This month, the New Zealand government agreed in principle to allowing the sale of nicotine e-cigarettes as a consumer product. Evidence for the safety and effectiveness of nicotine e-cigarettes for helping smokers quit is now compelling and Australia should make similar changes.

New Zealand authorities are satisfied that nicotine e-cigarettes can help smokers quit and can substantially reduce smoking-related disease. Similarly, in Britain, the prestigious UK Royal College of Physicians recently recommended that they be promoted as widely as possible as a substitute for smoking in the interests of public health.

Colin Mendelsohn: E-cigarettes provide smokers with an alternative way of getting the nicotine to which they are addicted without the smoke that causes almost all of the adverse health effects of smoking. Credit:AP

However, in Australia it is illegal to sell, possess or use nicotine without an authority, such as a prescription. Nicotine is classified as a Schedule 7 "dangerous poison" in the Poisons Standard, the national medicines and poisons register. How have we got it so wrong?

Last week, the New Nicotine Alliance made a submission to the Australian drug regulator, the Therapeutics Goods Administration to remove low concentrations of nicotine from the Poisons Standard. This would allow legal access to nicotine for use in e-cigarettes as a less harmful alternative to smoking tobacco. The alliance is a not-for-profit consumer organisation representing ex-smokers who now vape instead of smoking. Under the current laws, their members are being criminalised for quitting smoking "the wrong way".