Extract from ABC News
It started as a social puff here and there for non-smoker Jill Clarke.
Almost three years later, she found herself tossing and turning in the middle of the night, unable to get back to sleep until she'd vaped.
The realisation her body had become dependent on nicotine hit her hard.
"Honestly, I didn't completely comprehend that I was addicted until I tried to quit," she said.
"Which is an odd thing to say because I knew I was reliant on it, but I really didn't grasp to what extent until I tried to remove it from my life."
The Sydneysider documented her journey on TikTok, with almost 4 million people viewing her original post.
In the video, she details her worries about her health as she methodically drops her six pink disposable vapes into glasses filled with water; one sizzles as it hits the liquid, and a small plume of smoke billows out.
Over the next few months, she talks about her withdrawals, the challenges of sticking to her plan, and how her lung health has deteriorated because of vapes.
Then came an update.
"This is not a video I wanted to make," she said to the camera.
"A couple of weeks ago, I started vaping again."
It came five and a half months after she'd quit, and she was no longer experiencing nicotine withdrawals or cravings. What lured her back was stress.
"I decided to go back to the thing that had always relieved that stress and made me feel less anxious," she said.
During her relapse, Ms Clarke also developed a serious lung infection and a chronic cough, requiring antibiotics and cough medicine. She attributed her illness to vaping and said she felt disappointed in herself.
In a new post, she vowed to try again.
"I'm counting today as day one. I haven't vaped today, and yeah let's do it again," she told her audience.
Ms Clarke told the ABC her story resonated on TikTok, with people contacting her with tips and encouragement and others using her as inspiration to stop vaping too.
She doesn't want others to go through what she did but also worries new legislation, starting on Monday, may not be the right antidote to the vaping problem.
"If the government wants to make this truly effective, they need to build the wall of entry much, much higher," Ms Clarke said.
"Extreme pricing, very low levels of location accessibility … is probably the only way to achieve significant success."
What's changing?
From Monday, the sale, supply, manufacture, importation, and commercial possession of non-therapeutic vapes is illegal.
The only place a person will be able to legally buy a vape is from a pharmacy and the person must have a prescription.
Under the rules, vapes must be therapeutic, have plain packaging, and flavours are to be limited to mint, menthol, or tobacco.
From October 1, vapes will be rescheduled so that only people under 18 will require a prescription to get one. Adults will be able to get one over the counter after speaking with their pharmacist, but the rest of the rules will remain.
These aren't the first rule changes when it comes to vapes.
In January, almost all disposable vapes were banned from being imported into Australia.
Then, in March, came an import ban for all vapes and vaping hardware unless the importer had a special licence and permit.
The purpose of this latest "world-leading" legislation is to reduce the number of people vaping by disrupting the supply of highly addictive vapes.
Vapes that are disposable, brightly coloured, and have confectionary-like flavours often contain high levels of addictive nicotine.
In 2021, new laws made it illegal to sell nicotine vapes to anyone without a prescription — a change that should have prevented them from being openly sold in a retail setting. Despite this, an easily accessible and thriving black market has remained in (almost) plain sight.
Whether this latest legislative change will finally disrupt that secondary market will become apparent later this year, once hoarded supplies diminish.
A potential outcome is that the new laws drive up costs on the black market, making them unaffordable.
What happens to vape stores?
Vape stores are dead.
And, as of Monday, Sean Waite is unemployed.
He's worked at a vape store in south-east Queensland for about five years.
"It's not the best feeling at the moment, given the cost of living keeps going up and up and up. I personally don't know what I'm going to do," Mr Waite said.
The 29-year-old started smoking cigarettes when he was 13 and switched to vaping about six years later because it was cheaper.
Back then, he said, he would import parts to make a vape and mix his own flavoured liquids. It was that knowledge that led him to work in the industry.
He's adamant legitimate vape stores, like his, did not sell the disposable, nicotine-filled, vapes and described them as a "plague" on the industry.
He thinks the government's legislation misses the mark and said authorities should have worked with legitimate vape stores to bring in effective regulations and build a strong education campaign for consumers.
"Because they've never been legal to sell, you've never had shops like us selling them to people and educating them on the way to use them properly," Mr Waite said.
He also warned that, without stronger enforcement, the laws would continue to be flouted.
"The import ban for [disposable vapes] has been in effect for six months; it hasn't stopped the people buying them or the people importing them."
The Pharmacy Guild has also expressed concern over the legislation which it said was announced with little consultation.
Catherine Bronger, a pharmacist at Broadway in Sydney and senior vice-president of the Pharmacy Guild of NSW, said she was worried about pharmacies being the main channel for vapes.
"We were completely surprised … and only notified of the legislation a couple of days before it happened," she said.
"There are many pharmacists who really don't want to be in the supply of vapes. We're not policemen — we're pharmacists and we shouldn't have to police these items within community pharmacies, especially because we know they're often used by underage people."
Ms Bronger urged customers to have patience and be aware that it would take pharmacists time to decide whether to stock vapes and to get adequate supplies.
However, several pharmacy brands have already indicated they won't stock vapes.
Ms Bronger said pharmacists may choose to do so in the future, if legal and supply issues can be resolved.
She said many pharmacists were still trying to understand where they stood on serious legal issues like indemnity cover for selling vapes to people who could then become ill.
Quit advocates welcome new legislation
Rachael Andersen is the director of Quit Australia, a free service that helps people give up nicotine products.
She welcomed the change saying it represented "significant progress".
"Any measures that have been put into place that restrict supply of vaping products to young people is a good outcome," she said.
According to Ms Andersen, the service had seen a doubling of people reaching out for help to quit vaping in the past year, including children as young as 12.
"It's probably their first experience of an addiction and they're realising that something that was once fun, that they could do socially, they're realising that at 10 o'clock at night, they're reaching for their vapes."
She thinks moving vapes from a retail to a healthcare setting is a good move that will ensure vapes are clearly labelled and monitored and it will allow for greater enforcement of the law "because it will be absolutely illegal to sell a vape in a retail store".
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