LEIGH SALES, PRESENTER: Big tobacco is trying to mount an aggressive campaign to promote electronic cigarettes in the Australian market, according to documents obtained by 7.30 under Freedom of Information laws. E-cigarettes are already part of a multibillion-dollar industry worldwide. They're small, personal vaporisers that give you a nicotine hit without producing smoke. Tobacco companies are lobbying Australia's Therapeutic Goods Administration to allow them to sell e-cigarettes at any corner store. They also want to roll out a major marketing campaign promoting the medicinal benefits of the product, a claim health experts say is duplicitous. Conor Duffy reports.

CONOR DUFFY, REPORTER: The post-work drinks at this Adelaide pub have seen a beer and a cigarette replaced with a beer and vapour, part of a trend that's booming across Australia.

E-CIGARETTE USER: It's definitely a social thing to be doing.

CONOR DUFFY: In this circle, e-cigarettes are all the rage. They work by heating nicotine-infused water and producing vapour. It gives the hit from smoking without many of the chemicals or carcinogens.

GRAHAM MILNE, VAPORAMA: I'm actually getting people every day thanking me, coming in, say, "Wow, it's the best thing I've ever done."

CONOR DUFFY: Anecdotally, there's plenty of stories of people using vaping to quit smoking.

Graham Milne imports and sells e-cigarettes. The business is largely unregulated and legally contentious.

GRAHAM MILNE: They can't stop it. It's getting too big. It's huge in America, huge in England, huge all over the world.

CONOR DUFFY: Overseas, it's a multibillion-dollar industry, fuelled by millions of dollars of glamorous advertising. British American Tobacco, the company that ran these advertisements, hopes to do the same in Australia.

VYPE ADVERTISEMENT (male voiceover): Pure satisfaction for smokers. Vype e-cigarettes. Experience the breakthrough.

CONOR DUFFY: Documents released to 7.30 reveal British American Tobacco offshoot Nicoventures began its Australian push in November. It approached the Therapeutic Goods Administration, describing e-cigs as medicine. It wrote, "We have found these face-to-face meetings to be extremely productive ... to fully explain our medicines based approach."

What do you think of a company like British American Tobacco claiming it wants to sell medicines?

SIMON CHAPMAN, PUBLIC HEALTH, SYDNEY UNI.: Look, I think it's Orwellian. That's the only word I can think that's apposite here. Down the corridor in BAT, you have a division who are spending all their days trying to work out how to gut, thwart and ruin any policy like plain packaging.

CONOR DUFFY: Nicoventures made it inside the TGA in December last year. Ahead of that meeting, it made another claim that it was motivated by protecting smokers' health.

NICOVENTURES (male voiceover): "We are committed to bringing these products to market and so reducing the harm caused by smoking in the population."

SIMON CHAPMAN: This is duplicity, it's hypocrisy, it's fork-tongued talk. It's everything that we have come to expect from the tobacco industry over the last 40 or 50 years.

CONOR DUFFY: After decades of denying smoking killed, now big tobacco is claiming smoking is, "The single greatest cause of illness and preventable illness and early death ... in most of the western world." It also claimed to have the answer, saying e-cigarettes would mean smokers, "Begin their journey towards quitting or substitution of cigarettes with medicinal nicotine products."

NICHOLAS TALLEY, ROYAL AUSTRALASIAN COLLEGE OF PHYSICIANS: There is no evidence, no convincing evidence that using e-cigarettes leads to people quitting. There's not even convincing evidence it leads to people smoking less, although I guess that might be possible.

CONOR DUFFY: Professor and surgeon, Nicholas Tally, and the Royal College of Physicians have reached a very different conclusion.

NICHOLAS TALLEY: The worry is e-cigarettes often look like, smoke like, cigarettes, and the real concern is young people will start such a habit, nicotine's highly addictive, and then they'll move on to cigarettes proper.

E-CIGARETTE ADVERTISEMENT (female voiceover): It's time. Put out the smoke and pick up the style. Slim, sleek, sparkling. Break free from the pack.

CONOR DUFFY: In the US and Europe, advertisements for e-cigarettes certainly seem to focus on style and glamour rather than health.

E-CIGARETTE ADVERTISEMENT (female voiceover): Co-ordinating colours straight off the runway. Eye-catching accessories.

CONOR DUFFY: British American Tobacco is pushing the TGA to allow it to plug its product as it does overseas. Internal TGA emails summarising British American Tobacco's pitch show the company's representative said, "Light touch regulation is the key: require commercial freedoms (able to advertise and have general sale)."

SIMON CHAPMAN: Well if you go over to the United States and turn on a television, you will see advertising for e-cigarettes, sports sponsorship by e-cigarettes, cultural rock concerts, everything such that we have not seen in this country for maybe 30 years.

CONOR DUFFY: As e-cigarettes continue to grow, most health experts believe the TGA will approve big tobacco's looming application. The TGA will then have to set rules on where they can be sold and how they can be advertised.

NICHOLAS TALLEY: If e-cigarettes are not properly regulated, they will lead to young people, lots of young people, taking up the habit. It'll seem to be cool. I'm sure this will happen. And that is not a good thing. It's quite likely, in my view, many of these young people will then transition to cigarettes themselves.

CONOR DUFFY: Conor Duffy with that report. Nicoventures declined to be interviewed. You can read its statement:

Statement from Nicoventures for 7.30

Nicoventures has met with the Therapeutic Goods Administration about the possible introduction of a new smoking cessation device in Australia.

It is anticipated that Nicoventures will be making a formal application to the TGA in the near future.

We expect to be able to provide more details to the public once the application is lodged.

E-cigarettes and similar devices should be manufactured to the highest quality standards and marketed responsibly to ensure only the safest possible products are sold in Australia. This is currently not the situation.

The TGA has the capability to appropriately regulate the manufacture and sale of e-cigarettes and similar products.