Electronic cigarette crackdown considered by ACT Government
The ACT Government is considering subjecting the sale and use of electronic cigarettes to the same laws as conventional cigarettes.
The Government has released a discussion paper on whether e-cigarette sales should be restricted.
It has called for public submissions on possible new regulations, including banning the sale of e-cigarettes to minors, restricting advertising and ensuring they are only used in areas designated for smoking.
Nicotine e-liquid or cartridges, or devices containing these, cannot be legally sold in Australia.
But vapour-based e-cigarettes that do not use nicotine are legal in the ACT, and other Australian states and territories.
ACT Chief Minister Katy Gallagher said sales of e-cigarettes had increased, but little was known about the possible impacts on smokers' health.
She also warned that e-cigarettes could encourage young people to try the real thing.
"The fact that they are being targeted and marketed like cigarettes, in that you put them up to your mouth and hold them in your hands like cigarettes, certainly starts a behaviour going that smoking or fake smoking is okay," she said.
"Health officials are concerned about that as well, about where that leads to."
With flavours like guava and juicy fruit on offer, ACT chief health officer Dr Paul Kelly agreed e-cigarettes could be seen as a path to smoking real cigarettes.
"By re-normalising smoking-like behaviour with these products, it really can be seen and has been labelled in other parts of the world, as a gateway to smoking," he said.
"These are new products and just as it took us some time to recognise the extremely harmful effects of tobacco smoking, we should take a precautionary approach here."
'Beijing air more risky than e-cigarettes'
But Christopher Franzi, who left his public service job to open a cafe selling electronic cigarettes in Gungahlin, disagreed.
"An electronic cigarette or personal vaporiser is a battery powered device," he said.
"It uses a battery, which is a perfectly legal thing to buy. It uses a tank, that's got wire and cotton in it.
"Those are perfectly legal things to buy. And it uses liquid that essentially consists of the same stuff in a gummy bear."
Mr Franzi's business does not sell e-cigarettes to minors by choice.
"But saying that e-cigarettes are a gateway to smoking for young people without any actual evidence to back that up, is an opinion based claim. There is plenty of peer reviewed science to show that that is actually not the case," he said.
Mr Farzi said scientific studies had shown breathing the air in China's capital Beijing was worse than smoking an e-cigarette.
Don't just regulate for the sake of it: Hanson
Opposition Leader Jeremy Hanson agreed there needed to be some evidence on the table.
"Let's just make sure we're not regulating for the sake of regulating here," he said.
"If it's a legitimate way for people who are smokers to get themselves off cigarettes than I think that's a good thing, I don't think we should be out there trying to make that difficult for people."
Earlier this year the World Health Organisation (WHO) called for the strict regulation of e-cigarettes.
The WHO found e-cigarettes posed a threat to teenagers and that there was not enough scientific evidence to support the belief that they helped people quit smoking.
In September the Queensland Government announced that at the start of 2015 it would become the first state in Australia to subject e-cigarettes to the same laws as tobacco cigarettes.
In June a WA court ruled the sale of e-cigarettes in the state to be illegal.
Public submissions in the ACT close at the end of next month.
