Australian Tobacco Harm Reduction Association (ATHRA)
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Australian Tobacco Harm Reduction Association (ATHRA), Tobacco Tactics, updated 11 November 2024, accessed 09 January 2026.
The Australian Tobacco Harm Reduction Association (ATHRA) describes itself as a “registered health promotion charity established to improve public health by reducing the harm from tobacco smoking in Australia”.1
Background
ATHRA was founded by four Australian health practitioners in October 2017.1 It has regularly campaigned and lobbied to try to overturn the Australian Government’s ban on retail sales of nicotine-containing e-cigarettes .2
ATHRA has received funding from Knowledge Action Change (K-A-C), an organisation funded by the Foundation for a Smoke-Free World (FSFW). FSFW was rebranded in May 2024 as Global Action to End Smoking (GAES). The organisation remains wholly funded by Philip Morris International.
People
ATHRA does not appear to employ any staff.3 In 2024 it listed three volunteer directors.45
Founders in October 2017:
- Dr Colin Mendelsohn, Founding Chairman of ATHRA; board member until January 2021.136
- Dr Joe Kosterich.78
- Dr Alex Wodak.89
Board as of June 2024:5
- Dr Joe Kosterich (Chairman).
- Dr Alex Wodak.
- Ean Alexander.10
Previous directors and members include:
Mendelsohn, Kosterich, Wodak, Silsbury and Elsom stated in 2018 that ”none of the directors have ever had any financial or commercial relationship with any electronic cigarette or tobacco company”.15 The same statement is made on the ATHRA website in respect of the current directors.5
Tobacco Industry links
Part-funded by FSFW grantee K-A-C
Mendelsohn has stated that it cost AUD$50-60,000 to set up ATHRA.1617
Australian media reported in 2019 that ATHRA had received around AUD$43,000 in e-cigarette and tobacco industry-related funding,1819 including a “one-off, unconditional donation” of AUD$8,000 from Knowledge Action Change (K-A-C).1620 In 2018, K-A-C received US$787,000 in funding from the FSFW. For more details see FSFW Grantees.
In March 2019, six months after its funding sources first received media scrutiny, ATHRA published a statement on its website saying it would no longer accept money from the e-cigarette industry.21 ATHRA also stated that it “has never and will never accept funding from the tobacco industry or its subsidiaries”.21 However, the statement did not mention a grant from K-A-C.22
In July 2022, Mendelsohn and Wodak co-authored a paper in Drug and Alcohol Review which included a statement acknowledging that ATHRA had received a donation from Knowledge Acton Change Communications which was “legally separate from Knowledge Action Change (KAC)”.23 At the time of the donation, KAC Communications and Knowledge-Action-Change Ltd had the same directors.2425
Activities
Public media campaigns
At the 2017 Global Forum on Nicotine in Warsaw, which is run by K-A-C, Mendelsohn outlined plans to set up a “switch2vaping” public education and media campaign in Australia,26 which ATHRA subsequently launched in December 2018.27
Mendelsohn wrote the foreword for a report published by the Australian Taxpayers’ Alliance (ATA) and MyChoice Australia in 2018,28 and attended the launch event.29 The report launch event was part of ATA’s “Legalise Vaping Australia” (LVA) project.29 (LVA was later listed as a partner of the World Vapers’ Alliance.)
In May 2019, ATHRA and ATA co-organised the “first ever Aussie Vape Day” in Sydney on the day before World No Tobacco Day.30 The event’s stated aim was to “educate adult smokers about vaping and encourage them to ‘give it a go’ as a much less harmful alternative to smoking”.3031 The same month, ATHRA’s Dr Mendelsohn gave a presentation at ATA’s 7th Annual Friedman and Global Taxpayers’ Conference titled: “Vaping in Australia. Tobacco harm reduction in a hostile regulatory environment”.32
Promoted report funded by Foundation for a Smoke-Free World
In March 2019, ATHRA co-hosted the Australian launch of a report by K-A-C in the New South Wales and Victorian state parliaments.33 Titled “No Fire, No Smoke”, this first edition of K-A-C’s Global State of Tobacco Harm Reduction (GSTHR) was funded by a US$176,700 grant from FSFW.34 ATHRA Chairman Dr Mendelsohn was credited as author of a section about Australia’s “ban on nicotine” and listed among the “key informants” in the report’s acknowledgements.35
Speakers at the parliamentary launches included ATHRA directors Mendelsohn and Kosterich, the report’s author Harry Shapiro and Dr. Marewa Glover of the Centre for Research Excellence: Indigenous Sovereignty and Smoking (COREISS), which has also received significant funding from FSFW.32 Attendees included “MPs, health policy professionals, academics, harm reduction experts, journalists, consumers and vape supporters”.33
Lobbying against government restrictions on e-cigarettes
In March 2020, ATHRA signed a joint open letter with ATA and a new Australian Retail Vaping Industry Association (ARVIA), urging the Australian Prime Minister and all State Governments to keep e-cigarette shops open during the COVID-19 lockdown. The groups argued that closing the shops would have “devastating long-term public health consequences” and would force vapers back to smoking.36
ATHRA later announced it had “formed a coalition” with ARVIA and ATA-LVA to fight the ban on personal nicotine imports from overseas proposed by the Australian Government in June 2020. In K-A-C’s Nicotine and Science Policy newsletter, Mendelsohn outlined how their coordinated media and MP lobbying campaign had raised funds and garnered support from politicians, after online petitions collected tens of thousands of signatures, helping to secure a six-month delay to the ban. 37 The proposed reform was later shelved.
