Rachel Payne MP made a contribution to the Tobacco Amendment (Tobacco Retailer and Wholesaler Licensing Scheme) Bill 2024. In her contribution, Rachel acknowledged the threat of gang warfare as a result of the illicit tobacco trade, while highlighting her concerns around this bill to properly eradicate it. Rachel also noted the bill’s failure to address the issue through a lens of harm reduction.
Tuesday the 26th of November
Victorian Legislative Council
RACHEL PAYNE (South-Eastern Metropolitan) made a contribution to the bill on behalf of Legalise Cannabis Victoria:
I rise to make a contribution to the Tobacco Amendment (Tobacco Retailer and Wholesaler Licensing Scheme) Bill 2024. On behalf of Legalise Cannabis Victoria. I cannot contribute to this bill without first acknowledging the massive failing that has led us to where we are today. Seemingly every week we hear of another firebombing. It is genuine gang warfare on our streets! With cars ramming into buildings and so much violence, all in the name of the illicit tobacco trade. Ordinary Victorians are increasingly caught in the crossfire. Local businesses suffer thousands of dollars in damages thanks simply to being next door to a tobacconist.
We appreciate that these scenes of violence have rightfully stoked fear in the community. There is immense pressure on government to act. But with that being said, we are fearful that this bill, much like the firebombings themselves, will end up hurting ordinary Victorians. There are legitimate businesses out there – mum-and-dad shops, many of them with English as a second language – and they sell illicit tobacco. That is the reality of the situation. They are not some sort of criminal overlord; they are simply trying to make a living. A living in a market that is increasingly saturated with illicit tobacco.
This government is at risk of targeting these kinds of people with imprisonment. And hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines.
We are now the only state without a tobacco licensing scheme
We have tried many times. Thanks to their own inaction, this government has enabled a fully established illicit market within our state. Finally, when they do decide to act, they do so while championing the toughest penalties in the country and a half-baked plan for implementation. Thanks to this tough-on-crime stance, I now have no doubt this legislation will sail through with the support of the opposition, free of any real conversation about harm reduction and public health.
In consulting on this bill, we spoke with Deakin University criminologist James Martin-
who addressed the nuances of regulating these kinds of markets. When you focus on enforcement and penalties, you do not meaningfully address supply and demand. Often what you actually do is push out the good actors from the illicit market and leave the most hardened criminals, who then escalate their violence.
We agree that this bill seems to be a reactive short-term solution that could very well create more harm. There is also much of this scheme that will only be ironed out at a later stage. We will not be able to be involved in these later stages and do not know what they could include. Which is something that concerns us deeply. When we speak about our concerns and lack of trust, we are speaking from experience. As the Legalise Cannabis Party we have a unique perspective on the harms a tough-on-crime approach can have. Especially when trying to regulate the illicit drug market. After seeing the many harms of the war on drugs, can you really blame us for being sceptical about the war on illicit tobacco? These crackdowns never really seem to work.
It has been so promising to see the government’s language around cannabis shift in the last decade –
They increasingly recognise that a health-led and harm reduction focus leads to better outcomes for all. That is why this bill is particularly frustrating for us. It feels as if all of those lessons that have been so hard fought for are being ignored because it is convenient. We appreciate that an unregulated market and the absence of a licensing scheme have made public health and harm reduction efforts more difficult; however, we would be remiss not to mention the role of the Commonwealth government in landing us in this situation. The tobacco excise is astronomical and vapes are now more restricted than cigarettes. It is frankly ridiculous.
In other countries where they are close to being smoke-free –
like New Zealand, vapes are regulated in a commonsense way and endorsed as a smoking cessation tool. We encourage the Victorian government to stand up to their federal counterparts and raise these issues, because in the meantime people like my friend who is currently battling cancer cannot access a herb vaporiser for her medicinal cannabis. That is right, it is a dry herb vaporiser – it has no nicotine; it is essentially a heating element – and she is treated like a criminal just for trying to buy one.
It is disappointing that the Victorian government has not had the confidence to come out and call out the Commonwealth government for playing a major role in creating the illicit tobacco market. Their excise on tobacco criminalises the poor and their regulation of vapes has made a tool for smoking cessation incredibly hard to access, harder than even cigarettes themselves. This is going to create a huge group of people who will have to do one of two things: they have to either foot the high cost of regular cigarettes in the midst of a cost-of-living crisis or stop smoking. The third option would be that they go to some of these organised crime gangs and buy their cigarettes direct.
The latest national drug strategy household survey –
Continues to tell us that those who smoke tend to be older and live in the most disadvantaged socio-economic areas. This legislation should address smoking cessation supports through improved accessibility to health care and cessation services. Instead, it is silent on these issues. At the end of the day this market only exists because there is a demand for it, and unless we address the demand we are not going to get to the core of the issue. We have broad concerns about the approach in this bill, and we do not believe it will hit the mark in reducing organised crime. That is why, despite our support for a licensing system, we cannot support this bill.
To begin with, we have concerns about the practicalities of the implementation of a licensing scheme
One of these concerns relates to the role VCAT will play in dispute resolution. VCAT is already overrun and subject to significant delays, blowing out disputes by months and sometimes years. This bill sets up VCAT as the body to which complaints can be escalated to for a review. It is not fanciful to expect that in the process of trying to license an unknown number of thousands of tobacco retailers and wholesalers, there could be hundreds of people who will use this review process.
We need some assurances that the government will address this by providing additional resourcing and funding to VCAT. Let us be realistic about the demands that already exist and how without further action this bill will worsen those demands. We do not know how many licence applicants there will be. So for the government to claim they can get this regulator set up and all of these licences assessed within a six-month window is ambitious, to say the least.
Our concerns also include the general tone of not only this bill but the broader commentary by the government. As I have already touched on, we have seen such a positive shift in the way this government shapes its drug policy, focusing on public health and harm reduction, which is why we are so concerned about how the centrepiece of this bill is a tough-on-crime approach, so much so that we feel harm reduction has been left out of the conversation altogether. We will be raising a number of these concerns during the committee-of-the-whole stage and hope that the government is able to provide some assurances. This bill will not decrease demand for illicit tobacco, and it will not inform and educate Victorians on harm reduction. For these reasons, we will not be supporting this bill.
