Forty experts urge Australian health minister to reconsider e-cigarette restriction policy

In response to Australian Health Minister Mark Butler's recent proposed e-cigarette restrictions, 42 tobacco control and addiction experts from Australia and New Zealand have written to members of Parliament urging him to reconsider the measures that have already failed.

Completely ignoring countless peer-reviewed studies, the opinions of smoking cessation experts, existing tobacco harm reduction science, and the fact that current strict e-cigarette laws have completely failed, Australian regulators recently announced further restrictions on e-cigarette products, making them less accessible to adult smokers who wish to use them to quit.

John Skerrit, Deputy Professor of the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA), recently acknowledged that the current regime seems to be ineffective, but refused to take responsibility for it: “We should be proud of what we have done.”

In the letter to Butler, the 42 experts, including renowned tobacco treatment specialist Dr. Colin Mendelsohn and honorary advisor Dr. Wayne Wodak from the Drug and Alcohol Services Centre, reiterated their long-held views and scientifically proven facts.

In short, they reiterated that further restrictions will continue to feed the already thriving black market, allowing minors to access potentially unsafe products while making it difficult for adult smokers to obtain safer alternatives, which are already hard to access through legal channels. This will lead to former smokers returning to smoking. Consequently, the rate of decline in smoking will slow down, resulting in more smoking-related deaths and diseases that could have been avoided.

The letter urges Butler to consider the existing scientific knowledge regarding e-cigarette products and explains that a well-designed regulatory model would be ideal, one that prevents minors from accessing products while allowing adult smokers to access them.

Dr. Mendelsohn added on his blog page discussing the proposed measures that, in fact, the dangers of youth vaping have been greatly exaggerated, as studies show that non-smoking youth actually vape very little. Among them, vaping is often experimental, thus incidental and short-term.

Flawed studies inform local policy

Furthermore, Mendelsohn added that the letter to Butler draws attention to two flawed Australian reports that have unfortunately been used to inform policy. “The National Health and Medical Research Centre (NHMRC) report and the Banks report from the Australian National University have been criticized in peer-reviewed journals and shown to contain serious scientific errors, misinformation, and bias. We believe these reports are unsuitable for guiding Australian policy purposes.”

Experts concluded that, in their view, the proposed further restrictions could have an overall negative impact on smoking rates, thereby adversely affecting public health. This, in turn, would negatively impact Australia's healthcare and medical costs.