Transcript
Station: 6PR Date: 15/01/2018
Program: PERTH TONIGHT
Compere: CHRIS ILSLEY Summary
Audience: Male 16+ Female 16+ All people
CHRIS ILSLEY: The debate over e-cigarettes continues to rage here in Australia, which is a bit unusual really when you consider that many other countries that are equally as advanced as ours like the UK and New Zealand have already embraced e-cigarettes. But it would seem the health Nazis here are vehemently opposed to them and people even like our Perth Tonight GP Dr Joe Kosterich have been asking a fairly simple three word- three letter question, why? Or perhaps in the words of the late professor Julius Sumner Miller, why is it so?
The Australian Association of Convenience Stores has welcomed comments by Colin Mendelsohn who’s an Associate Professor and tobacco treatment specialist at the University of New South Wales for leading what has been described as a credible medical opinion to the debate against a chorus of other health lobbyists with entrenched views on the subject of e-cigarettes and vaping generally.
Jeff Rogut is the CEO of the Australasian Association of Convenience Stores, joins us on the program right now. Hi Jeff.
JEFF ROGUT: Hi Chris. Good to be with you.
CHRIS ILSLEY: Mate, I think you’re probably one of the people who’s going to be yelling, a bit like Dr Joe Kosterich in the wilderness here, because for some strange reason in Australia, unlike many other countries who are equally anti-smoking, we seem to be vehemently anti e-cigarettes and vehemently anti-vaping despite the fact that other countries are saying; hey you know, there appears to be benefits to this. And also people like callers to this program are saying it was a way I was able to quit.
JEFF ROGUT: Chris, you’re absolutely right and we’ve been long arguing the same position. We have colleagues in other countries, we visit other countries as part of keeping up with what’s happening in our industry and as you said in your introduction certainly in the UK, the US, even in Japan, Canada and New Zealand, vaping is quite common. It’s legal, it is assisting people and despite what our authorities would have us believe they are an aid to getting people to quit using tobacco rather than encouraging new people to actually start smoking. Their heads are in the sand at the moment and it really is time for something like this.
CHRIS ILSLEY: How do you think we’re going to perhaps persuade people to think this from a different perspective? Because it seems to me unfortunately in this country a lot of our health zealots – and that’s the correct word, they’re zealots – they’re almost becoming cult-like in their behaviour. They’re welded to an ideological point of view and you’re never going to break their thinking. It’s almost like they have to be deprogrammed in some way.
JEFF ROGUT: Again, you’ve taken the words largely out of my mouth. You know it really is interesting. Tobacco is a legal product. In our industry it makes up about 38 per cent of sales of a typical convenient store, so there’s a core of people that still choose to smoke.
The fallacy behind plain packaging of tobacco, which so many people said this is the silver bullet that’s going to reduce smoking rates, of itself has failed. If you go to any market – and certainly we see it here in Victoria, certainly in New South Wales, increasingly South East Queensland and even in regional centres – illicit tobacco is growing enormously. Illicit tobacco is controlled by criminal activity. Government is losing about $1.6 billion every year in excise. But not only can you buy illicit tobacco, you can buy vaping products. And recently and I do go around these markets to prove to myself that when I am talking to people it is credible, I was able to buy two bottles of nicotine product which is bad, it’s illegal, for $15 and yet people such as the Cancer Council and many other reputable bodies and individuals refuse to acknowledge that that is a problem and people are actually resorting to that. Using the illicit product, quite frankly, could be doing people more harm than the legal product because there is no guarantee of what that product is. There’s no description on the outside, there’s no content and not being a vaper or a smoker I wouldn’t use it but certainly some people are using it and buying it. So it’s time we recognise what is actually happening in our communities and assisted people rather than making it so hard for them.
CHRIS ILSLEY: Why do you think- and this seems to me to be the fundamental problem and I know I’ve had this discussion with Dr Joe Kosterich many times, as to why it’s so much of a problem to get health authorities in this country to understand that there are actually benefits to vaping such as helping people to quit smoking. There’s no evidence to suggest that it’s some sort of a gateway drug, it seems to be a pretty convenient ideological point of view, but there doesn’t seem to be any hard evidence suggesting that it is in fact the case.
And the second thing is how are we going to go about convincing these people to actually consider this? Because what we have – at the moment when we talk about this it’s almost like some petulant child – if you go back to your school days – who puts their fingers in their ears and goes: I’m not listening, la, la, la, la. It’s a bit like that and it’s almost in some ways almost as petty.
JEFF ROGUT: It is and the crazy thing about it is that when research comes out say from Public Health as there were reports in the media today talking about controlling what people eat, I’m sure the authorities will jump on that and say: here’s a credible body saying we need to control what people eat. But when the same body, Public Health UK, came out and extol the virtues of vaping, it was totally ignored and pushed aside by our authorities. I think your word zealot is absolutely right, they just do not want to see the reality of what is happening.
