David Leyonhjelm (NSW, Liberal Democratic Party) Share this | Hansard source

The problem with the TGA is it deals with therapeutic claims. There is no therapeutic claim in relation to cigarettes. An alternative to cigarettes, which is required to substantiate therapeutic claims, is an anomaly. Replacing smoking tobacco, for which there is no therapeutic claim, with something which is less harmful and allows people to quit smoking tobacco, in the face of demands for a therapeutic claim, would be very unusual.

There is also a commercial issue involved in this demand that a therapeutic claim be substantiated. I've heard it quite a number of times before. There is no way that a commercial business would invest in a therapeutic claim, which is very expensive to generate, because it couldn't protect its property in that area. The e-cigarettes market, despite the worst fears of the health department, is not dominated by big tobacco. It is actually a very diverse market globally. There are hundreds of companies involved in it. It is a very competitive market, obviously not in Australia but in most parts of the world. You can find vaping shops all over the place. They sell an enormous range of products. You cannot spend many millions of dollars on substantiating a therapeutic claim and then say, 'Having invested that money, I can now capitalise on that by selling my product.' That is not how it works. You have to have a unique position to justify that sort of expenditure. That's never going to happen in this area. We have to take a different approach.

Question negatived.