BakerB (criminalised nicotine consumer)

@Algore09algor @LanceChurchill @Clive_Bates He has much credibility. I remember seeing him defending THR back in 2012 shortly after I switched after smoking for 25 years.

@Clive_Bates offers a refreshing and pragmatic vision for the future of public health and tobacco control in Australia. At the heart of his proposal is tobacco harm reduction, which is the simple idea of helping people move from high risk products like cigarettes to low risk alternatives like vapes. The goal is to focus on reducing the heavy burden of disease and death caused by inhaling tobacco smoke.  Moving away from current restrictive regulations toward a regulated market offers several major advantages for the community. By bringing the market into the light, the government can set rules for product safety, accurate labeling, and age secure retailing. Addressing the underlying economic drivers of the illicit trade, rather than relying solely on expensive and often ineffective enforcement, can dry up the profits currently flowing to criminal networks. When safer alternatives are accessible and affordable, smokers have a clear, lawful path to protect their own health. Furthermore, for young people who might otherwise start smoking, having access to regulated, smoke free products can divert them away from the most harmful forms of nicotine use.  The core message is one of optimism: Australia can fix the current lawless fiasco by being more open to economically grounded and consumer focused solutions. By focusing on risk proportionate regulation, where the most harmful products are controlled most strictly, the government can reassert control and normalize a lawful market. Choosing regulation over prohibition protects consumers, reduces crime, and ultimately saves lives.

@bakerbee1 @Algore09algor @jamomartin @drjoesDIYhealth @caphraorg @MarewaGlover @Anne_Ruston No points awarded for being consistently right in Australia’s tobacco and nicotine politics. Everyone loves the consistently wrong simpletons. The authorities have not been deprived of reality-based advice for the last 10 years. They have chosen to ignore it. #Auspol2026

@Clive_Bates @Algore09algor @jamomartin @drjoesDIYhealth @caphraorg @MarewaGlover @Anne_Ruston So many submissions from so many inquiries ignored. Serial box ticking exercise.

@jamomartin @drjoesDIYhealth @caphraorg @MarewaGlover @Anne_Ruston What stands out from the submissions isn’t diversity of thinking, it’s uniformity. Across law enforcement bodies, health organisations, councils, and advocacy groups, the same prescription keeps getting repeated: more policing, tougher rules, higher pressure. It doesn’t seem to matter that these are the very approaches that have already led to exploding illicit markets, loss of control, and worsening outcomes. There’s almost no sense of reflection. No serious engagement with what’s actually happening on the ground. Just a doubling down on enforcement, as if repeating the same strategy louder will somehow produce a different result. What’s more concerning is how broad this alignment is. When groups with very different roles all converge on the same narrow solution, it stops looking like independent analysis and starts looking like groupthink. And that’s the real problem. Because when everyone is focused on tightening control, no one is asking whether the approach itself is flawed. No one is seriously considering alternatives that might actually reduce harm rather than just attempt to suppress behaviour. The result is a policy environment that feels less like it’s responding to reality, and more like it’s trying to force reality to comply with a predetermined view. • Northern Territory Police Association • Austrac • Illicit Tobacco and e-Cigarette Commission • Royal Australian College of General Practitioners • City of Stonnington • Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission • Cignall • Simon Chapman • Cancer Council (Queensland, WA, NSW, Victoria, Tasmania, South Australia, and Australia) • Australian Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman • Freight and Trade Alliance • Aboriginal Health Organisation • Bega Valley Shire Council • Lung Foundation Australia • Australian Taxation Office • Michelle Jongenelis • Tobacco Free • Shopping Centre Council • Master Grocers Australia • National Heart Foundation • Australian Medical Association • The Matilda Centre • Australian Council on Smoking and Health

@Clive_Bates Lovin' this bit @Clive_Bates

Submission by @Clive_Bates aph.gov.au/DocumentStore.… thanks

@Algore09algor @jamomartin @drjoesDIYhealth @caphraorg @MarewaGlover @Anne_Ruston @Clive_Bates provides an accurate timeline of all these inquiries in his submission x.com/bakerbee1/stat…

@Algore09algor @jamomartin @drjoesDIYhealth @caphraorg @MarewaGlover @Anne_Ruston tbh there's so many of the submissions i haven't bothered even reading because there's been half a dozen inquires that they've said the same crap.

