central arguments for the past several decades: that consumers respond to price.
You cannot simultaneously argue that increasing the price of cigarettes powerfully changes consumer behaviour and then suggest that decreasing the extraordinary price advantage enjoyed by illicit cigarettes would have essentially no effect on consumer behaviour. Price elasticity cannot conveniently disappear when the discussion turns to the black market.
The vaping argument is even more revealing. Simon says Australians already have easy access to vapes because illegal retailers sell them everywhere. But that is hardly an argument in favour of the pharmacy model. It is an extraordinary admission of its failure.
The question isn’t whether Australians can obtain a vape illegally. Clearly they can. The question is why adults wanting to move away from smoking should have to participate in an illegal market to obtain products that are legally available through ordinary regulated retailers in countries such as New Zealand and the UK.
An illegal vape market is not evidence that legal access is unnecessary. It is evidence that demand has found another route because the regulated system has failed to capture it.
Then comes perhaps the biggest contradiction. Simon criticises the authors because they say enforcement alone hasn’t solved the problem while simultaneously arguing that enforcement remains essential.
There is no contradiction whatsoever.
Saying that enforcement is necessary but insufficient is entirely coherent. Police enforcement against illicit drugs is necessary too, but few serious criminologists would claim enforcement alone can eliminate drug markets. Supply, demand, price, incentives and regulation all matter.
That is precisely why a three-pronged strategy makes sense: reduce the extraordinary financial incentive created by the legal-illegal price gap, provide smokers with attractive regulated lower-risk alternatives, and maintain strong enforcement against criminal suppliers.
Simon’s own evidence about hundreds of closures actually demonstrates the scale of the policy failure. When governments have to close hundreds of retailers, seize millions of illegal products and impose million-dollar penalties simply to regain control of a consumer market, declaring victory seems remarkably premature.
And celebrating seizures tells us very little about the proportion of total supply being intercepted. Four million seized vapes sounds impressive until we know how many successfully entered and were sold. Hundreds of shops closed sounds impressive until we know how quickly supply migrates to delivery services, social media, replacement premises and other channels.
The comparison with restaurant firebombings is also weak. Nobody is claiming organised crime was invented by tobacco excise. The relevant question is whether Australia’s nicotine policies created an unusually profitable commodity market that organised crime could exploit. The existence of organised crime elsewhere doesn’t answer that question.
Most importantly, Simon repeatedly treats Australia’s record-low smoking prevalence as though it settles every other policy question.
It doesn’t.
Australia can simultaneously have historically low smoking prevalence and a disastrously large illicit tobacco market. Those propositions are perfectly compatible. In fact, the latest AIHW results themselves make the distinction important: smoking prevalence tells us how many Australians smoke; it does not tell us whether the cigarettes consumed were purchased legally or illegally.
This is where Simon’s argument becomes circular. Falling smoking proves the policy works. Growing illicit trade doesn’t count against the policy because other countries have illicit trade too. Illegal vaping doesn’t demonstrate failure because people can still obtain vapes. And hundreds of closures demonstrate that enforcement is now succeeding rather than demonstrating how deeply the illicit market became entrenched.
Whatever happens, the existing policy framework apparently emerges vindicated.
That isn’t the way policy should be evaluated.
The real question isn’t whether Australia should abandon tobacco control or stop enforcement. It is whether a system designed for yesterday’s nicotine market remains appropriate for today’s.
A sensible harm-reduction position can hold several thoughts at once: celebrate falling smoking, protect young people, enforce the law, regulate safer nicotine products properly, and acknowledge when taxation or regulation produces unintended consequences.
Australia doesn’t have to choose between public health and harm reduction.
Harm reduction is public health.
And the existence of hundreds of illegal shops selling exactly the products Australians continue to demand should prompt curiosity about why the legal market has lost so much ground, rather than another declaration that everything is going according to plan.
Arguing against Chapman is generally pretty pointless. Everyone who is inclined to know the truth knows he is full of shot. Well, ok, arguing can have fun value. Sadly it is not as fun with him as with others. Even for someone like Trump, his delusions leave room for him to feel humiliated (fun!). But Chapman is pretty clearly so deep into narcissistic delusion that he is immune to any recognition he should feel humiliated.
Emeritus Professor Simon Chapman AO and his colleagues have for decades been the major advocates for the tobacco control policies Australia has been implementing in recent decades. But Siminy continues to deny that Australia’s sky high cigarette excise and quasi prohibition of vaping have resulted in a booming black market controlled by organised crime and also remains vigorously opposed to any reduction in cigarette excise. People with different views are often ridiculed or accused of being agents of tobacco companies. This should not be how public health operates in Australia or anywhere else. Public health should always welcome polite and respectful public and private discussion and debate about important issues. The crux of Australia’s failed tobacco control policies is the inexplicable savagely restricted availability of the safer nicotine option, vaping, while deadly cigarettes are readily available. Alan Gor’s comments here and elsewhere are polite and respectful of Simon. As they should be. Alan recognises that when Hon Lik produced the world’s first commercially successful vape in 2003, which was then patented and went on sale, the world irrevocably changed. Actually it should have changed much earlier but the importance of Swedish snus was overlooked for far too long. In fact, snus had existed for over 200 years, popular among Swedish men but no one else (but this popularity varyied considerably). Snus provides proof of concept of tobacco harm reduction. Simon claims he was involved in the decision to ban snus in Australia but in a rare display of self-doubt later admitted he may have been mistaken. Tobacco control and public health policy generally should not be about personalities. It should be about evidence. Australia’s sky high cigarette excise and quasi prohibition of vaping has had catastrophic unintended consequences. These policies should be reformed and advisers who recommended and supported these policies have made themselves redundant. Australia’s health establishment should review how it accepted these flawed policies and continued to support them long after it was clear that they are counterproductive. Groupthink is unhealthy.