This is my response to the Australian Parliament Senate Select Committee on Tobacco Harm Reduction.

I made two submissions to this consultation, see: Response to the extremely poor European Commission SCHEER preliminary opinion on e-cigarettes.

NNA writes to the UK government suggesting post-Brexit reforms – letter and briefing PDF making 10 tobacco and nicotine policy recommendations that become possible once the UK leaves Brexit transition on 1 January 2021 and key EU directives no longer apply. This also serves as a critique of EU policy.

John P A Ioannidis, Prabhat Jha, Does the COVID-19 pandemic provide an opportunity to eliminate the tobacco industry? Lancet Global Health, 9,(1), E12-E13, January 01, 2021 [link]

The case for extending PMTA deadline.

The Therapeutic Goods Administration is consulting on its interim decision not to exempt heated tobacco products from the Poison Standard Schedule, which currently only exempts “tobacco prepared and packed for smoking”. Obviously ludicrous, but we examine some of the arguments anyway.

Submission from Abrams, Bates, Niaura, Sweanor to Philippines FDA proposals for regulation stresses unintended consequences that will support the cigarette trade – we go through the main measures.

Experts take aim at the WHO’s ludicrous World No Tobacco Day campaignHere is the response: International experts in tobacco policy say WHO is blocking innovation and wasting opportunities to save millions of livesSee official press release at the Attorney General of Iowa’s web site.

In my view, the sly attribution of this problem to e-cigarettes and nicotine e-liquids by activists, academics and supposed public health agencies has been as bad as the worst ‘merchants of doubt’ operations of Big Tobacco in the 1970s.  I have labelled it a mere “fiasco” only out of politeness because the word implies that only incompetence and negligence lay behind it.  But I think it was much more deliberate than that – and we know that because virtually nothing has been done to correct misperceptions that were created and spread across the US and worldwide from July to December…

My submission to the committee. It covers smokefree places policy; risk proportionate regulation; the need to allow advertising of vaping products; why a differentiated approach to packaging is justified.

The EU is consulting on its plans to ‘beat cancer’. Consultation information here. I made two responses.

Letter from the Attorney General of Iowa and 12 others to the Food and Drug Administration on its statements on vaping and COVID-19, 31 March 2020 [link]. In its communications on vaping, smoking and COVID-19, FDA must improve:

I offer harsh feedback of WHO’s Q & A on e-cigarettes: World Health Organisation fails at science and fails at propaganda – the sad case of WHO’s anti-vaping Q&A

"In the vaping debate, falsehood flies and the truth comes limping after it”.  I examine three falsehoods.