"Well, well, if it isn't the consequences of my own actions"

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https://velvetgloveironfist.blogspot.com/2021/03/well-well-if-it-isnt-consequences-of-my.html

FRIDAY, 26 MARCH 2021
He used to bring us so much entertainment. Australia's leading vaping prohibitionist is still knocking about in his nursing home shouting at clouds. He's been recently complaining about a "tsunami" of black market e-cigarettes. This is not a problem we have in Britain for some reason.

Meanwhile, Australia's black market for real cigarettes continues to flourish. Industrial scale tobacco smuggling and vast illegal tobacco farms didn't exist Down Under until the government fell under the spell of Chapman and his buddies and made the legal product unaffordable and unattractive.

Here's a typical story from earlier this month.

Illicit tobacco crops worth more than $84m seized in raids near Murray River
Authorities say illicit tobacco crops seized and destroyed in raids on properties near the Murray River this month are among the biggest busts of their kind in Australia.

Officers from the multi-agency Illicit Tobacco Taskforce uncovered more than 40 hectares of the plant growing on properties either side of the Victoria-New South Wales border, near the regional centre of Swan Hill.

The tobacco's potential value was estimated at $84.3 million.

More than 183 tonnes of tobacco was found in the first of three raids on a property at Kyalite, in south-west NSW, which the Natural Resources Access Regulator also attended to investigate possible water theft.

183 tonnes!

And here's another from this month...

The Australian Border Force (ABF) led Illicit Tobacco Taskforce (ITTF) has disrupted the activities of two alleged organised crime syndicates involved in the importation and distribution of illicit tobacco throughout Victoria and Western Australia.

The first operation occurred on Wednesday and Thursday this week (10 & 11 March 2021) when ABF officers from the ITTF executed Customs Act 1901 search and seizure warrants at a number of residential and commercial properties in suburban Melbourne.

The targets allegedly belong to an organised crime syndicate that smuggles illicit molasses tobacco into Melbourne and distributes it throughout Victoria.

During the warrants approximately 1,000 kilograms of molasses tobacco was located and seized, along with jewellery and $100,000 in cash, alleged to be the proceeds of crime.

The estimated value of evaded duty for this amount of tobacco is more than $1.5 million dollars.

Somewhere there's an organised crime boss commissioning a gold statue of Simon Chapman. Where would they be without him?

 

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But there's more.. Below are previous actions by the exact same AU govt now raiding illegal tobacco farms and since June 2020 are just temporarily halted but not actually stopped from implementing their complete AU vaping ban just yet.

https://www.legalisevaping.com.au/blog/advocacy-body-slamsgovt

Australia’s largest vaping advocacy body slams the Government’s special deal for Big Tobacco
Australia’s largest vaping advocacy body slams the Government’s special deal for Big Tobacco

News that the global tobacco giant Phillip Morris International has been secretly invited to submit an application to the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) to register their electronic cigarette product is bad news for Australian vape consumers and smokers wishing to switch to vaping.

Public health experts have been concerned for some time that Health Minister Greg Hunt’s stupid and illogical insistence that vaping products would need to be approved by the TGA was always intended to benefit Big Tobacco against smaller independent vape product manufacturers.

LVA Campaign Director Brian Marlow said today was a sad day for Australian vapers and was a very dark day for hundreds of vape retailers and manufacturers across Australia who have developed their own perfectly safe vape products, but do not have the millions of dollars required to go through the TGA process that Greg Hunt is demanding.

“This is a retrograde move orchestrated by our Federal Government and is designed to protect Big Tobacco and kill off Australia’s rapidly growing vaping industry which is made up of small family retail businesses and highly innovative and world-leading e-liquid manufacturers.”

“Australia’s 300,000 vapers and 2.6 million smokers should not be forced to access just one TGA approved nicotine vaping product owned by a multinational tobacco company, but they should have the freedom to purchase one of the many hundreds of combinations of available vaping products that suits them and helps them quit smoking.”

“It is now patently clear that everything Greg Hunt has said and done as Health Minister has been to serve the interests of Big Tobacco and to kill off Australia’s independent vape sector.

“Every time Greg Hunt and various health bureaucrats attack vaping, they end up defending the financial interests of companies like Philip Morris. This latest decision to give Phillip Morris, a multinational, multi-billion dollar tobacco giant a free pass on electronic cigarettes while punishing smaller independent vape manufacturers is simply unacceptable. It is pure corporatism, and should be labelled as such.”

“There needs to be a fair go for vapers. If there are going to be any moves to legalise heated tobacco, then it stands to reason that all appropriately manufactured vaping products should be legalised too.”

Vapers and vape retailers need to send the government a message that their dodgy deal with PMI is not okay. It will cost Australian jobs and hurt the Australian Vaping community that's made up of small family run businesses.