I happened to sit in one of the inquiries when vaping was brought before a Senate inquiry and certainly if we look at some of the commentary that was made – and it’s all on the public record through the transcripts – they were not prepared to give an inch. So it really does leave people, such as Professor Mendelsohn, who I certainly applaud for his comments, and the public, to start putting their hand up; talking to their local MP and saying: it is just not on.
We did a survey late 2016. We surveyed 4000 people on a number of issues that affect our industry, including sales of alcohol and other things, and we certainly used the topic of e-cigarettes. And 73 per cent said – that’s a high proportion, 4000 people is greater than the Newspoll that determines whether the Government will survive or not – 73 per cent of those people said they’d support legislation of e-cigarettes if it helped people smoking. Only 6 per cent said that they might try it. Six per cent of non-smokers said that they might try it, but certainly 68 per cent of smokers said that they would try it.
So if the evidence from the UK, from the US, from all of the other countries, is so strong, it must be seen as an aid to help people stopping to smoke tobacco.
CHRIS ILSLEY: Well of course, one of the big arguments here, which kind of makes sense really, is that: okay nobody’s suggesting that vaping is 100 per cent safe, but what they are suggesting- what they suggest there is no doubt is indeed the case, it is far, far safer than smoking conventional tobacco. So therefore, if you said- if we have to look at the lesser of two evils, vaping wins every time. So once again, we get back to this question as to why the zealots seem to be so opposed to it?
But here’s the other question: why do governments seem to be so complicit when it comes to the zealots? Now there could be a little bit of the cynical side that might suggest well, actually, the people who, regardless of any claims to the contrary, stand to lose the most, are the Government. Because after all, they’re getting so much revenue from tobacco it’s just absolutely unbelievable. And one of the main reasons why there haven’t been any major successes with tobacco lawsuits in this country, because simply the Government cannot argue that it’s been financially disadvantaged by it simply through the sheer volume of taxes it’s collected.
JEFF ROGUT: Yeah, correct, and we collect tax for them, but our industry alone sells over $3 billion worth of tobacco every year. And yes, we have an interest. Certainly customers come to us looking for choice. We’re not saying that e-cigarettes shouldn’t be taxed. There is an opportunity for Government to do that. But by the same token, all of the illicit tobacco, it’s estimated by KPMG, who are a reasonably reliable organisation, that 14 per cent of all tobacco sold in the country currently, is illicit or illegal tobacco. So even there, the Government is losing about $1.6 billion every year in excise revenue. We’re not saying don’t tax [indistinct] or the products. There is an opportunity to do so. But let’s give consumers the choice where they actually want that.
If a customer comes into the convenience store, our operators can’t even talk to them about the product, for fear of the huge fines that could be [indistinct] if they seem to be selling or recommending a tobacco-type product. So we’re not even talking to consumers about it and the education of consumers has really not even begun in this country. A lot of what they’re hearing and seeing comes from online or their travels and experience overseas. I really do believe the Government and the health departments, in particularly, are letting smokers down by not giving them the choice.
CHRIS ILSLEY: It strikes me that we are really going to have a battle and, as I said, bearing in mind the information from other countries, I just can’t get my head around why it has taken so long and why there is so much of an effort to try and get this looked at here. And I think I probably will bang my head against the wall the next time I hear somebody talk about it: well it might be a gateway to people taking up tobacco. Somehow I doubt it.
JEFF ROGUT: Look, I’m with you with that and as I said, the survey of 4000 consumers showed a very small proportion – 6 per cent of those said they might if at all tried. I think the other thing is the health lobby is incredibly powerful in Australia. They are unionised almost and they have enormous influence over government, and I think that is part of the issue.
CHRIS ILSLEY: [Talks over] Mate, the problem is they’ve become zealots and fanatics, and I want to argue that like all zealots and all fanatics, they become dangerous, because what happens is they get welded to a point of view and they get focused on that. The blinkers go on and they are not prepared to consider anything else and I think that’s the fundamental problem we have here.
JEFF ROGUT: That’s spot on and they have very deep pockets. They can put out adverts, they can lobby governments …
CHRIS ILSLEY: [Interrupts] Of course they can, it’s taxpayers’ funds they’re using.
JEFF ROGUT: Correct and organisations such as ours and many others who [indistinct] vaping or keep giving consumers choice just cannot compete, which again is why I say it’s terrific to see credible people, such as Colin Mendelsohn, come out with some of the facts, which counter what some of these people say. We’re not health experts. We are retailers. We talk to our customers, we react to what customers want. But it really is up to the health experts, who do believe that there’s an opportunity for vaping to really get on board and help us, and other like-minded people, to push that [indistinct].
CHRIS ILSLEY: Makes a lot of sense, thank you very much for your time. I appreciate that.
JEFF ROGUT: My pleasure. Thank you, Chris. Have a good evening.
CHRIS ILSLEY: Jeff Rogut, by the way, is the Australasian Association of Convenience Stores CEO.
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TRANSCRIPT PRODUCED BY ISENTIA
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