Very bad news for SA Vapers!

Another cut and paste Job from FB - dont shoot the messenger - just sharing what I see around the traps.

"Savvas Dimitriou
45 mins
Hi all, I've seen a lot of conflicting information spreading across Facebook about the SA vaping bill that I'd like to clear up.

WHAT STAGE IS THE BILL AT?
A few people have given the impression (based on some poor wording in Minister Wade's replies to questions during debate) that the bill won't be voted on until 2019, but that isn't the case. The bill was introduced into the lower house earlier this year, and was (very) briefly discussed at that time. Yesterday, it was voted on in the lower house and passed, and was then moved to the upper house where it was also voted on and passed.
The bill is now scheduled to return to the lower house for a final vote, which is just a formality – after all, it was already passed by the lower house previously and the upper house did not propose any amendments, so there's no reason for any MP to change their vote.
I spoke with the Minister for Health's senior policy advisor about an hour ago who confirmed the final vote in the lower house will take place in November, probably in the first week.
Once it passes the lower house for the final time it'll be sent to the Governor for assent – again this is just a formality.
Once the bill is proclaimed it becomes law, but the regulations will not be enforced for six months to give shops time to adjust to the new regime. Based on the current timeline the regulations will be enforced sometime in May 2019, but that might change between now and then, and of course there's always the chance that we'll be able to influence the upcoming lower house vote.
To summarise, the bill has not yet passed, but it will pass within the next few weeks.

WILL IT BE ILLEGAL TO BUY ONLINE IF YOU'RE SOUTH AUSTRALIAN?

The law doesn't make it illegal for South Australians to buy online, it makes it illegal for stores to sell to South Australians online. That's a small but important difference: the liability is 100% on stores, not on customers.
The government isn't going to block access to vaping websites (they couldn't do that even if they wanted to, there is no law in South Australia that gives the government the right to unilaterally demand that ISPs block websites), it's incumbent on the stores themselves to refuse service to South Australians.
If you do manage to place an order online and it gets delivered to you, you as an individual have not broken the law and you cannot be charged with any crime. However, the vendor who sold it to you can be prosecuted and would face extremely harsh fines.
CAN INTERSTATE STORES STILL SELL TO SOUTH AUSTRALIANS?
The government's position, as related to me directly during our final meeting with the Minister's advisors last week, is that they believe they can enforce this law on stores that operate interstate. We've received a lot of conflicting legal advice on this issue (AVATAR has engaged two commercial law firms, and we're waiting for a third assessment by a constitutional law expert) but as far as we can tell it may not be possible for the SA government to enforce the law in the exact way they intend.
However, it gets a lot murkier depending on the nature of the business making the sale. A good example is the way businesses are currently banned from selling tobacco online to South Australians. If you live in any state other than South Australia, you can go on the Coles or Woolworths website and buy cigarettes online and have them delivered to your door with no issues. If you live in South Australia, both Coles and Woolworths are prohibited from selling cigarettes to you online.
The reason for this is that Coles and Woolworths operate businesses in South Australia as well as interstate. Although their websites are not based in South Australia, and the products would be shipped from outside of South Australia, they are nevertheless required to follow South Australian law because part of their business is in South Australia.
Similarly, if a vape company has any physical retail stores in South Australia, or any other presence in South Australia, then they will be prohibited from selling vaping products online to South Australians even if their website and fulfilment team is based interstate. The government has made it clear that they fully intend to prosecute vendors that sell to South Australians, and it will be extremely easy for them to do so if any part of the business is in South Australia.
WHAT ABOUT THIS LOOPHOLE I JUST THOUGHT OF?
Lawmakers aren't stupid and they have decades of experience writing laws in such a way as to make them enforceable. The way this legislation is written allows for the Minister for Health to arbitrarily define any product he wants as a vaping product, regardless of what the vendor calls it.
For example, if you set up a store selling eliquid but you only ever refer to it as "food flavouring", the Minister can determine at his own discretion that you're trying to sneak around the law and prosecute you accordingly. It's even easier if the product you're selling is sold by a different vendor and marketed by them as a vaping product. For example, if you're selling cotton online to South Australians without making any reference to vaping, and another vendor sells the exact same brand of cotton but makes it clear that it's a vaping product, or the manufacturer of the cotton makes it clear that it's a vaping product in their marketing materials or on their website, you can still be prosecuted.
Even if you did find a successful loophole, all that would happen is that the government would introduce a new amendment to close it and you will have wasted time and money on a pointless venture instead of devoting that time and money on fighting against the law itself. On top of that, the government will use it as proof that the industry is acting in bad faith and may decide to enact even harsher restrictions as a punishment for not adhering to the spirit of the law.

