Let’s Improve Vaping Education! Director of ALIVE advocacy movement & Australia’s Chief Firebombings Warden🇳🇿🔥 https://xitter.cf/t.co/usLXNIR12i
Queensland, Australia
Joined September 2019
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I’m no longer interested in engaging with those who spread false accusations, misinformation about nicotine vaping, or deliberately misrepresent my motives.
My advocacy has always been grounded in one goal: helping people live healthier lives through harm reduction.
However, moving forward, any individual or organisation that publishes or repeats defamatory claims about me or my work should be aware that such conduct may be subject to the full extent of legal remedies available.
Healthy debate is welcome. Defamation is not.
A smart Govt who is in touch with real science and real tobacco harm reduction outcomes would not only slash the tobacco excise, they would make it compulsory to supply a card in every pack with a QR code in every pack linking them with great real quit information that’s links to a $100 voucher (one only per smoker) to get a refillable vape set up from a legalised and licenced approved seller, or nicotine pouches or heat not burn set up or for any other NRT product.
The recipient would report back after 6 months and also receive an incentive for doing so!
This would not only help smash the black market but also smash real world smoking rates!
The data collected would be excellent for measuring success too!
Current Governments don’t seem to like smart measurable outcomes like this, I wonder why?
It’s like they want people to die from smoking and collect their taxes!
Great quotes from politicians offering real world perspective is rare as rocking horse 💩
Yet @maryaldred has nailed many now, proving it’s possible to be in touch!
Eg:
“Shutting tens of (illegal tobacco & vapes) shops statewide when there are more than 8000 of them out there is about as much use as an ashtray on a motorbike.
At that pace, clearing the illegal shops from Victoria’s streets would take the best part of 12 years.”
I’ve said it for years now, the Govt can throw a full scale military operation at this lost cause and waste hundreds of more millions of taxes trying to claw back the 7 billion dollars per year of lost tobacco lost excise, but clearly they don’t understand how whack-a-mole works! 🤦♀️
As Mary Aldred said
“It’s just taking it from bricks to clicks, while Australians hand over their credit card details and home addresses to organised crime figures running these rings.”
Meanwhile real smoking rates stagnate and most effective quit smoking method of vaping is treated worse than smoking!
Nicotine Vaping Deaths Evidenced=0
Smoking= 24000 or more per year!
@AngusTaylorMP @TimWilsonMP @Anne_Ruston @mattjcan @Barnaby_Joyce @Mark_Butler_MP
sgst.com.au/100-tobacco-shop…
To be fair to @RyanPark_Keira MP,
he did say on 15 October,
“So long as the (tobacco) excise continues to remain high, the black market will continue, and we will have to keep playing whack-a-mole with bad actors."
This statement should be respected by fellow Labor federal Health minister @Mark_Butler_MP!
Vaping should be sensibly regulated for retail sales out of chemists with strict guardrails too!
How much more failed enforcement, firebombs, murders and youths enticed into these god awful crimes will it take to understand that Australians are beyond fed up with this?!
@AngusTaylorMP @TimWilsonMP @Barnaby_Joyce
Yesterday in the Sydney Times,
@RyanPark_Keira gloats after just 10 illicit tobacco and vapes outlets get closed down:
“We continue to strengthen our efforts, including bolstering enforcement activity, to stop the sale of illicit tobacco and illegal vapes.”
In other words:
“We are committed to a game of unwinnable wack a mole and wasting public money as we grandstand every failure as if it’s a success”🤦♀️
Much easier and cheaper for taxpayers to create sensible policy solutions, haha well that’s only possible when you have sensible people in Govt at all levels!
Until then we have a poor crime culture emerging and embedded into our way of life.
Another day, another firebombing and shooting!
>7 Bn dollars a year in tobacco excise evaded.
Over $365 million committed to failed enforcement.
Yet Albo/Butler Labor Govt keeps defending the policies that make the black market keep growing while small businesses get blown up!
Are they trying to assist organised crime or are they just this stupid?
“these attacks deepen my alarm about violence spilling into everyday public places.”
substack.com/@pippastarr/not…
#313 Tobacco and Vape Wars Firebombing 🚨☄️🔥🔥🔥🚒 Deer Park
Based on the summary of information now there is no chance that this incident wasn’t related to the spate of 312 similar incidents.
It appears once the tobacco store was closed next store a stand over tactic on the effected grocer was pursued.
Yesterday in the Sydney Times,
@RyanPark_Keira gloats after just 10 illicit tobacco and vapes outlets get closed down:
“We continue to strengthen our efforts, including bolstering enforcement activity, to stop the sale of illicit tobacco and illegal vapes.”
In other words:
“We are committed to a game of unwinnable wack a mole and wasting public money as we grandstand every failure as if it’s a success”🤦♀️
Much easier and cheaper for taxpayers to create sensible policy solutions, haha well that’s only possible when you have sensible people in Govt at all levels!
Until then we have a poor crime culture emerging and embedded into our way of life.
Another day, another firebombing and shooting!
Pippa Starr - Let's Improve Vaping Education! 🇦🇺 retweeted
Government:
We don’t want you to smoke.
Tobacco Control:
We don’t want you to smoke.
Government:
We want you to quit.
Tobacco Control:
We want you to quit.
Government:
Here’s a cigarette that still produces smoke, tar, and toxins. It just has almost no nicotine.
