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Question of whether vape ban to be legislated by commonwealth or states, Butler says
Mark Butler was also asked about the government’s plan to ban all disposable vape products. He said they are working on it “furiously” with eight other jurisdictions for a uniform approach, but haven’t got a set timeframe yet.
… which will be, you know, difficult, complex and probably take some time.
We know that there will be a furious response by the industry – there has been every time we tried to regulate nicotine or tobacco – so we want to make sure that we get this right.
And one of the real problems is we don’t know how much nicotine. This black market that’s flourished [is] cynically targeted at kids.
You can tell that through the fact that they’re bubblegum flavoured and they’ve got pink unicorns on them. It’s not as if those sorts of things are targeted at the middle-aged hardened smoker.
In addition to that … small rural pharmacies, which is the vast bulk of them, will receive 100% of the reduction in dispensing income – that’s over and above the additional investment we’re making in all pharmacies across the country – which will amount … to hundreds of thousands of dollars in funding from taxpayers through the course of this four-year period.
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