When Prohibition Pushes Consumers Back to Cigarettes
A response to Nine News reporting on nicotine pouches, adult relapse risk, illicit tobacco and the TGA’s claims about youth uptake.
The issue
Recent Nine News coverage reports that some former smokers who had moved to nicotine pouches now fear returning to cigarettes following the removal of lawful access pathways. The report also points to consumers seeking cheaper illicit cigarettes.
That is not a minor unintended consequence. If a policy designed in the name of public health pushes adults back toward combustible tobacco or deeper into illicit supply, its real-world effects need to be confronted directly.
Read the original report
For transparency, readers should review the source coverage alongside this response.
Nine News: Former smokers fear relapse and black market after nicotine pouch ban →
The central policy question is simple: if adult smokers are being pushed back to cigarettes or toward illicit tobacco because a lower-risk alternative has been removed from lawful access, can the policy still be called a public-health success?
1. A policy that pushes adults back to smoking is failing its own test
Nine News reports concern among former smokers that the nicotine-pouch prohibition may lead them back to combustible cigarettes. It also reports interest in cheaper illicit cigarettes.
This is precisely the outcome policymakers should have been trying to avoid. Cigarettes remain the highest-risk nicotine product because combustion drives the overwhelming burden of smoking-related disease. If adults who had moved away from smoking return to cigarettes because legal access to pouches disappears, the direction of travel is backwards.
The problem becomes even more serious where consumers then seek illicit cigarettes. That means the policy can simultaneously increase exposure to the most harmful nicotine product and strengthen the market operating outside product standards, taxation, retailer controls and ordinary consumer protection.
Public-health policy should be judged by outcomes, not intentions.
If prohibition increases smoking relapse or illicit purchasing, those consequences belong in the assessment of whether the policy is working.
2. Illicit cigarettes are not a safer fallback
Australia already has a substantial illicit tobacco problem. The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare reports that one in three people who smoke purchased illicit tobacco in the previous three months and/or currently smoke illicit tobacco.
Removing a lawful route to nicotine pouches does not remove nicotine demand. Where consumers respond by purchasing cheaper illicit cigarettes, government policy is effectively redirecting demand toward a market with less oversight and toward a product category with far greater health risks.
3. The TGA’s 1.8% figure needs factual context
Statements about “emerging nicotine products” and rising youth use can leave the impression that the 1.8% nicotine-pouch figure is specifically a youth prevalence figure.
It is not. The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare’s 2025 National Drug Strategy Household Survey reports that 1.8% of Australians aged 14 and over used oral nicotine pouches in the previous 12 months.
AIHW’s more detailed age breakdown reports past-year use of 0.9% among 14–17-year-olds, although that estimate has a high level of sampling error and is unsuitable for most uses. Use was much higher among adults aged 18–24, at 8.4%.
Separately, Cancer Council NSW’s Generation Vape study reported that 1.9% of 14–17-year-olds had ever used an oral nicotine pouch, slightly down from 2.1% in the previous survey wave.
4. “Young people” is not a substitute for precise age data
Youth protection is a legitimate public-health objective. But statistics need to be presented accurately. A figure covering everyone aged 14 and over should not be presented as though it measures adolescents alone.
There is also a meaningful difference between past-year use, current use and ever use. Conflating these measures can make prevalence sound larger or more entrenched than the underlying evidence supports.
The appropriate policy response is to focus on under-age access directly: robust age-gating, retailer compliance, online controls, enforcement against illicit sellers and clear restrictions on youth-oriented marketing.
5. Youth protection and adult harm reduction can coexist
Preventing minors from accessing nicotine products does not require denying adult smokers access to every non-combustible alternative. These are separate regulatory objectives and should be treated that way.
A credible framework can prohibit sales to minors, impose product standards, control marketing, require accurate labelling and enforce age verification while still providing lawful access for adults who would otherwise continue smoking.
That is more coherent than a system in which cigarettes remain readily available while an adult seeking a smoke-free alternative is pushed toward either smoking again or buying from an illicit seller.
6. The current architecture creates a perverse hierarchy of access
Australia has created a situation in which the most harmful nicotine product—combustible cigarettes—remains legally available, while nicotine pouches have no ordinary lawful consumer pathway.
If former smokers are now returning to cigarettes, the problem is no longer theoretical. It is a warning about what happens when regulatory design ignores substitution, consumer behaviour and the basic principle of relative risk.
What a more credible response would look like
Strict age verification, retailer accountability and enforcement against youth sales.
Clear nicotine limits, ingredient requirements, warnings and manufacturing standards.
Allow regulated access while longer-term assessment and product frameworks are developed.
Focus enforcement on sellers and supply chains operating outside consumer-protection rules.
Track smoking relapse, switching, illicit purchasing and youth use rather than relying on headline claims.
Distinguish adolescents from adults and past-year use from ever-use or current use.
Policy failure should not be rebranded as protection
If the practical result of prohibition is that adults return to cigarettes or seek cheaper illicit tobacco, government cannot simply point to the intention behind the policy and declare success.
Australia should be able to protect young people and regulate nicotine products without creating a system that leaves cigarettes as the easiest legal option for adults.
The test is not whether government can prohibit a product. The test is whether the policy reduces harm in the real world.
This response was prepared by the Australian Consumer Alliance, a consumer advocacy organisation. [ADD HERE: how ACA is funded, and whether it receives any funding from the tobacco, vaping or nicotine-pouch industry.] All statistics cited are drawn from the publicly available sources listed below and can be independently verified.
Consumer experience belongs in the policy debate.
Australia needs a framework that protects young people, addresses illicit supply and gives adult smokers a lawful pathway to appropriately regulated lower-risk alternatives.
Sources
- Nine News — Former smokers fear relapse and black market after nicotine pouch ban.
- Australian Institute of Health and Welfare — National Drug Strategy Household Survey 2025.
- Australian Institute of Health and Welfare — Emerging nicotine products in the NDSHS.
- Cancer Council NSW — Generation Vape Wave 8, 14–17-year-olds.
- Therapeutic Goods Administration — Notice of decision concerning nicotine and novel nicotine preparations.