In March 2021, Australian media reported that metadata linked to PMI’s Hong Kong lobbyists Burson Cohn & Wolfe (BCW) had been discovered in the page source code on ATHRA’s website,38 including on some 2020 press releases. 383940 ATHRA and BCW denied ATHRA was a client.4142
Conferences, Presentations and Commentary
In September 2020 Mendelsohn was a keynote speaker at the annual tobacco industry-funded Global Tobacco and Nicotine Forum (GTNF).43
More recently, Mendelsohn presented his research on youth vaping at the 2023 GTNF in South Korea as part of a panel titled “Youth Use is Everyone’s Responsibility”.3244 At the 2022 Dubai World Vape Show, he joined a “Vaping Research and Public Health” panel alongside head scientists from PMI and British American Tobacco (BAT) , and the Consumer Choice Center.45 The organisers, who own the world’s largest network of tobacco-related, e-cigarette and shisha events,46 paid Mendelsohn’s travel and accommodation expenses.47
ATHRA’s directors have expressed support for industry activities promoting tobacco harm reduction.
In a 2022 ABC news interview Mendelsohn stated:48
“Big Tobacco is actually more trustworthy and more pro-health in this [e-cigarettes issue], than many of the public health bodies of Australia. They’re producing credible research, they’re producing products that save lives.”
He argued that public health bodies were “costing more lives” by campaigning against vaping.48 Mendelsohn has also called for consumers to email their local MPs via BAT’s “Responsible Vaping Australia” front group website and sign a petition in favour of legalising retail vaping.49
In March 2023, the Australian Association of Convenience Stores (AACS) invited Mendelsohn to address their annual conference, where he spoke on nicotine vaping products and the role of convenience stores.50 AACS’s corporate members include PMI, BAT and Imperial Tobacco.
Lobbying against e-cigarette regulations
Since 2018, ATHRA has made submissions to multiple federal and state government inquires and consultations in Australia to lobby for the loosening of e-cigarette sales restrictions. These include:
- Northern Territory Inquiry into the Tobacco Control Legislation Amendment Bill 2018: ATHRA argued against e-cigarette regulations, including the banning of advertising e-cigarettes and their use in public spaces.5152
- West Australia Inquiry on Personal Choice and Community Safety (2018): ATHRA argued against an e-cigarette ban, and instead proposed “proportionate risk-based regulation”.53
- National Tobacco Strategy 2018-26 Consultation: ATHRA’s submission to this Inquiry was deemed to have a conflict of interest (“whether real or perceived”) due to its funding from e-cigarette companies, its K-A-C grant and involvement with K-A-C’s GSTHR report launches in Australia.54
- National Tobacco Strategy 2022-30 consultation: ATHRA’s submission disagreed with the government’s draft priority areas, arguing that “Priority needs to be on adding tobacco harm reduction via support of vaping to the current mix”. ATHRA did not disclose the K-A-C funding in the section on conflict of interest.55
- Submission to the Australian drugs regulator arguing that heated tobacco products should be approved for consumer sales in Australia.56
Directors of ATHRA have also made individual submissions to inquiries since 2016.5758
Relevant Link
Australian Tobacco Harm Reduction Association (ATHRA) website
Tobacco Tactics Resources
- Third Party Techniques
- Lobby Groups
- Lobbying Decision Makers
- Foundation for a Smoke-Free World
- Harm Reduction