Tobacco Control:
Yes. Here’s a cigarette that still produces smoke, tar, and toxins. It just has almost no nicotine.
Who knew that a new cigarette company that many bad acting Quit industry/“Quitscam” people who endorsed this farce would fail so badly, except for anyone that understands that it’s the smoke that kills not the nicotine! 🤯
Very low nicotine cigs pfff🤦♀️
How could any sane public health professional have let this happen! 🤷♀️
Pippa Starr - Let's Improve Vaping Education! 🇦🇺 retweeted
Enough nicotine to satisfy cravings can help a product replace lethal cigarettes and save lives. More nicotine does not automatically mean more harm.
My new article examines why confusing nicotine delivery with smoking-related harm matters so much.
cliffdoug.substack.com/p/nic…
QUITSCAM?
Put People Before Profits
There is no honour in putting government tobacco revenue, pharmaceutical profits, or the interests of the quit industry ahead of people’s lives.
The honour lies in helping smokers move away from combustible tobacco and reducing harm wherever we can.
When protecting an industry matters more than helping people, “quit industry” starts to sound like a massive QUITSCAM!
Ask yourself:
Am I helping smokers move away from cigarettes?
Or am I defending a system that depends on them remaining a problem?
People’s lives should come before revenue, profits, and industry interests!
Pippa Starr - Let's Improve Vaping Education! 🇦🇺 retweeted
The quit industry is not only a worldwide multibillion dollar industry, it’s more accurate description is the “Quitscam” industry. If you got caught up in that believing you were noble, ask yourself,
“am I actually the baddie?”
Pippa Starr - Let's Improve Vaping Education! 🇦🇺 retweeted
There is no honour in having industry ties to Govt’s making huge profits from billions of deaths via combustible tobacco and keeping profits from big pharma cancer treatments flowing!
The honour comes from reducing harm as best as we can!
That is the message too many have lost!
A kind compassionate person usually helps people if they are struggling with something.
But when it comes to helping people quit smoking, morals are too often abandoned and replaced with awful stigma.
Don’t be that person!
Be kind, support harm reduction!
It could save a life!
Just as important as Govts measuring success, they must also measure failures!
Current Albo Australian Govt appear incapable of recognising their failures!
One Minute with Alan
Governments often measure what is easiest to count.
Products seized, shops closed, calls received and legal sales restored may all show that enforcement changed something. They do not automatically show that fewer people smoked, more people quit or overall harm declined.
These measures can be useful indicators, but they are steps along the path, not the destination.
Policy evaluation must follow what people did next and whether the outcome improved their health.
Activity shows that government acted. Outcomes show whether the action achieved its purpose.
One minute. One idea. A different way of thinking.
Vaping IS NOT SMOKING!
Signalling otherwise stifles the greatest health improvement opportunity this century!
At Monash Hospital, the signs declare “strictly smoke-free and vape-free”, while recorded reminders play over and over through the loudspeaker.
Then there is the stigma. Patients and families arrive carrying enough fear and worry without feeling publicly judged for nicotine dependence.
Protecting people from unwanted exposure matters. But placing smoking and vaping under the same prohibition symbol, without explaining the distinction, risks reinforcing the confusion that tobacco harm reduction is trying to overcome.
For someone who has stopped smoking through vaping, that message can feel like their progress counts for nothing. For someone still smoking, repeated warnings offer little comfort when they are struggling.
A Quitline number on a window cannot tell us whether compassionate, practical support is available when someone needs it.
Hospital boundaries can be communicated respectfully. Dependence does not erase a person’s dignity, and shame should never become part of the treatment.
@drjoesDIYhealth @Anne_Ruston @_davidlimbrick @JulianHillMP @maryaldred @MRobertsQLD
Pippa Starr - Let's Improve Vaping Education! 🇦🇺 retweeted
Sky News has a short video following yesterday's article by Boidin et al in JAMA Cardiology.
Here's a clip from it featuring Dr. Matthew Evison, a Professor of Respiratory Medicine and one of the authors.
Pippa Starr - Let's Improve Vaping Education! 🇦🇺 retweeted
Well, that's inconvenient.
This 2025-26 survey of ~400k Australians shows daily smoking prevalence at 10.1%, almost double the recent semi-official estimate and far better aligned with the Roy Morgan estimate of 12.1% in 2025.
@Bludn_Gore
@jkelovuori
roymorgan.com/findings/9937-…
I'm posting this for Alan Gor.
"The 2026 Index estimates daily smoking among Australians aged 15 and over at 10.1%, compared with the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare’s 5.6% estimate."
09algor.substack.com/p/befor…
Cc @jamomartin @drjoesDIYhealth
BREAKING‼️🚨
What is Australia’s real world smoking rate?
It’s certainly nowhere near 5.6% that our Govt & their tax funded superfans spruik!
It more likely to be at least DOUBLE THAT!
A must read below 👇
substack.com/@09algor/note/p…
Smoke free alternatives like vapes that were created & marketed >20 years ago by independent companies because big tobacco & big pharma wouldn’t risk interrupting their profitable business models are now competing so hard that 40% of PMI products sold are now smoke free!
Good!
100% would be better but it’s a good start!
Philip Morris International (PMI): Q3 2026 Results:
"Smoke-free products accounted for more than 40% of quarterly revenue, underscoring their increasing importance to PMI’s business mix."
tobaccoinsider.com/philip-mo…
