The Fail Quitting Industry Trips Over Backwards Again!

20 August 2025

By Pippa Starr – ALIVE Advocacy Movement

Another failing Quit industry stooge and another piece of propaganda designed to mislead Australian public health in regards to vaping was published yesterday in what can only be described as nervous panic.

Associate Professor Genevieve Wilkinson’s recent commentary on Australia’s vaping laws is yet another example of how the debate has been hijacked by ideology, professional self-interest, and misleading comparisons with Big Tobacco.

What’s missing?

The voices of the actual key stakeholders: adult consumers who vape to quit smoking and stay smoke-free.

Let’s unpack where Wilkinson has it completely the wrong way around.

Consumers Are the Real Stakeholders, Not Academics, Not Lobbyists

Wilkinson argues that governments should consult with “children and teenagers” as stakeholders, but she omits the millions of Australian adults whose lives are directly impacted by these laws. The reality is that vaping is overwhelmingly used by adults who smoke or once smoked. The stakeholders that matter most are adult consumers, not prohibitionists, not professional quit industry operatives, and certainly not academics who’ve never had to choose between another cigarette or a life-saving alternative.

Vaping Is Not Tobacco, And Conflating the Two Is Scientifically Misleading

Wilkinson leans heavily on a tired, inaccurate trope: that the vaping industry is just another arm of Big Tobacco. This is not only false, it’s deliberately misleading.

• The previously legal vape industry in Australia was driven by independent small businesses, not tobacco companies.

• Many of these operators were run by ex-smokers who wanted to help others quit cigarettes.

• Internationally, the scientific consensus is clear: vaping is dramatically safer than smoking and conflating the two undermines public health by scaring smokers away from switching.

Calling vaping “tobacco” is like calling a seatbelt “a car crash.” It ignores the very reason the technology exists: to reduce harm.

The Professional Quit Industry, Profiting From Failure

Wilkinson has strong ties to the professional “quit” industry – an industry notorious for leeching taxpayer money while producing poor results. Billions have been poured into quit campaigns, nicotine replacement therapies, and pharmaceutical stop-smoking products, yet Australia still has nearly 2 million smokers.

The quit industry’s business model thrives on failure. If smokers actually quit en masse, their taxpayer-funded empires collapse. By demonising vaping, a disruptive consumer-led solution, they protect their turf while leaving smokers behind. That’s not public health; that’s empire-building.

The Real Evidence: A Case for Repealing the July 2024 Vape Laws

Every point Wilkinson makes about “needing evidence” to defend the laws actually flips on its head when you examine the real data:

• Wastewater analysis shows nicotine use hasn’t dropped – it’s simply shifted into the black market.

• Roy Morgan surveys and independent studies reveal adult smoking has plateaued and may even be ticking up since vaping was pushed underground.

• Countries with regulated retail models (like the UK and New Zealand) are seeing rapid declines in smoking, while youth vaping stabilises under proportionate regulation.

By her own standard, the laws introduced in July 2024 are indefensible. They fail every test of evidence, transparency, and public health outcome. The logical response isn’t defending them against WTO challenges – it’s abolishing them as quickly as possible.

The WTO Red Herring

Wilkinson worries about challenges under international trade law, yet the only reason Australia faces that risk is because it chose the most extreme, prohibitionist path rather than a balanced regulatory framework. The WTO doesn’t exist to defend ideological crusades; it exists to prevent discriminatory, protectionist measures. If Australia had implemented sensible regulation through ordinary retail, there would be no legal vulnerability.

Learning the Wrong Lesson from Plain Packaging

Wilkinson points to Australia’s plain packaging battle as a model, but that’s comparing apples to oranges. Plain packaging regulated a lethal product, cigarettes, that we want to phase out entirely. Vaping is the solution, not the problem. Defending life-saving harm reduction with the same tools used to regulate tobacco isn’t just flawed; it’s reckless.

The Bottom Line:

Genevieve Wilkinson and her colleagues argue from an ivory tower of ideology, disconnected from the reality faced by adult smokers and vapers. They conflate vaping with tobacco, protect the taxpayer-funded quit industry, and promote policies that hand the market to organised crime while failing public health at every level.

The truth is clear: everything in Wilkinson’s case, when examined against the evidence, actually supports dismantling the disastrous July 2024 vape laws and replacing them with a regulated retail model that empowers adult consumers, protects youth, and saves lives.

Australia doesn’t need trade-proofing. It needs truth-proofing.

And the truth is: these laws are indefensible.