Online vape seller has ‘no intention of stopping’ shipments to Australia, despite nationwide ban — ‘We have no intention of stopping just because of one twat in Canberra.’::The New Zealand-based seller issued a notice to its Australian customers that shipments will continue regardless of the government’s vape reform.
Leave vaping alone, but ban those single use vapes with rechargable lithium ion batteries in them. It’s absolutely insane to me the amount of waste from throwing out perfectly good rechargeable batteries after one cycle.
The disposable one I’m using has a rechargeable battery and an LCD screen lol. So wasteful. I’ve been saving my dead ones and will be salvaging the battery and screens for a side project.
Just out of curiosity what’s preventing you from getting a refillable setup? You can get refillable, rechargable vapes for about $10 more than a single disposable and it’ll probably save you money within the month depending on how much you use it.
Well I wasn’t planning on vaping for very long, just enough to stop smoking. However, I finally did get honest with myself and get a refillable not too long ago.
Yeah, it was exactly like that for me too. Bought a few disposables (still have them in my drawer, will probably bring them to the supermarket for recycling at some point) because I didn’t want to actually start vaping but realized that I already did.
No, do not leave vaping alone. Just because some asshat companiea found a new way to exploit health damage for profit does not mean it should be allowed because freedumb.
Let me consume nicotine in the least harmful method available. You don’t get to dictate what I do with my body. That includes all drugs.
You mean nicotine gum? Or nicotine patches right? Because those are still legal.
Nicotine gum is not more healthy. You can develop serious issues with your gums and stomach. Nicotine is not meant to be ingested, and gum makes that particularly easy.
Nicotine isn’t “meant” for anything. It’s a side product from a plant that works as a form of protection.
There is no healthy was to use it, but that’s true for almost everything in the world. There are responsible ways to use it, and most drugs should be legal to allow for this. If they’re illegal they’re still going to be purchased and used, but they’re not going to go through regulations that could prevent harm from factors that can be controlled for.
I am not sure what your point is. All I am saying is different substances do better with different ROA. Rock Candy isn’t healthy, however it’s much less healthy if you aggressively insert it into your rectum.
There is a reason there are no nicotine beverages and the gum specifically says not to swallow while using it.
I wasn’t countering what you were saying, but adding to it. Some people think there are no bad health effects from vaping nicotine. Nicotine, at minimum, is bad for you heart though. I’m fine with people making the informed choice to use it, but no one should be under the allusion that there’s a certain way that it’s meant to be used and it’s healthy.
Sure, but can we then tax the product for the actual health risk?
And least damaging? How about gum, or tabs. No popcorn lung involved.
Popcorn lung does not come from vaping any sort of regular vape juice that is on the market anymore. Popcorn lung came from inhaling vape juices that had Diacetyl, or Vitamin E acetate. These were used for flavoring in the early days of vapes before it was found out that they cause popcorn lung. It was also more common in THC vapes than nicotine ones.
I haven’t heard of one case of it happening since then, as all of the vape juice manufacturers stopped adding these ingredients years ago. I’m not saying vaping isn’t bad for you, it definitely is, but popcorn lung is not something anyone needs to be concerned about anymore. It is definitely not as bad for your health as smoking cigarettes, at least.
You are correct that gum or nicotine pouches are the least damaging way to consume nicotine.
Popcorn lung came from inhaling vape juices that had Diacetyl, or Vitamin E acetate.
The nasty cases were Vitamin E acetate, not diacetyl. Diacetyl is butter aroma, same stuff as in actual butter, probably not dangerous at all at sane concentrations, certainly at the amount sensible for vape juice. Cigarette smoke contains more diacetyl than the highest ever measured concentrations in vapes and somehow noone is arguing that cigarettes are causing popcorn lung – they do nasty shit, but not that particular kind of particularly nasty. The original popcorn lung cases were workers in a factory producing popcorn and handling the stuff pretty much pure, though TBH I’m not entirely convinced it was actually diacetyl and not something else.
I definitely agree. Most of the worst cases of vape related injury that I have ever read about involved terribly made THC cartridges containing Vitamin E acetate. I just know there were claims of popcorn lung and diacetyl in vape juices in the early days of vaping.
