Prohibition never works – criminals simply adapt to increased enforcement

Posted on July 17, 2024 By Colin

AUSTRALIA NEEDS A REGULATED RETAIL MARKET for vapes like New Zealand. Prohibition never works and criminals adapt to increased enforcement and simply find ways around it.

This was the view of Rohan Pike, who founded the Australian Border Force's Tobacco Strike Team in 2015, in his evidence to the Victorian Parliamentary Inquiry into vaping. He is the director of Rohan Pike Consulting.

Watch his evidence here, 11 mins (thanks to @LivePippas for the video):

Mr Pike gave evidence about illicit tobacco and the vape industry. In regard to vapes he said:

"Mr Butler's vape ban is simply wrong. Prohibition doesn't work it never has. This product needs to be
strictly regulated in the retail environment with an attached sensible excise rate. New Zealand has attached a 15% VAT and it's working well over there."

"At the first sign of enforcement the criminals will pivot and use some other methodology, either going online, having safe houses where they store their products, using other types of technology to get their  product to the customers or in fact it customers to them to pick it up."

"I think the only way to eliminate it is to reverse course on the policy that's created it in relation to the
legal trade and I look at other countries around the world where policy settings are different."

"I'm not a medical expert but I can read and I do read the international evidence and I do read
documents and reports from people who are in the harm reduction industry and it's obvious from that that some of the products such as vaping but particularly nicotine pouches are far safer than
cigarettes which are the worst possible um form of ingesting nicotine and therefore if all of the people
who were smoking went over to nicotine pouches I think that would be a good outcome for the community."

"Nicotine has been ingested for whatever reason for thousands of years. There's a billion people in the world that still smoke. There are you know 15% in Australia that use it for whatever reason, I certainly
don't, but a lot of people do and some of those people do it for enjoyment reasons and it's very difficult to
get them to stop using an addictive products."

Opening statement

Transcript of opening statement, Rohan Pike 15 July 2024