@Dstat_THR @_DaveCross_ Its the same social engineering they used for smokers, see 'smokers stink' campaign.

@_DaveCross_ @bakerbee1 And probably held focus groups about which messaging would deter the respondents the most, whether true or not.

So you better start smoking instead! I'm guessing you'd have to do way more than vaping to get your teeth into this state. #Sydney #Australia

@JulianHillMP Prohibit drastically less harmful nicotine alternatives and extort tax money from smokers. Sounds like a winner set of policies. Australia is a basket-case and it's 'world leading' tobacco control and public health industries are to blame.

Going after these criminals, to save the lives of Australians.

@kimber792 They could say the same thing about drinking milk before bed time without cleaning your teeth.

@bakerbee1 So, brushing your teeth isn’t an easy solution to prevent tooth decay and gum disease? Vaping might cause this, but drinking and eating crap food and not cleaning your teeth is the most likely culprit.

@Algore09algor @TheDrknownaswho He's always allowed his ego to go rogue.

At first glance, Simon Chapman's submission acknowledges something important: cheap illicit tobacco is now widespread, highly accessible, and eroding the price barrier that once discouraged smoking. But rather than follow that logic to its obvious conclusion that extreme taxation has created the conditions for this market, he instead bends over backwards to deny the role price plays in driving it. This is the central contradiction in his argument. Chapman repeatedly states that price is a “universally acknowledged” driver of smoking behaviour. Yet when that same principle applies to illicit markets where a $7 pack competes against a $40–$60 legal product, he suddenly dismisses price as irrelevant. You can’t have it both ways. If price reduces consumption, then extreme price gaps will inevitably redirect consumption. That’s not ideology, that’s basic economics. His attempt to argue that illicit trade exists everywhere, regardless of tax levels, is another sleight of hand. Of course, illicit markets exist globally, but the scale, visibility, and violence attached to Australia’s market are what make it exceptional. Open, shopfront sales. Delivery services advertised on trees and social media. Firebombings. Turf wars. That’s not business-as-usual, it’s a market supercharged by unprecedented margins. And this is where Chapman’s dismissal of James Martin becomes particularly telling. Martin’s work doesn’t rely on rhetoric - it reflects well-established criminological principles: when profit margins are extreme, organised crime will enter and expand. Australia has effectively engineered one of the most lucrative black markets in the world through policy settings that pushed legal prices far beyond what enforcement alone can control. Ignoring that doesn’t make it untrue, it just avoids the uncomfortable implication that policy has backfired. Chapman’s arithmetic argument that even large tax cuts wouldn’t undercut illicit prices is also overly simplistic. Illicit markets don’t operate in a vacuum. They respond to risk, enforcement pressure, and margins. Narrow the gap, and you reduce the incentive structure. Leave a 500–800% margin in place, and no amount of policing will keep pace. Perhaps most concerning is his continued defence of the pharmacy-only vape model. In theory, it mirrors tightly controlled systems like pharmaceuticals. In reality, it has failed. Consumers didn’t migrate to pharmacies; they migrated to the black market. The result? Less regulated access, not more. More illicit supply, not less. And, increasingly, evidence that some users are shifting back to smoking as legal alternatives become harder to access. Instead of acknowledging this, Chapman frames the issue almost entirely as a failure of enforcement and compliance. But enforcement cannot overcome economics at this scale. When the reward is enormous, and the risk historically has been low, criminal participation isn’t an anomaly. It’s predictable. There’s also a broader tone throughout the submission that’s hard to ignore. Critics are caricatured as “economically illiterate” or industry-aligned, rather than engaged with seriously. That might work rhetorically, but it doesn’t address the substance of the argument. And increasingly, that argument is being made not just by commentators, but by criminologists, economists, and even policymakers who are starting to acknowledge that the current approach is unsustainable. In the end, Chapman is right about one thing: Australia is facing a serious illicit tobacco crisis. But his refusal to recognise the role that extreme pricing and restrictive policy settings have played in creating that crisis means his proposed solutions are more enforcement, harsher penalties, and tighter controls, which risk doubling down on the very conditions that allowed it to emerge in the first place. When policy creates a market this profitable, ignoring the economic drivers doesn’t solve the problem. It entrenches it.