FWIW, I worked at a smoke shop for a few years during this time and we sold a lot of vape stuff from China. I never heard of a single customer complaint about anything health related to nicotine vapes, and these were the days where people were using those giant mods and blowing obnoxious clouds of vapor.
Abortion is bad for the fetus’s health. Perhaps we should tax it 1000%. While we are at it let’s tax Soda and Sugar. Fuck it lets tax cosmetic surgery, I mean it is such a waste and so risky.
If we are going to go down this road of controlling other people’s bodies let’s go all the way then.
Sugar is already being taxed, and this will grow. High fructose should be extra taxed yes. Abortion seems out of place in your rabid “muh freedumbs” response.
There is a responsibility for a government to protect the health of citizens. I can see this (and drugs) being properly regulated. And then people can buy and use as they see fit. But just free sales, no.
I don’t agree with those taxes. People are free to do with their body what they want, provided it’s not harmful to others. This is not the responsibility of the government.
Providing education so people can make informed decisions about the risks of the behaviors they engage in - now that’s a government (and parental) responsibility.
Yeah, same as with vaccination. Your decisions influence a lot of others.
Even if the government properly informs people, not everyone is able to make an informed decision.
Private companies abusing the system and hurting many people along the way is not something that should be celebrated as freedom. And this is a perfect example of that. Health, the environment everything can be sacrificed in the name of profit.
Well I’m glad you are there to dictate what someone can and can’t do with their body. We only want people to engage in activities if they are state sanctioned.
As an alternative, government regulates all sorts of things. Alcohol, gambling, cigarettes, firearms.
The government is the counterweight to corporations abusing people that might not be able to resist and the VERY negative societal impacts this has.
The fact you think this is unnecessary makes you very fortunate that you never had to deal with the negative externalities of these companies.
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The thing about shipping internationally is that you generally need a logistics partner to actually physically move the packages for you, and they also have a legal responsibility to ensure that what they are carrying is legal. I don’t know what number of packages you need to have seized by customs before they stop doing business with you, but I’d doubt it’s much more than 1.
As a bonus, there are only a handful of logistics companies in NZ that do international outbound, and they are the major domestic delivery companies as well, so if you fuck around enough you could end up finding out that no one will deliver your packages locally either
Pretty sure ceased should be seized.
Honk. Yup
Those rules might apply to the sender… but the customer who places the order doesn’t get off so lightly. They can go to jail for five years for importing a drugs without a license.
That’s not even really a vape thing. Nicotine is a drug. Importing cigarettes is also illegal with the exception of travellers in person can bring a few packets with them.
It wouldn’t be hard to catch people - international shipping requires labels declaring the contents. And if the vape seller is lying on those declarations then they’re breaking NZ laws.
I can confirm that the rules do apply to the sender. You have to declare on a package what’s inside. For businesses using the normal postal system this is generally done electronically and also printed on the package so they’ll just be intercepted and binned. We ship product to Australia frequently and this is how it’s done. Same with private carriers but slightly different process. It’s still clear what’s inside.
Even if they try to avoid the ban by not putting correct customs information it’ll quickly become apparent to Australian customs which packages to seize who will then work directly with the private carrier if necessary (though it is prohibitively expensive to ship to more remote locations in Australia with private carriers so unlikely they will be used).
In short this is bluster.
Darknet markets have no issues shipping millions of packages internationally that contain drugs or steroids. Why should this be any different for these vapes?
- I think you’ll find “millions” is an exaggeration
- Depends on how happy you are with risking prison
a lot of darknet vendors don’t even bother with australia and their insane import controls, at best it’s a “no refunds” type of situation
Top kek
Damn it’s been a minute since I’ve seen a kek.
Good ol’ kek
these things have been flooding in and being sold to kids through vape stores – nine out of ten which have been established within walking distance of schools. That’s no accident, they’re doing that because that is their target market.
That’s some bullshit. I assume there’s already a law banning the sale of vapes to minors.
Schools are built next to residential neighborhoods. Those same neighborhoods with adults living in them are the target market, not kids. Just like cannabis stores are absolutely everywhere now in Canada (including within walking distance of most schools).Turns out that most places are within walking distance of a school. Did you know HITLER breathed air?
That’s it, I’ve taken my last breath!
Went to the (rec) dispensary the other day.
There’s a house across the street, and their kids had a table set up, selling Girl Scout cookies.
