The parliamentary inquiry into the marketing and regulation of e-cigarettes will hold its second hearing today (September 8) in Canberra.
The line-up will include the ACCC, TGA, Department of Health, Cancer Council Australia, National Heart Foundation and the NHMRC.
Also set to appear are individual health experts, including Emeritus Professor of public health Professor Simon Chapman – who has won WHO’s World No Tobacco Day Medal – and the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists (RANZCP).
It’s been two months since the inquiry’s first hearing in Sydney, where vaping proponents argued for “light touch” consumer-based regulation with a possible “therapeutic pathway” for companies that want to make smoking cessation claims for their products.
During that hearing, a toxicologist for British Tobacco, which the inquiry heard has invested $1 billion into vaping products – suggested regulation should fall under the remit of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission.
That idea has been rubbished by Professor Chapman, who argued that purported benefits of vaping were “small, uncertain and certainly unexceptional” while evidence of harm is emerging, and those “working to have the TGA circumvented as this umpire are challenging its authority on the flimsiest of pretexts”.