@grove_mitchell They did the same with the crap '5 times more likely to move on to smoking' study.

This new bogus study attempting to tie vaping to cancer really drags out the soulless bags of flesh giddy to hear such great news; that their long time suspicions are finally proving to be true; that cancer can finally be added to their list of admonishments. It’s disgusting.

@BenFordhamLive newstalkzb.co.nz/on-air/heather…

A new study has found vaping is "likely" to cause cancer. Professor Bernard Stewart says “we can’t say vaping is safer than smoking.” Listen to his full conversation with Ben HERE. 🎧omny.fm/shows/ben-ford…🎧

@Algore09algor @thebee Burn those atomisers, suffocate those mice and fill those Petri dishes. That'll do it.

The latest study out of Australia is a perfect example of the “scientists” who GOT THE MEMO. Not because it is uniquely flawed, but because it is so completely, almost effortlessly, aligned with expectation. It doesn’t challenge. It doesn’t disrupt. It fits. It reads like work produced within a system that already knows what conclusions are acceptable and how to reach them without ever appearing to try. That’s what it means to get the memo.

@Algore09algor This is good. People need to see that the public health industry in Australia have jumped the shark.

More and more experts who never got the memo are coming forward to debunk the so called “study” Robert Beaglehole newstalkzb.co.nz/on-air/heather…

@EricCrampton @brentwheeler @dpfdpf I posted the SMC article on the Sydney Morning Herald article. The comment was not published. It was not a rude comment or anything like that.

@brentwheeler @dpfdpf The SMC piece was released 30 March in the UK, so would have been available to check before syndicating the ABC piece.

This morning, Radio NZ played a long ABC piece on a new Australian study on vaping. Shame that neither RNZ nor the ABC checked the Science Media Centre's review of that study. Let's have a look at what the SMC's experts had to say.

@DraganDeeWhy @newscomauHQ Just like EVALI scare campaign and the Diacety scare and the formaldehyde scare before that. It's social engineering.

@bakerbee1 @newscomauHQ The damage has been done. It is all over MSM and no one looks any further then the headlines and a short summary.

More irresponsible headlines news.com.au/lifestyle/heal… @newscomauHQ

@Algore09algor @LanceChurchill @7NewsBrisbane Just like the Banks report it was designed to find harm and there's a co-ordinated effort to spread it to all media outlets.

After digging into the Carcinogenesis bgag015 study, one thing becomes very clear: It talks a lot about what’s present, but almost nothing about how much. The paper highlights chemicals linked to carcinogenic pathways, metals, oxidative stress, DNA damage. Sounds alarming. But where are the actual exposure levels? Where are the real-world quantities? Where are the comparisons to smoking? They’re largely missing. And that’s not a small detail, it’s the entire point. In toxicology, dose is everything. You can’t assess risk just by detecting a substance. Many of the same compounds mentioned in the study are found in everyday environments, air pollution, cooking fumes, even normal biological processes. The difference between harmless and harmful isn’t presence, it’s concentration and exposure over time. Instead, the study leans heavily on: lab-based cell experiments animal models with artificial exposure mechanistic pathways All useful for generating hypotheses, but not for determining real-world cancer risk. Without quantifying exposure, the argument effectively becomes: “We found substances that can be harmful under certain conditions.” That’s not risk assessment. That’s possibility. What’s also missing is context. There’s little meaningful comparison to cigarette smoke, where carcinogen levels are orders of magnitude higher. Without that, readers are left with a distorted picture, where a lower-risk alternative is evaluated in isolation. In the end, this isn’t a paper that measures risk. It’s a paper that implies risk without scaling it. And without scale, you don’t have evidence of harm, you have speculation that sounds scientific.

A lethal link between e-cigarettes and cancer has been uncovered in new research by Australian scientists. The study found vapes are just as harmful as conventional cigarettes as their popularity continues to soar.