As we pointed out yesterday, the Coalition’s plans to raise more tax from vapes means that they would scrape Labor’s policy of having vapes available only with a doctor’s prescription, and put them back for sale in shops.

They say that the rise in organised crime in selling tobacco and vape products prove that the government’s policy has failed and something else needs to be done.

Katy Gallagher told ABC radio RN Breakfast Labor’s policy was based in health research and was aimed at protecting kids from Big Tobacco:

We’ve been very strong on this. We want kids off vapes and Peter Dutton wants to make money off them, off kids using vapes. I mean, that’s what we saw yesterday with that part of their costings. It sounds like they’ve put the white flag up. We’ve had a generation of dealing with the problems of tobacco addiction, and it sounds like Peter Dutton doesn’t want to worry about another generation being addicted to vapes. Yes, there’s issues around enforcement and compliance, which is why we put extra money in the budget. And there’s also opportunity for people who do want to come off tobacco to go through the chemists, the pharmacy, to get access to vaping products. But it should not ever go back to just this free-for-all of these companies targeting young people to get them addicted to nicotine and other chemicals.