Capital Territory.
It’s the Northern Territory that has suffered another blow to its vaping
community, as parliament passed laws on February 13 to regulate
e-cigarettes as conventional tobacco products. From July 1, shops
will need a tobacco licence to sell e-cigarettes and they must be sold
as if they were conventional cigarettes.
Steven Whalan owns a vape shop in Darwin, he told Vapouround:
“We are also going to have to cover up all our products, even though
they don’t have nicotine and there’s no tobacco, we have to cover
them up.
“We’re fighting at the moment, trying to keep vaping inside the shop,
because under current tobacco laws you can’t smoke indoors. It’s
2019 but it’s like we’re in a different era.”
Not only do these regulations make life difficult for retailers like
Steven, this is a damning amendment that further demonises an
already demonised product, and one that the Northern Territory
desperately needs.
With one of the highest smoking rates in Australia, the health of
Northern Territory residents is indicative of an area in big trouble:
for non-indigenous men and women, lung cancer is one of the most
commonly diagnosed cancers; the same is reported for Indigenous
women. But for Indigenous men in the Northern Territory there’s a
much bleaker picture: lung, oral, and pharynx cancer are the most
commonly diagnosed, all of which are heavily linked to tobacco use.
Smoking-related health problems are something that Steven knows
about all too well: he nearly lost a leg to gangrene caused by smoking.
He said: “I was also on heart medication because my heart was
pumping through no-hope veins because of all this tar in my system.
One year on and I got off all my heart medication due to vaping. It’s an
incredible product, it’s going to save so many peoples’ lives.”
But the new legislation is a step back and Steven’s especially
frustrated, because he says the government is looking to combat
drug use through legalisation; he wants to see the same approach
with vaping: “If we can replace cigarettes with something healthier
then that’s going to solve a lot of problems. But legalising drugs, yet
hiding vaping away from people that need it? It doesn’t make sense.
“The government believe that vaping renormalizes smoking, I don’t
agree with that and I think it’s quite the opposite. I don’t see any
“It seems that we’re very Americanised
in everything that we do, we are
backward – I’d have believed we’d be
following the UK but that’s not the case,
we’re following America.”
customers coming into the shop that have never smoked cigarettes,
they’re all smokers and I believe there should be something there for them.”
His shop, Vapourholics, has weathered the storm so far and he’s
assisted many smokers with making the switch, telling customers how
to import nicotine from nearby New Zealand and showing them how
to mix it into e-liquid, he just wishes it didn’t have to be this way.
“It seems that we’re very Americanised in everything that we do, we’re
backward – I’d have believed we’d be following the UK but that’s not
the case, we’re following America. As a retailer, it’s hard and it’s going
to get more difficult.”
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