By Conor Duffy
Big tobacco is preparing for the new front in the smoking wars – and it’s not plain packaging.
Electronic cigarettes, or e-cigarettes, have been taken up by more than a million people around the world and businesses are quietly being established in Australia.
Looking similar to tobacco cigarettes, the e-cigarette delivers a hit to the user by vaporising liquid nicotine, which is then inhaled.
A number of the e-cigarette companies overseas have been bought by large tobacco companies and are on the verge of a massive marketing campaign in Australia.
Anti-smoking campaigner Dr Simon Chapman warns that after decades off-air, these companies are ready to return to the “golden days” of tobacco advertising – using beautiful women, glitz and sport.
“They’ve been out of the advertising market now for many years. We have not had tobacco advertising in Australia for 20 years, so they’ve got a war chest built up there,” Dr Chapman said.
“The moment they get the green light, we could see massive advertising for these products.”
Marketing push to glamorise ‘vaping’ e-cigarettes
Viewers of this year’s Super Bowl in the United States, one of the most watched television events in the world, saw an advertisement for the e-cigarette NJoy.
Celebrity endorsements showing people using e-cigarettes, or vaping, and shameless product placement, like one in a video clip for popstar Lily Allen, are also being used.
Sceptics like Dr Chapman believe big tobacco is turning to e-cigarettes in a last-gasp effort to glamorise smoking and cash in on the new craze.
“Make no mistake, the big tobacco companies are not trying to say to people smoke, or vape, e-cigarettes and don’t smoke,” he said.
“They’re trying to say use e-cigarettes, keep smoking. When you can’t smoke, vape. It expands their market immeasurably.
“They think all their Christmases have come at once.”
E-cigarette marketing clearly targets young people – the customers tobacco companies crave the most – and there is a push to stop them making smoking cool again.
“Where they would really have their sights set on is young people. We have record lows of tobacco use in young people in Australia today thanks to successful tobacco control,” Dr Chapman said.
“[The] tobacco industry know that that’s going to starve their industry with each generation that turns into adulthood and does not smoke.”
He sees it as a disturbing trend which could undo decades of gains made in the fight against tobacco.
“In the United States, where it’s on for young and old, there has been a dramatic uptake of vaping in some areas by young people,” he tells 7.30.
“The biggest market I saw in a report released by Harvard University [recently] is of vaping for 15-year-olds.”
Health experts divided on safe use of e-cigarettes
But the health establishment is bitterly divided on the issue.
Medical researcher Dr Coral Gartner is one of 53 academics who wrote to the World Health Organisation (WHO) saying e-cigarettes could save hundreds of millions of lives.
“In the UK there are a million people who are using e-cigarettes now, and many of them are staying off cigarettes by using these products,” she said.
Dr Gartner says some research shows short-term use seems to be safe, although e-cigarettes have not been around long enough to establish the long-term effects.
She insists it would be unethical to stop people vaping.
“If we were to take [e-cigarettes] away from them, many of these people might go back to smoking. So that would damage their health if they were to do that.”
In response to these claims, Dr Chapman led a group of 129 rival academics who sent a contradictory letter to the WHO arguing that not enough is known about the effects of e-cigarettes.
“If someone says, ‘look, I’ve discovered a cure for AIDS’, we don’t go and say let’s go and sell them from any petrol station or candy store or whatever,” he said.
“We say put those claims into the Therapeutic Goods Administration, let them be tested for safety and efficacy, and if it’s found that you do have a cure for AIDS, fantastic.”
“We’ll find out over time whether pulling a lot of ultra-fine particles down your lungs over 100 times a day is harmless as the manufacturers are suggesting.”