Mr. Paul Gordon:

Most of the large e-cigarette companies are either owned or part-owned by tobacco companies. In the US, for example, Juul, which at one point had a 70% market share, is part-owned by Altria, which is Marlboro's parent company. Here, a couple of the main brands like VIP are owned by P.J. Carroll & Company, which is a subsidiary of British American Tobacco. Logic is owned by Japan Tobacco International. These companies all have significant shares in those vaping companies. We certainly feel that tobacco companies are using vaping as a back door or a Trojan horse to try to get a seat at the table in making laws around tobacco control. That is clearly what they have been doing through vaping. They have no interest in people quitting their tobacco products and they have no interest in people quitting their vaping products. An internal R.J. Reynolds memo that was leaked by a whistleblower stated, "Doubt is our product since it is the best means of competing with the 'body of fact' that exists in the mind of the general public." Tobacco companies' products are death and doubt and that is what they have been selling for decades.

Parliamentarians have been standing four-square against the tobacco industry for a very long time but it is becoming increasingly difficult for Deputies and Senators to actually know who is lobbying them. That is a real challenge. It is the same issue with the general public. We did research with Ipsos and it showed that only three in ten people had any awareness that the tobacco industry owned or part-owned many of the major vaping brands. It is a real challenge and one that we have to face head-on. We have to apply a lot of scrutiny to what is happening, particularly when we see vaping companies talking about reducing harm, referring to studies from Public Health England and latching on to figures that have been, if not debunked, then heavily criticised by the likes of The Lancet.