A briefing paper just published by the NSW Parliamentary Research Office offers an overview of the legal position in respect to e-cigarettes, as well as a summary of research findings and an overview of the current debate.
E-cigarettes: regulatory and policy options by Gareth Griffith, begins with a description of e-cigarettes and the various forms they come in - with or without nicotine. The author goes on to look at the health risks, while acknowledging that the body of evidence is still small, and then looks at regulations and policies in the United States, the United Kingdom, Canad and New Zealand.
'The downward trend in smoking ... is a public health success story. It is understandable that public health professionals and others should seek to guard against any new innovation that might jeopardise the advances that have been made in this field. It is in that context that much of the debate about e-cigarettes occurs. In essence, the question is not whether e-cigarettes should be regulated or not; rather, it is about the degree of regulation required for e-cigarettes of all kinds, those containing and those not containing nicotine.”
This year's WHO report on the global tobacco epidemic details the continued success in global tobacco control. Much progress has been made with their MPOWER measures in the last ten years. These include smoke-free environments, cessation programmes, warning labels, mass media, advertising bans and taxation. 