Honestly nobody cares. And I hate that it’s illegal for me to park at the dispensary and leave my kids (with my wife) in the car. Under 21 not allowed on the property.
But I can bring my kids into a liquor store. I’d rather bring a bull into a China shop, but I can do it. Can’t even have them in the parking lot of the dispensary.
Where I live, you have to be 21 to enter a liquor store
The three US states I’ve lived in all allowed children in liquor stores if accompanied by a parent or guardian
If you try to buy alcohol in Dan Murphys with kids then you’ll get the third degree. If they’re teenage kids then they won’t sell to you. Meanwhile if I order online it gets delivered to my door and my postie just leaves it there.
Unfortunately not bullshit.
Here in Australia, just about every tobacco store was selling them under the counter to kids, often still wearing their school uniforms. Worst still, most of the vapes were dodgy grey market imports with undeclared and often dangerous chemicals in them as well as nicotine. There were more of these stores near schools then there were stores that sell candy.
Common sense dispenery laws for both vapes and recreational cannabis like Canada would make sense here too but our politicians are too beholden to corporate interests and think of the children fear mongering.
What “dodgy grey market” people benefit in any way by adding extra bad stuff?
Cheaper to get, bulks it out, flavours it more efficiently? Any number of reason.
There was that apple sauce scandal in the US recently where kids were getting chunky doses of lead because waaaaaaaay down the production chain, some dude grinding cinnamon in Ecuador chose to bulk out his milling output with lead chromate (for the red-orange colour pop) amongst other powders which were not cinnamon.
More government testing up and down the production chain could help stop that sort of thing. Hopefully dodgy imports avoiding the tests at one level, would get clamped at another.
Basically yeah, it’s cheaper to use chemicals other than what’s approved to make a chemical vape. We were seeing a bit of an endemic of kids being hospitalised because of them.
It’s worth keeping in mind these vapes were coming from the same place where even baby formula wasn’t off limits to substitute dangerous chemicals into to save a buck.
Whether or not you think Australia should have such a ban, a company trying to provoke a war with a nations customs service is a true “fuck around, and find out” moment
Are cigarettes banned as well or do they get massive taxes from their sale like in the US?
I heard cigarette taxes are the preferred form of sin tax because typically smokers pay more in taxes than they use in healthcare etc on the way out. Nicotine addicts die fast and are tax efficient, unlike alcohol or gambling addicts.
A good example of a policy that can kind of make a form of “objective” economic sense for the government to do, but is actually totally immoral, cruel, and inefficient. A good example of why governments shouldn’t be run like companies, basically.
Banning vices has rarely (if ever?) gone well. Far better to tax and regulate them to at least reduce the harms by making it less affordable/dangerous and mitigate them with revenues that can be used to repair the damage.
You know I would kind of off the cuff think that probably the optimal solution would be something that prevents general accessibility for the population at large, but encourages, and makes it more easily accessible for those who already have problems with it, and then kind of, chase solutions from there. Of course, I think probably that solution would lend itself more towards a country or state that cares whether or not you’re going homeless or sleeping in your car or what have you, because it’s generally easier to keep track of less marginalized populations.
This isn’t really to advocate for a ban, but there’s definitely a kind of fine middle ground between full bans and completely free easy access. I think the thing that strikes me the most as a kind of, huge dick move, is mostly that it’s kind of a purely short term financial calculation of, oh, smokers are going to pay a lot more in taxes than in healthcare, and they die quick, so that’s economically good. But of course, you wouldn’t want a country made up entirely of smokers, and I don’t think that would be good, or pay out the best in long term societal, or even purely economic, benefits. I’m skeptical of blanket calls for total drug legalization just as I am skeptical for blanket calls for bans. Usually, there’s more nuance to the situation than that, which unfortunately tends to be the thing most leveraged to enforce the status quo or pass bad austerity legislation.
All but, massive taxing, plain packaging laws and more controls like can smoke in public places, banned in bars banned in restaurants and hotels ect. Its being “phased out” slowly turning the heat up until its gone.
I believe they will have to start smuggling their product the old-fashioned way, I mean like the cartels do with illegal drugs.
Inb4 my mate, Paul, smuggled a gallon of nicotine up his arse…
The real question here is, are there (mostly) harmless?
