The service offers a mass-billed Telehealth phone consultation or, for $ 45, will issue a prescription using an online form.
The email did not mention that vapors should be prescribed to quit smoking. However, the Smartstop website states that “it offers nicotine replacement therapy and education to move quickly. [people] far from smoking ”.
“Only one in three people who used e-cigarettes reported using them to help quit smoking, so most people use them recreationally.”
Federal Health Director Paul Kelly
Prescription Vape, a group of Australian pharmacies, also offers prescriptions and spray products.
A Prescription Vape spokesman said it only issued scripts to people who had failed other methods to quit smoking.
Both services declined to provide details of their medical staff, but said they were authorized prescribers. Its physicians are not on the Therapeutic Goods Administration’s list of more than 700 authorized prescribers of nicotine vaporization products, although inclusion on the list is not mandatory.
The main pharmacy chain Chemist Warehouse refers customers who want to buy vaporizers to the online service Instant Switch, whose prescribers are listed.
“We have serious concerns about patients receiving prescriptions this way,” said Dr Bruce Willett, vice-president of the Royal Australian College of GPs, and urged people who want to quit to visit their GP.
The National Medical and Health Research Council on Thursday released its latest report on e-cigarettes, concluding that “vapor from e-cigarette devices can be harmful and there is limited evidence that e-cigarettes are effective in helping smokers to quit smoking “.
Bonning said the association did not consider steaming a good help to quit smoking. Willett said the college of GPs considers vaping a “second or third option” for people trying to quit smoking.
Since January, NSW Health has confiscated more than $ 1 million in illegal and liquid nicotine-containing e-cigarettes from convenience stores, gas stations and other unauthorized vendors.
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Arash Taji, a pharmacist at Amcal Pharmacy Prahran in Melbourne, which covers Smartstop orders nationwide, said the illegal market was still significantly larger than the number of prescriptions issued.
“It fills the scripts because we see it as a means to quit smoking,” he said.
Dr. Samuel Murray, CEO of Quit Clinics, whose $ 85 consultation service for current smokers appears on vapor sales websites, although not affiliated with them, agreed that the illegal market, especially for teenagers, it was a bigger problem. His average patient is about 40 years old.
He also saw problems with doctors working for vaporizer suppliers, but noted that Australia was the only OECD country where nicotine vapors were regulated as medicines rather than consumer products and believed that their service was necessary because not enough GPs were prescribed.
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The National Council for Medical and Health Research expressed particular concern about rising vaporization rates among young people who had never smoked before.
“Only one in three people who used e-cigarettes reported using them to help quit smoking, so most people use them recreationally,” said Paul Kelly, federal health director.
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