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A senior WA Police officer who played a leading role in the force’s pandemic response has been appointed as the state’s “illicit tobacco tsar” as violent attacks on shops linked to the illegal cigarette and vape trade escalate.
WA Premier Roger Cook announced on Sunday that Superintendent Steve Post would join the Department of Health’s Tobacco Compliance Unit, while also revealing changes to the state’s Tobacco Products Control Act were being drafted.
Superintendent Steve Post has been appointed as WA’s “tobacco tsar”.Credit: 9News Perth
Post has more than four decades of policing experience and helped lead WA Police’s pandemic response effort Operation Tide.
Top of his priority list is to increase the department’s compliance enforcement at illicit tobacco shops, and to prepare WA Health for the looming bolstered tobacco laws.
“This is about keeping our community safe, and most importantly, it’s about keeping our kids safe because they are being exposed to, and have access to, harmful and addictive products in our communities,” Post said.
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“I have a message for those that are involved in this illicit activity: get out while you can, because we will be strengthening our enforcement, we will be strengthening the compliance, and we will use the new laws to great effect.”
Cook said WA did not want to see “tobacco thugs” terrorising the community.
The move comes on the back of another week of tobacco violence, with a shop in Huntingdale destroyed by fire and a Ballajura convenience store targeted for the fourth time in 12 months.
Locals are fed up, with the owner of a pub neighbouring the Ballajura store demanding to know when the government was going to take action.
“You’ve got kids going in there buying vapes. It needs to go. It’s not good. It’s not good for the Ballajura community or its local residents, or the businesses that operate out of here,” Harshal Patel told media on Thursday.
Cook did not put a timeframe on the beefed-up laws’ passage through parliament on Sunday – “they’re complex laws, and we need to get them right” – but revealed more staff would also be appointed to WA Health’s tobacco enforcement unit, more than doubling its inspector capacity.
Police Minister Reece Whitby said Post was a veteran WA Police officer, who had spent 25 years in the organised and crime gangs operations.
“He is the ideal person to be our tobacco tsar here in Western Australia,” Whitby said.
“He will lead officers who are hard-nosed investigators and bring their skills and expertise to Health to assist them in compliancy.
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“We’re going to make life hell for the illicit tobacco trade here in Western Australia.”
On Thursday, a WA family was charged over their alleged roles in the sale of tonnes of illegal tobacco and vapes after Australian Federal Police raided homes, storage units and a tobacconist in the state’s south-west.
Officers seized about $1 million in cash, five tonnes of tobacco and tens of thousands of vapes in the raids, which also allegedly uncovered cash counting machines.
On Monday, WAtoday revealed almost a dozen shops targeted by firebombs and shootings over the past year were back open and blatantly selling illegal cigarettes and vapes.
Taskforce Maverick, the WA Police operation set up to combat illegal tobacco crime groups in the face of the escalating violence, has so far charged 12 people with 59 offences since it was established in November last year.
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