They are an excellent and well understood harm reduction measure compared with smoking.
In a true dichotomy they are the far better option. Unfortunately they were/are attracting new smokers. The rate of teenage smoking had been plummeting for decades and was only at a couple of percent - until vapes became popular and reversed about two decades of progress.
There’s an even better harm reduction measure: not smoking at all.
Don’t take any drugs, wish them away. Failing that, start a war on drugs. Prosecute the war for decades with nothing to show for your efforts aside from a pile of bodies and organised crime.
'murican much?
Oh, piss off.
Oof, someone’s angry because they didn’t get their oral fixation!
That sounds unhygienic, so I don’t think I will
Yes but unless they ban cigarettes first, banning vapes will likely just have a negative effect
I was just wondering in my pea sized brain how making things illegal in the past has worked out… hrrmmm
Sometimes it works out great (banning guns in Australia for most people), other times it’s terrible (banning alcohol in America).
But in general, vapes are shit and should be banned. No issues there. This producer will soon be blocked pretty easily.
Notice my next comment clarifying that I am talking about mind altering substances. You may think vapes are shit but they wouldn’t be around if people didn’t like them plus no major second hand or terrible smell like traditional cigarettes homie.
Also cigarettes in Australia. They’re not banned, obviously, they’re just taxed so high that hardly anyone smokes them anymore. I’m probably a bit sheltered, but I’m genuinely surprised when I see someone smoking an actual cigarette now.
Your brain is pea sized indeed, because any nominal amount of wondering should make you realize it has to be taken on a case by case basis. Otherwise we should just make everything legal, no?
This is going to blow your mind but I believe all mind altering substances should be legal and available to purchase if you are 21 years of age. This takes money away from the black market organizations and can help fund rehabilitation facilities/drug education/college scholarships.
People should be able to kill themselves as well if they choose to.
Given what a pack of absolute shit cunts Australia has been towards NZ in recent years, I fully support any company that wants to make life difficult for the Australian authorities.
I’m willing to go to war against this vape seller.
This seems familiar. Perhaps the British did this before?
Allow vaping but ban nicotine.
In Japan they basically do this. It’s not illegal to import the liquid nicotine so that’s what people do and mix their own (or vape shops also do that in a less-than-legal fashion (allegedly))
Australia going full retard again.
Still better than people who smoke (which does include “vaping”)
I have to draw this line because it’s actually really important.
Smoking is when someone inhales smoke.
Vaping is when someone inhales vapour.
These are different in more ways than they are similar, but perhaps the most important is the difference in negative health outcomes. Smoking is about twenty times more harmful than vaping.
Vaping is a very effective path away from smoking for those with a nicotine dependency, and it’s counterproductive to attach the same stigma to both, let alone to consider them equivalent.It is premature to declare vaping safer than smoking, as there is relatively little comprehensive research on the long term effect of vaping. The whole “vaping is safer” spiel is not that different than when doctors were paid to tout the health benefits of cigarettes: propaganda not based in conclusive science.
On top of that, while I don’t doubt that vaping is probably a good way to help someone quit smoking, there are plenty of young people who started or are staying vaping who never smoked and wouldn’t have considered it
This is the issue. Vaping is great for ex smokers, but it should absolutely not be taken up for its own sake. Twenty years or so ago, we made a lot of progress, smoking looked like it was going to be phased out in mist countries. Now vaping itself is becoming an issue, hooking kids for life on nicotine.
Along with disposable vapes, marketing and selling to kids should be banned and strictly enforced.
But removing the lifeline from ex smokers will just push them back towards tobacco, because nicotine dependency is real.
Ignorant take. When vape products contain, at most, 6 ingredients, all of which have been individually extensively studied, none of which are carcinogenic, and 5 of them are FDA approved for food and pharmaceuticals, theres a pretty obvious harm reduction to inhaling thousands of compounds with at least 70 being carcinogens. So much so that every study you can find will conclude the same.
Here’s a quote from a source I would call a qualified institution on the matter: "In its 2016 assessment, the Royal College of Physicians of London stated: “Although it is not possible to precisely quantify the long-term health risks associated with e-cigarettes, the available data suggest that they are unlikely to exceed 5% of those associated with smoked tobacco products and may well be substantially lower than this figure.”
