The AMA has rejected a UK "swap-and-stop" plan to get people to substitute cigarettes with vapes, saying GPs can assist with safer ways of quitting instead of swapping one addiction for another.
A United Kingdom initiative to mail free vaping kits to encourage people to stop smoking cigarettes was replacing extremely harmful cigarettes with very harmful vapes - both are harmful.
AMA President Professor Steve Robson rejected the UK plan to encourage up to one million smokers in a "swap and stop" campaign to substitute cigarettes with vapes.
"This is replacing something extremely harmful with something very harmful - it has to be a very temporary measure," he said on ABC TV News Breakfast.
When asked on television if vaping was not as harmful as cigarettes, Professor Robson said, "I guess it is the same as asking if it is better to be hit by a stick rather than a brick, but either way it's a harmful thing to inhale chemicals into your lungs.
"We must do everything we can to get people off vapes, get people off smoking and working with your GP instead of having a vaping kit arrive in the mail sounds a lot smarter to us."
Professor Robson was quoted in the Courier Mail saying there was limited evidence of the effectiveness of vaping as a smoking cessation tool, but there was ample evidence of the harms of vaping.
"Vaping to stop smoking should be a last resort and should only occur under the care of a GP," he said.
"In the AMA's submission to the Therapeutic Goods Administration consultation on vaping we have argued for changes to regulations to prohibit the personal important of nicotine vaping products, reduced nicotine concentration levels from 100mg/ml to 20mg/ml and introducing limits on the flavours and volume of nicotine that can be prescribed or ordered.
"We would also like to see the government work with state and territory governments to add NVPs to real time prescription monitoring programs and the MBS telehealth smoking cessation items amended so only a patient's usual doctor can prescribe NVPs to help people stop smoking."
