“Vaping”, or using an e-cigarette to mimic the experience of smoking, has become a popular pastime around the world, but only recently has the trend come to Australia. 

Many proponents claimed vaping was a safe alternative to smoking, but Tobacco Compliance Officer Ian Hardinge said there was no proof to support those claims.

“There’s no evidence (e-cigarettes) assist in giving up smoking,” Mr Hardinge said.

“The Therapeutic Goods Administration hasn’t done any tests on quality, safety or performance.”

One of the problems in understanding the health implications of vaping was that it was a relatively new activity. A 2016 report from the British Royal College of Physicians concluded that “for all the potential risks involved, harm reduction has huge potential to prevent death and disability from tobacco use (and) to hasten our progress to a tobacco-free society”.

But in March, the TGA upheld a ban on nicotine in e-cigarettes, leaving a legal grey area for users. Australian stores weren’t allowed to sell liquids containing nicotine, but people could readily buy them online for personal use.

A group of 16 academics, researchers and doctors said the TGA’s ban was “unethical” and “unscientific”, pointing to 2014 research that estimated six million Europeans had quit smoking with e-cigarettes and a review that found vaping was at least 95 per cent safer than smoking.

Kylie Humphreys said she had seen first hand how effective vaping could be as a way to quit smoking. Her partner tried and failed to give up smoking several times before he discovered e-cigarettes.

“He tried everything: Patches, gum, cold turkey… there were all the side effects and agitation with them,” Ms Humphreys said.

“We read online about vaping – I’d never heard of it before – and he stopped smoking immediately.

“As soon as he stopped he wasn’t coughing, had higher fitness levels and felt much better.”

However, Wagga mayor Greg Conkey, a longtime anti-smoking advocate, said until there was definitive proof that vaping was safe, he’d remain sceptical.

“While the jury’s out, I’ll be against it,” he said.

In an opinion piece for Fairfax Media, public health expert Simon Chapman from the University of Sydney ​said the “95 per cent safer” claims were “nothing more than guesswork by a small hand-picked group, convened with the support of a Swiss-based agency with ties to the tobacco industry”.

“It cannot refer to any real-world health data because e-cigarettes have only been used for a few years,” he wrote.

“If any scientist had declared in 1920 that cigarette smoking was all but harmless, history would have judged their call as dangerously incorrect. But this is the reckless call e-cigarette spruikers are making today, after just 10 years.”