But e-cigarettes are freely available as consumer products in the UK and have been warmly embraced by the scientific and public health communities. A landmark report published last week by the Royal College of Physicians concluded that e-cigarettes have the potential to make a major contribution towards preventing premature death and disease due to smoking, and encouraged their widespread use by smokers. The report was in agreement with a comprehensive report commissioned by Public Health England in 2015.

Attitudes to e-cigarettes are much more cautious in the US and the European Union, where they are regulated as tobacco products. Under the American Food and Drug Administration's new "deeming regulations" and the EU's revised Tobacco Products Directive, all devices and solutions will require extremely costly and onerous approval, which will force all but the very largest companies out of the market. Prices will increase, innovation will be reduced and a black market created. On the other hand, deadly cigarettes and other smoked tobacco products will remain freely available.

Prohibition is not working in Australia, and it is easy to purchase nicotine online or through a thriving black market. The federal government has commissioned a discussion paper to guide e-cigarette policy, prepared by the Public Health Unit at the University of Sydney and Cancer Council NSW, both of which have previously expressed negative views on e-cigarettes. Also of concern is that the process is shrouded in secrecy and is only taking advice by invitation.

Decisions on how to regulate e-cigarettes should be based on evidence, not on ideology, politics or other bias. Some organisations have been historically locked into a single-minded focus of destroying tobacco companies, cigarettes and nicotine. It can be difficult to see that using nicotine to reduce harm may now be part of the solution. Our priority should be to reduce the health risks for current smokers, of whom two out of three will die as a result of their habit.

Overseas research has found that many of the concerns raised about e-cigarettes are not grounded in evidence. E-cigarettes are much safer than smoking and have helped millions of smokers to quit. There is no evidence of a "gateway" (that e-cigarettes lead non-smokers to smoking) or that they "renormalise" smoking in the community – vaping is almost exclusively confined to smokers and recent ex-smokers.