An international panel of experts has come forward to defend vaping against Australia's nicotine ban.
Vapers fighting to overturn Australia's nicotine ban have gained 40 key allies. University of New South Wales professor Colin Mendelsohn has found a group of prominent Australian and international experts, and has addressed the government on their behalf.
Professor Mendelsohn said there were three million smokers in Australia who wanted to quit but had repeatedly failed. He said switching to e-cigarettes was a less harmful and cheaper way for smokers who could not or did not want to quit. “Using e-cigarettes can satisfy a smoker’s craving for nicotine and provide a similar experience to smoking, which many smokers miss after quitting and lead to resumption of smoking,” Dr Mendelsohn said in a paper announcing the expert panel’s recommendation to the Therapeutic Goods Administration.
“There is a scientific consensus that e-cigarettes are only five per cent as harmful as cigarettes. At the same time, two in three smokers in Australia will die prematurely from smoking-related diseases if they continue,” he added.
Is this the moment for Australian vapers?
There had been hope that Australia’s tough stance on nicotine might yield some concessions. In the article “Cancer Council Divided Over E-Cigarettes,” nine newspapers reported that researcher Ron Borland had broken with his organization over the nicotine ban. The Cancer Council’s position remains that nicotine should remain banned.
But Borland says e-cigarettes are being treated like cocaine and heroin while traditional cigarettes remain widely available. And that’s a hard argument to counter.
Researcher Ron Borland
“I just don’t understand the logic, tobacco is a toxic form of nicotine and is still freely available, while e-cigarettes are a safer way to deliver nicotine and are banned by the Poison Standard,” said Professor Ann McNeill of Kings College London.
Professor McNeill was the lead author of Public Health England’s evidence-based paper on e-cigarettes last year, which Mendelsohn also sent to the Australian government. “Australia’s current situation is also deliberately protecting the tobacco market, encouraging smoking and increasing the disease rates caused by the habit,” she said.
The signatories to Mendelsohn’s letter to the government are a group of prominent global experts on tobacco and nicotine, including some prominent figures in New Zealand, a country that is already in the process of legalizing nicotine vaping.
