Dr Kerrie Aust, president of the ACT Australian Medical Association, supports laws that will allow pharmacies to sell vapes without prescriptions. She said this was the first step in curbing unknown amounts of nicotine allowed in flavoured vapes currently sold at tobacconists.
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00:00We've seen an increasing number of especially young people who are concerned about the amount
00:05that they are reliant on vapes to get through the day. At the moment it's really difficult
00:10to get statistics on exactly how many people come in but I'd have at least one a week who
00:16approaches us to talk about cutting down their vape use and most of the time this started because
00:21they were using flavoured vapes unaware that they had nicotine in them and over time they've
00:26developed nicotine dependence. So even today I had a patient in who was talking about how his
00:31daughter was vaping and said oh it's all right there's no nicotine in them and have no understanding
00:36that the products that his daughter's consuming probably do contain nicotine. The big one is
00:41craving and withdrawal symptoms so feeling agitated and irritated when they're due for
00:47their next hit of nicotine but the other side effects that we're seeing a lot of so if you
00:52check someone's blood pressure after they've had a vape you'll notice that their heart rate
00:56is higher, their blood pressure is higher which indicates that it's having an effect
01:00on the cardiovascular system. I've also had patients experiencing severe abdominal pain
01:05so some of which have gone to the emergency department multiple times over the last 12 months
01:09as soon as they quit vaping their abdominal pain symptoms disappeared.