By Alan Gor 03 December 2025 Before anything else, let’s be clear: the government was warned. Experts from every sector, criminologists, economists, former AFP and Border Force officers, public-health analysts, retailers, and even international researchers, have said the same thing: Australia’s extreme tobacco taxes and prohibition-heavy nicotine policies were supercharging the black market. Yet when pressed, Minister Murray Watt denied it, waving away the evidence from Dr

By Alan Gor 01 December 2025 Why New Zealand’s success is an existential threat to the WHO’s abstinence-only doctrine, and why Australia is held up as the obedient alternative. For years, the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) has insisted that the only acceptable path to reducing smoking is abstinence: no nicotine, no alternatives, no deviation. Their message is simple: Quit or die, but don’t you dare switch. But standing right next door to Australia is a cou

Alan Gor 23 November 2025 Why the WHO-FCTC would rather blame shadows than face its own failures The headline alone tells you everything you need to know about the state of tobacco control journalism today: “ Unprecedented Levels of Industry Interference Stalls Decisions at COP11.” It’s dramatic, emotional, and completely unfalsifiable. It also sets the tone for an article that works overtime to defend a failing system, using the same recycled talking points we have heard for

Alan Gor 21 November 2025 If COP11 needed a demonstration of how ideology can hollow out science, Professor Emily Banks delivered it. Her speech, framed as “current evidence on the risks of e-cigarettes”, was less a scientific briefing and more an emotional appeal crafted to reinforce the WHO’s pre-determined anti-nicotine narrative. What she presented wasn’t a balanced assessment of evidence, but a political position dressed up as epidemiology. And like the rest of the COP11

Alan Gor 16 November 2025 The BMJ’s latest piece , “How e-cigarettes compromise children’s human rights”, reads less like a scientific review and more like a political pamphlet for the WHO’s anti-nicotine lobby. It claims to champion the rights of children, but what it actually does is weaponise human rights language to justify policies that keep adults smoking and leave teenagers exposed to black-market nicotine products. The article is exactly what you get when a few acad

Organized crime is thriving. Public trust is collapsing. Adults are criminalized for quitting cigarettes the wrong way. And yet the official narrative repeats: “We are protecting public health.”

Alan Gor 11 November 2025 Australia’s nicotine policy is spiralling into absurdity. The Minns Labor Government has announced new legislation that will make landlords  criminally liable if their tenants are caught selling illicit tobacco or vapes. Under the Public Health (Tobacco) Amendment (Landlord Offences) Bill 2025, landlords who “knowingly permit” tenants to sell illegal products face up to one year in prison or fines of $165,000. It’s being sold as a “public health mea

history will record this moment as one of the greatest public health betrayals of the 21st century. They aren’t “protecting the public from harm”. They are protecting themselves from being proven wrong, while people continue to die in numbers they refuse to count.

the cost of refusing harm reduction is now being paid in blood, tax revenue, community safety, and lost social trust. The evidence is in. Prohibition failed.

Alan Gor 30 October 2025 The UK’s LSE British Politics and Policy  blog has published yet another predictable puff piece defending prohibition and dismissing anyone who dares to mention the consequences. Titled “The Tobacco and Vapes Bill – why we need to be careful with international comparisons,”  the article pretends to be a balanced academic review. In reality, it’s a carefully worded attempt to rewrite what’s happening in Australia and New Zealand, the two countries the

Alan Gor 22 October 2025 In the first two parts of this series, Public Health Theatre: Now Playing Across Australia , and The Sequel: Prohibition Strikes Back , we exposed how a nation once known for evidence-based health policy became trapped in a moral crusade. We unpacked the spin, the silence, and the strange rewriting of data that turned harm reduction into heresy. Those pieces revealed a system more focused on control than compassion, where everyday Australians who qu

Alan Gor 19 October 2025 If you thought the first production of Australia’s “Public Health Theatre” was wild, buckle up for the sequel, which is even more unbelievable. The curtains never really closed. The actors just changed costumes, the script got a rewrite, and the same mistakes kept playing out. This time, the show is darker, louder, and far more expensive. It’s called Prohibition Strikes Back. Scene One: The Pharmacy Fantasy When the government banned vape sales, they

Alan Gor 17 October 2025 Grab your popcorn, because Australia’s public health establishment has turned the vaping debate into a full-blown stage production. The actors are polished, the script is well-rehearsed, and the media always gives it five stars. The only problem? It’s all performance, and none of it is helping real people. Act One: The Press Conference Enter Health Minister Mark Butler, the star of the show. Every few months, he steps up to the podium to announce anot

How outdated thinking at the World Health Organisation is hurting public health instead of helping it. The WHO’s latest report on tobacco...

Alan Gor 5 October 2025 Australia likes to see itself as a global leader in public health, the country that took on Big Tobacco and won....

Alan Gor 02 October 2025 Now and then, a paper comes along that does not just raise eyebrows but leaves you shaking your head in...

Alan Gore - 27 September 2025 For decades, Australia was celebrated as a global leader in tobacco control. Plain packaging, ad bans, and...

Alan Gore 21 September 2025 Australia now has a tobacco black market worth more than $5 billion a year, with 60% of all tobacco sold...

Alan Gor 17 September 2025 Australia loves to parade its “world-leading” tobacco control model. High taxes, endless restrictions, and the...

Alan Gor 11 September 2025 Dear Minister Butler, I’m writing to you not as a lobbyist, not as an academic, not as someone with a...