De-Merit Goods - Australia to ban recreational vaping

Australia is looking to ban recreational vaping, believing vaping amongst the young to be a gateway drug, rather than a way of weaning people off cigarettes. As a result, vaping is going to be ban unless it is so-called prescription vaping. However, is this good economics?

There's a large number of people who argue that in reducing the availability of a substitute, this will only serve to encourage smoking, that it will encourage the emergence of a shadow economy and that it will be hard to police, and thus have a high opportunity cost.

Australia has banned recreational vaping and tightened other e-cigarette laws in a huge crackdown on the tobacco industry as it tries to stop the rise in teenage vaping.