{"id":446,"date":"2024-06-17T17:43:49","date_gmt":"2024-06-17T17:43:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.jacobgrier.com\/blog\/?p=446"},"modified":"2024-06-17T17:43:49","modified_gmt":"2024-06-17T17:43:49","slug":"australias-new-drug-war-on-nicotine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jacobgrier.com\/blog\/2024\/06\/17\/australias-new-drug-war-on-nicotine\/","title":{"rendered":"Australia&#8217;s new drug war on nicotine"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Australia is often lauded as a world leader in mainstream tobacco control. But on the ground, things are descending into chaos. <a href=\"https:\/\/reason.com\/2024\/06\/17\/the-deadly-tobacco-drug-war-down-under\/\">New from me at Reason<\/a>:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p>Since March of last year, the Australian state of Victoria has been rocked by a series of arsons and firebombings. Some of the targets are victims of extortion; others are caught in an escalating turf war between rival gangs. Two men with links to organized crime have been\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.dailymail.co.uk\/news\/article-13076401\/vape-shopes-fire-victoria.html\">publicly murdered<\/a>, one in a broad-daylight\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/theage.com.au\/national\/victoria\/four-men-at-large-after-targeted-shooting-linked-to-tobacco-wars-20231008-p5eaj6.html\">shooting<\/a>\u00a0at a shopping mall in a Melbourne suburb. Violent conflict is not unexpected in organized crime, but what is unusual is the drug at the center of this conflict: nicotine.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>E-cigarettes are already only legally available with a prescription, though widely sold illicitly. The government is now on the verge of passing a bill to penalize suppliers of e-cigarettes with up to seven years in prison. Deadly cigarettes, meanwhile, remain freely available, if exorbitantly taxed. Read the whole thing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Australia is often lauded as a world leader in mainstream tobacco control. But on the ground, things are descending into chaos. New from me at Reason: Since March of last year, the Australian state of Victoria has been rocked by a series of arsons and firebombings. Some of the targets are victims of extortion; others [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-446","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","post-preview"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jacobgrier.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/446","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jacobgrier.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jacobgrier.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jacobgrier.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jacobgrier.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=446"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.jacobgrier.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/446\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":447,"href":"https:\/\/www.jacobgrier.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/446\/revisions\/447"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jacobgrier.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=446"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jacobgrier.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=446"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jacobgrier.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=446"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}