Simon Chapman keeps repeating the same argument: New Zealand is an outlier, therefore vaping cannot be responsible for its rapid decline in smoking.
But that’s not the question many people are asking.
The question is why New Zealand experienced one of the fastest declines in smoking after embracing a regulated consumer vaping market, while Australia chose a prohibition-style pharmacy model and is now grappling with a booming illicit nicotine market, collapsing tobacco excise revenue, widespread illegal vape sales, and concerns that smoking rates may be rising again.
Simply pointing to countries like the US, UK or Canada and noting they have higher smoking rates than Australia ignores important context. These countries started from different baselines, have different demographics, different tobacco control histories, and different social factors influencing smoking. Public health outcomes are rarely explained by a single variable.
More importantly, Australia’s smoking success largely predates the pharmacy-only model. The relevant question is not why Australia had low smoking rates in the past. It’s whether current policies are delivering the outcomes they promised.
When legal access becomes more restrictive but illegal access remains widespread, when former vapers report returning to cigarettes, and when organised crime profits from nicotine prohibition, it seems reasonable to ask whether the policy is working as intended.
Instead of engaging with those questions, critics are often dismissed as industry shills, ideologues, or members of some mythical “vaping theology”.
Public policy should not be a faith-based exercise. It should be judged by outcomes.
And right now, the outcomes deserve far more scrutiny than Simon Chapman appears willing to give them.