That isn’t pseudoscience. It’s easily found by a quick Google search.
Conclusively, we’re going to find that the tobacco industry makes far less money off of refined nicotine than it does from tobacco. There’s a reason Phillip Morris bought a 30% stake in Juul, ran their advertising into the ground, and now also exclusively funds anti vaping ads rather than anti tobacco product ads.
They hooked a new generation on nicotine with Juul and are trying to ban vaping to sell their higher profit margin cigarettes.
Whether my conspiracy conjecture is found to be true or not, studies comparing vaping to smoking keep coming to the same conclusion, vaping is less harmful than smoking. If you have a study or information to the opposite I would love to read it.
The number of ingredients is irrelevant, especially since the idea that there are “at most” 6 ingredients is simply wrong: https://hub.jhu.edu/2021/10/07/vaping-unknown-chemicals/
A major area of concern for vaping is the fact that vaping generates much higher concentrations of nano-particles compared to regular cigarettes, and therefore may penetrate much further into the lung material (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6312322/ and https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0210147). There are also concerns about contaminants, variations in delivery devices (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6312322/), and other confounding factors that require a lot more research to ascertain the long term impact.
As for whether I have a study or information contradicting the conclusion that vaping is safer than smoking, it depends on whether you selectively ignore the parts of the studies that say “more research is needed” (because apparently that’s an “ignorant take”), but searching for “peer reviewed articles electronic cigarettes safer than tobacco” returns these top results (I did not cherry pick in any way, and instead took the top results sequentially):
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https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2042098614524430: “In conclusion, toxicological studies have shown significantly lower adverse effects of EC vapor compared with cigarette smoke. Characteristically, the studies performed by using the liquids in their original liquid form have found less favorable results; however, no comparison with tobacco smoke was performed in any of these studies, and they cannot be considered relevant to EC use since the samples were not tested in the form consumed by vapers. More research is needed, including studies on different cell lines such as lung epithelial cells. In addition, it is probably necessary to evaluate a huge number of liquids with different flavors since a minority of them, in an unpredictable manner, appear to raise some concerns when tested in the aerosol form produced by using an EC device.” Granted, it does go on to say that existing evidence shows that vaping is safer than tobacco, but clarifies that there still needs to be more research on some of the unquantified risks of vaping.
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https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5469426/ This is an older study using a very small sample size. It focuses on e-cigs as a tool for smoking cessation, but also concludes “Similar to cancer risk, there are no published data describing the long-term lung function or cardiovascular effects of e-cigarettes; ongoing surveillance, especially once e-cigarettes are regulated and standardized, will be necessary.”
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https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0129443 This study was primarily measuring how likely e-cigs were to get people to stop using tobacco, rather than comparative safety (despite the title). The conclusion makes clear that it is not known (at the time; this was 9 years ago) if e-cigarettes could be considered “safe”: “Adding e-cigarettes to tobacco smoking did not facilitate smoking cessation or reduction. If e-cigarette safety will be confirmed, however, the use of e-cigarettes alone may facilitate quitters remaining so.”
I’m not sure what your Google search was, but its probably best not to cherry pick a single source to support your claim.
You’re clearly not cherry picking. If you were, you might have some articles that at least hint that ECs might be more harmful than cigarettes, but none of them come close. The first link you posted gets the closest, but it’s also just an article about one experiment, using 4 liquids that are not recommended in EC communities.
The rest of the actual studies you posted are not about safety. They do not compare disease or illness or death between the two. One of them does compare the amount of toxic chemicals in ECs to cigarettes and finds ECs to have zero. Until there are long term studies comparing the rate of death and disease, no journal is going to publish any definitive answer that ECs are safer than cigarettes. Until then, we will just have a bunch of studies comparing chemical composition, rates and particle sizes. And if it isn’t obvious, chemical composition and their rates are a bit more worrisome than the latter.
If you read through these studies and still think vaping is more harmful than cigarettes, then by all means wait the 50 years it will take the scientific community to out right say the obvious “vaping isn’t healthy, but it is significantly less harmful than traditional tobacco smoking.”
My argument wasn’t “vaping isn’t healthy” or “vaping is more harmful than cigarettes”. It was “more research is needed”, which each of those studies I linked support. Thank you, though, for proving my point in your attempt to build a lovely strawman to argue against.
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