Smoking and vaping

Smoking and vaping 18 August 2025

Balancing practicality with care in smoking cessation for patients with cancer

On oncology wards, busy clinicians are often burdened by time pressure and competing demands and may struggle to implement the 5As (Ask, Advise, Assess, Assist, Arrange) or ABC (Assess, Brief, Counsel) models for smoking cessation. However, despite various suggested models of care, implementation of cessation programs after a cancer diagnosis has been poor, with its management frequently perceived as being “out of scope” to core clinical care. But since the 2014 US Surgeon General’s (SG) report on smoking cessation, there has been increasing recognition that it is vital for improving patient outcomes.

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Australia’s progress in reducing adolescent smoking has slowed — vaping may be why

In October last year, we published findings from our retrospective cohort analysis of data from the Generation Vape study in the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Public Health, accompanied by an InSight+ article. Our analysis examined the relationship between adolescent e-cigarette use (vaping) and subsequent cigarette smoking and was the first Australian study to do so using individual-level data. We found that adolescents aged 12–17 years who vaped were significantly more likely to subsequently initiate smoking, with the strongest increased risks observed among the youngest participants.

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Apps could help people to quit vaping

Vapes are relatively new, very popular, and easy for almost anyone to access. With increasing concerns about their safety, there is more interest in helping people to quit vaping, but there is limited evidence on how to go about quitting.

Fiona Mackay