A young tradie who can only stop reaching for the vape once they are asleep is among many patients in the ACT who are looking for help.
"They work in the construction industry and they have said to me that while they are awake, they are constantly pulling the vape out of their pocket," the tradie's GP, Dr Kerrie Aust said.
"It's worse than smoking. During waking hours, there is no limitation on the amount of vaping that they partake in ... that's really concerning."
She said every week at least one person walked into her Garran clinic asking for support to quit. Dr Aust said many of them were young people, in their late teens and 20s, who started using flavoured nicotine vapes in high school.
She said they were "surprised" at how hard it was to stop.
When ACT Health asked people to report their vaping habits last year, it showed 22.3 per cent of 16- to 17-year-olds and 9.8 per cent of 12- to 15-year-olds had vaped within a month of taking the survey.
Dr Aust said she had not had a single patient who had successfully quit smoking using vapes.
"I've had one or two who have tried vaping as a means to quit smoking, and they have found that vaping is much more addictive [than smoking], partially because it doesn't have that strong smell," she said.
Dr Aust said some of her patients had been to the emergency department several times in the past year with severe abdominal pain and stopped having issues as soon as they stopped vaping.
Her patients have also reported having headaches and chest pains when they "take a hit" of the vape.
"When people vape they get an increase in their heart rate, they get an increase in arterial stiffness, they get an increase in blood pressure," she said.
Dr Aust supported new reforms revealed this week that would allow chemists to sell vapes in limited flavours (mint, menthol and tobacco). She also wanted more aids like nicotine patches and gum.
"For the first time in a couple of generations, we've actually started to lose the battle with understanding the harm of nicotine-based products," the president of the ACT Australian Medical Association said.
She said allowing vapes to be sold over-the-counter to adults was important, disagreeing with the Pharmacy Guild who previously said chemists were "not tobacconists or garbologists".
"[The law reform] provides that first step in getting them off the shelves where there is no opportunity for a brief intervention from a health care practitioner about the dangers of them," she said.
"We need to make sure that people are supported by getting the vapes out of the shops and into ... where they can be educated about nicotine reduction strategies."
The doctor was content knowing vapes sold at pharmacies from October would have a nicotine content which was "controlled and predictable" unlike those sold at tobacconists.
"Pharmacies won't have to stock vapes, but where they do ... there's will be a lot more restriction around quality control from the [Therapeutic Goods Administration] so that we actually know what's in them," she said.