THEY'RE ONLY DOING THIS SO THEY CAN MAKE MONEY FROM TOBACCO TAXES!

Stop it. This argument is a bad conspiracy theory that doesn't make any sense, and which politicians rightly find extremely offensive to them on a personal level.
Firstly, if this was just about making tax revenue, then lawmakers would be writing *less* restrictive legislation and applying a tax to vaping products. If it's just about money, then there's no reason why they wouldn't write legislation that makes it easier for them to make money, and this legislation does the opposite of that.
Secondly, individual states don't collect any tobacco excise revenue, that money all goes to the federal government, so there's absolutely no incentive for any state to write laws to protect tobacco taxes.
Thirdly, politicians aren't all sociopathic monsters who care more about tobacco taxes (that they don't benefit from anyway) than they do about public health. Almost every single public health body in Australia is campaigning to ban vaping or heavily restrict access to vaping on the grounds that there isn't enough evidence to say that it's safe (which isn't true, but that's a separate discussion.)
Politicians have a duty of care to the people they represent, and they have a duty to listen to Australia's public health institutions. In fact, all of us should WANT our elected officials to listen to Australia's public health institutions, because politicians should be making laws based on science, not on personal opinion.
The tragedy here is that Australia's public health bodies are ignoring the medical and scientific evidence that vaping is substantially safer than smoking, and they are promoting the unscientific, regressive viewpoint that vaping should be restricted. They are ignoring the mountains of statistical evidence coming out of the UK, US, Europe, Canada, and New Zealand that proves vaping is substantially safer than smoking, that the so-called "gateway effect" does not exist, that young people are not using vapourisers in any significant numbers, and that smokers who quit by switching to vaping are having a much higher level of success than smokers who try to quit using willpower, gums, patches, dangerous drugs, and other less effective quitting methods.
To be clear, there is no conspiracy working behind the scenes to keep people addicted to tobacco, politicians are not writing laws to protect the tobacco industry, and tobacco taxes have absolutely nothing to do with the vaping laws that exist around Australia. While the tobacco industry would love to see vaping regulated out of existence, they are not secretly working with the government to achieve that outcome, and frankly they don't need to - all they have to do is vocally support vaping and the general public and politicians will immediately believe that vaping is a tobacco industry initiative.
To get a sense for why the taxation argument is so offensive to politicians, try to think of it from the opposite perspective. Imagine if someone came up to you and said that the only reason you support vaping is because you want to make money selling vaping products to people. Imagine if they told you that you don't care about public health, and you're willing to let people die an early death just so you can make money from the vaping industry. Naturally, you'd be offended, and rightfully so. You would dismiss the person who made that accusation as an idiot who doesn't know their facts.
Well, that's exactly how politicians feel about it too. They genuinely believe that what they're doing is protecting the public from products that may be harmful to their health. That is their only motivation here, that's why they're willing to destroy an industry that's providing thousands of jobs around the country and millions of dollars in GST, income tax, payroll tax, and other government revenue streams.
The fact is that if it was just about money, they would be doing the opposite of what they're doing now.


I DON'T LIVE IN SOUTH AUSTRALIA, SO THIS LAW WON'T AFFECT ME

While it's true that if you don't live in South Australia you won't be directly affected by this exact law, the reality is that this law is going to have a chilling effect on vaping all around Australia, and it's likely that the SA law will be used as the basis for federal laws that will most probably be introduced next year."