I am at that charming age as a woman where someone asks me my age I can wryly tell them that I am “old enough” but it is also the age where you need to start getting serious about your life and your health. I wanted to give up smoking cigarettes and so I looked into e-cigarettes to help me give up smoking, but I didn't realize that doing so could make me a criminal in different parts of the country.
You see each Australian State and Territory classes Electronic Cigarettes and Nicotine differently, and I was lucky because I live in SA where e-cigarettes are unclassed, vaping itself is legal and the importation of nicotine is legal. So I bought a vape pen on Ebay and imported the Nicotine from a company recommended to me by a friend, and I was set, but if I was in a different Australian jurisdiction what I did could be illegal- yikes!
Approximately two-thirds of the people that smoke will die from it, or by related illnesses, and so smoking cessation is an important topic. It is so frustrating that e-cigarettes which albeit are still not good for you, but are less dangerous than a traditional cigarette which has a plethora of added chemicals and poisons, are illegal in some Australian jurisdictions (a link to a table showing the laws in different Australian jurisdictions can be found here).
In my quest to give up smoking I found that using an e-cigarette helped with both the physical withdrawals and psychological symptoms of smoking cessation. The added bonus is that there are so many different flavours available to choose from, so I wasn't restricted in choice to a tobacco flavour per se (I decided on coffee, chocolate and cola flavours- yum).
While legislators dally, more and more people are suffering under the yoke of addiction, when e-cigarettes could be used as a smoking cessation tool, just like I did. It makes me so mad to think that e-cigarettes which are far safer than cigarettes are not freely available, when cigarettes are so easy to buy from any corner shop. It is time for legislators to get serious about their constituents health and legislate e-cigarettes properly so that they can be as freely available as cigarettes.
