Sin Taxes, Black Markets, and the Illusion of Public Health

 

For years we’ve been told that smoking and vaping are public health issues. That every ban, every tax, every restriction, every shock ad is about “protecting people.” But when you look at how these policies actually play out in the real world, the story doesn’t match the script. What you see instead is a pattern of contradictions, selective logic, and policies that create the very problems they claim to solve.

It all began with passive smoking — a real issue, backed by evidence, and eventually by a court case that forced indoor bans. Fair enough. Nobody wants to breathe in smoke at work or in a restaurant.

But once the government realised how much money tobacco tax generated, the focus shifted. The “sin tax” ballooned into one of the most extreme taxes in the country. And what did it achieve? It didn’t stop smoking. It didn’t eliminate demand. It simply made cigarettes unaffordable for ordinary people and created a booming black market that the government now pretends to be shocked by. They didn’t stop the behaviour — they just pushed it into the shadows.

Then vaping arrived. Cheaper. Cleaner. And most importantly, untaxed. Suddenly vaping became the new villain. Overnight, we had “long‑term studies” about a product that hadn’t even existed long enough to have long‑term data. Overnight, vaping was declared a crisis. Overnight, the messaging flipped from “a safer alternative” to “a threat to public health.”

But here’s the contradiction: there has never been a passive vaping death. Not one. Yet vaping is banned in many of the same places as smoking — including outdoors. If the justification for smoking bans was passive harm, then what’s the justification for banning vapour that disperses in seconds? The logic doesn’t line up. The policy doesn’t match the risk.

And as hard as the government may try to deny it, their own messaging has actually promoted vaping. I still see people vaping on trains, in shopping centres, even in school uniforms. The age is getting younger, not older. I’ve seen ten‑year‑olds vaping — not because someone pushed it on them, but because the government’s propaganda raised awareness. Kids who had never heard of vaping suddenly knew all about it.

The same thing happened with machetes. They were a problem in a few isolated cases, then someone decided to install expensive “machete amnesty bins” in public. Children who didn’t even know what a machete was suddenly started asking questions. The government advertised the weapon, and machete use shot up. Another genius move nobody thought through.

Then there’s the argument that smokers are a “burden on the health system.” If that’s the logic, then we should also ban bricklaying, because bricklayers get back injuries. We should ban nursing, because nurses get infections. We should ban rugby, boxing, and martial arts, because they cause concussions, fractures, and long‑term neurological damage. But we don’t ban those things. We celebrate them. We broadcast them. We sell tickets to them.

In fact, boxing gives us one of the greatest contradictions of all. A world title fight at Madison Square Garden — one of the most violent sports on earth, watched by millions of children — and what happens between rounds? A woman in a swimsuit walks around the ring holding a card. Why a swimsuit? Why in an arena? Why during a sporting event? What happened to the war on sexism, objectification, and discrimination? Why is this accepted? And if you suggested a man walk around the ring in the same outfit, security would drag him out. That’s not equality. That’s selective outrage.

Meanwhile, smokers — adults making a personal choice — are treated like criminals for lighting up outdoors. Vapers are treated like threats for exhaling flavoured mist. And the government continues to collect billions in taxes while claiming it’s all about health. If that money truly went to healthcare, we’d have hospitals made of gold and staffed by smoker‑funded doctors. But we don’t. There’s no visible evidence that the revenue has improved the system it was supposedly meant to support.

And that raises a bigger question: is it time some of these laws and taxes were revisited? Because they’ve gone from “health measures” to extremes. Last year the government went after Coles and Woolworths for putting prices up. But if supermarkets indexed their prices the same way the government indexes tobacco tax, nobody in the country would be eating. The government accuses others of price gouging while quietly doing it themselves through sin taxes. If any private company raised prices at the rate the government raises tobacco tax, there would be royal commissions, protests, and headlines for months.

The truth is simple: the government didn’t stop smoking. They didn’t stop vaping. They didn’t eliminate harm. What they did was create a tax structure so extreme that it pushed people toward a black market, then blamed the black market for existing. They raised awareness of vaping so aggressively that children who had never heard of it suddenly wanted to try it. They banned behaviours that cause minimal harm while ignoring others that cause far more — as long as those others are profitable, popular, or culturally accepted.

This isn’t about health.

It’s about contradictions.

It’s about selective logic.

It’s about systems that create the very problems they claim to be solving.