MORE than 100 electronic cigarette users have petitioned a parliamentary committee not to regulate the vaporisers in the same restrictive way as tobacco products.

Among the 105 people who filled out identical proformas distributed by the Adelaide-based Smoke-Free Traders Association were at least two people who were not even cigarette smokers.

The forms were distributed to stores which sell the vaporisers and then sent to state Parliament’s Select Committee on E-Cigarettes, which is expected to deliver its final report next week.

It is understood it will make 20 recommendations, from a total of 142 submissions and in-person evidence, including on public safety measures and the need for more research into the long-term effects of using the vaporisers.

There is strong debate over whether e-cigarettes encourage the habit of smoking or help people to quit by simulating the action without delivering the chemicals.

Battery-powered e-cigarettes vaporise a refillable cartridge of solution — which can contain nicotine — to create vapour which a user inhales.

SA law prevents the sale — but not possession or use — of any product “designed to resemble a tobacco product”, such as a cigarette.

The Smoke-Free Traders Association represents online and shopfront retailers and wholesalers of e-cigarettes, batteries, tanks and other accessories.

In its submission to the inquiry, it argues its members are “completely independent of Big Tobacco”.

It says regulation should encourage the use of e-cigarettes by adults trying to “reduce or cease smoking and to prevent relapse to smoking”.

“If the regulation of electronic cigarettes becomes an expensive burden for retailers, then the only industry that will be able to afford to adhere to those regulations will be the tobacco industry,” it says.

“Adult smokers must be allowed freedom of choice.”

Smokers who filled out the association’s forms included Rodney Webb, who smoked up to 25 cigarettes a day for 30 years before switching to a vaporiser.

He wrote that it “gives me the habit (of smoking) without the health risks”.

Smoker of 16 years Jay Woolford had been using a vaporiser for two weeks when he filled out a form.

“The use of my vape pen has taken me from smoking two packs of ciggers (sic) a day to smoking next to no ciggers,” he wrote.

Peregrine Corporation, which owns 31 Smokemart stores in SA, argues in a separate submission that there is “strong anecdotal evidence that customers are using e-cigarettes as an alternative” to smoking tobacco.

However, a submission by the SA Health and Medical Research Institute warns there is “no substantial evidence that e-cigarettes are effective in assisting people to quit smoking”.