Dr Colin Mendelsohn- University of Sydney
- Pippa Starr
- Apr 26
- 3 min read
Updated: Apr 27
Colin graduated as a doctor from the University of Sydney in 1976 with honours. He was a Sydney GP for 27 years with a special interest in smoking cessation and then worked for ten years exclusively in tobacco treatment, helping smokers to quit.
He has an interest in all aspects of smoking cessation and tobacco control with a special interest in tobacco harm reduction – helping smokers who can’t quit to switch to safer nicotine products, such as vaping.
He was a Conjoint Associate Professor in the School of Public Health and Community Medicine at the University of New South Wales, Sydney from 2016-20.
Colin has conducted hundreds of workshops and lectures around Australia and New Zealand teaching students, medical practitioners, and other health professionals how to help smokers quit.
From 1987-97 he was actively involved through the University of New South Wales in researching, developing and teaching Smokescreen for the 1990s, a program for general practitioners to help smokers quit.
He retired from medical practice in December 2023 and retired from advocacy, teaching and research in November 2024. However, he will be continuing with any ongoing commitments until they are resolved.
Publications
Colin is a strong believer in evidence-based medicine, i.e. using treatments that are proven to be effective in scientific studies. He has participated in many research studies on how to quit smoking and has published many articles in peer-reviewed medical journals.
Click here to see or download some of his publications.
Other activities
Colin was a member of the Smoking Cessation Guideline Expert Advisory Group that develops the RACGP Australian national smoking cessation guidelines.
He was the Founding Chairman of the Australian Tobacco Harm Reduction Association, a registered health promotion charity dedicated to raising awareness of low-risk nicotine products as a substitute for smoking for smokers who can’t quit.
He was a past Vice President of the Australian Association of Smoking Cessation Professionals, Australia’s peak body for experts in the field of smoking cessation.
He was also on the Expert Advisory Group for the Coalition of Asia Pacific Tobacco Harm Reduction Association (CAPHRA) and was an honorary mentor for the Tobacco Harm Reduction Scholarship Program, under the auspices of Knowledge Action Change, UK.
He was an Honorary adviser for the ALIVE advocacy movement (Australia Let’s Improve Vaping Education!).
He has served on the NSW Health Advisory Committee on Electronic Cigarettes and was on the Vaping Cessation Expert Panel for the Canadian Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH), commissioned by Ontario’s Ministry of Health.
He has been a reviewer for a range of peer-reviewed medical journals such as the British Medical Journal, Drug and Alcohol Review, Harm Reduction Journal, MedicineToday and the prestigious Cochrane Tobacco Group.
For 16 years, he was the editor of Your Health newsletter, a health education newsletter distributed by over 1,600 Australian GPs to their patients. More>>
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Hundreds of Colin's Articles are now available here in our
News & Views page!
New Zealand now has a lower smoking rate than Australia for the first time.The decline in smoking in each country closely reflected their vaping rates!
10 February 2025 - Our Study Spotlights How Vaping Can Reduce Health Disparities
Nicotine vaping can significantly reduce health inequalities for low-income and Indigenous communities, suggests a new study published in the Addiction journal, which I co-authored.
My colleagues and I examined trends in daily smoking and vaping in Australia and New Zealand from 2016 to 2023. We found that smoking declined up to three times more rapidly in disadvantaged and Indigenous communities in New Zealand compared to Australia, reflecting New Zealand’s higher vaping rate.
18 July 2023 - Co-signee to "Urgent vaping law reform needed in Australia"
29 May 2023 - Letter To Mark Butler
August 2017 - Proposed Amendments to the Poisons Standard
Co-signee, source>>
