There's a particular kind of frustration in finding that the thing you took up to get off cigarettes is now harder to put down than the cigarettes were. If that's you, you're not imagining it, and you're not unusual.
The Australian data on this changed sharply in the last survey, and it's worth looking at properly.
Forty per cent can't cut down
The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare's National Drug Strategy Household Survey ran through the second half of 2025 with more than 17,500 people, and reported in August 2026. The finding that matters:
"40% of people who currently used e-cigarettes … were unable to stop or cut down."
— AIHW, NDSHS 2025
Two years earlier that figure was 29%. It's an eleven-point jump in a single survey cycle.
Among people vaping daily it rises to 49%, against 27% of less-than-daily users. Women reported it more than men — 45% against 37%.
The headline number is falling. That's not the whole story.
You may have seen reporting that vaping is down in Australia. It is, and it isn't.
Current e-cigarette use peaked at 7.0% in 2022–23 and fell to 6.0% in 2025. Among 18–24 year olds the drop is much steeper: from 20.6% to 14.0%. Fewer young Australians are vaping. That's real and it's good news.
But look at who's left. The proportion of current users who vape daily rose from 49% to 60%, and daily use across the whole population held steady at 3.6%. The casual end of the market thinned out. The dependent end didn't.
So the population statistic is improving while the experience of the individual person still vaping is getting harder. Both things are true, and only one of them gets headlines.
Why it grips differently to cigarettes
Nicotine salts are the main technical answer. Older e-liquids used free-base nicotine, which gets harsh in the throat at higher concentrations — the harshness was effectively a ceiling on how much you could take in. Salt formulations removed that ceiling.
A double-blind randomised trial in the US put 119 people through both formulations. Compared with free-base, salt nicotine scored higher on appeal and smoothness and markedly lower on harshness — all highly significant. The effect on smoothness and harshness was strongest in people who had never smoked.
Read that again, because it's the whole design problem in one sentence: the technology works best on people with no tolerance for harshness, which is to say, people who never smoked. Australia's current product standard caps nicotine in therapeutic vapes at 50 mg/mL. That is a lot of nicotine to make pleasant.
There's also no natural stopping point, and this is the part people describe most often. A cigarette ends. It takes five minutes, it's finished, and the ritual has a built-in full stop. A vape doesn't end until the battery does. It sits in your pocket, it's usable indoors, it leaves no smell to explain, and nothing about it ever says that was the last one.
We want to be straight about the status of that claim: we could not find a study that tests it directly. It's a plausible mechanism, widely described, not yet measured. What is measured is consistent with it — 60% of current Australian users now vape daily, and 40% can't cut down.
Dependence scores run higher, with a caveat. A 2024 US study of young adults compared people who only vaped with people who only smoked. Those who vaped exclusively scored roughly twice as high on a standard dependence measure; 45% said they felt addicted against 15% of smokers, and 50% reported strong cravings against 28%.
The caveat is real and we'd rather state it than bury it: the comparison group contained only 46 exclusive smokers, which is small. Treat it as suggestive, not settled. But it points the same direction as the Australian figures.
Most people who vape want to stop
This is the finding we'd most like people to know, because vaping carries a quiet assumption that nobody's trying.
An Australian survey of 602 e-cigarette users aged 14 to 25, published in Addiction, found that 61% wanted to quit vaping and 55% had already made an attempt.
The same study found that people who described themselves as addicted were around three times more likely to have tried to quit — and that people who found vaping appealing were markedly less likely to want to stop. Appeal is doing measurable work in keeping people there.
Australian data, Australian participants, roughly your age group. A clear majority want out.
What's different about quitting a vape
Most quit-smoking advice assumes cigarettes, and some of it transfers badly.
You probably don't know your dose. Someone on a pack a day knows it's twenty. Vaping has no unit — there's no natural count, so there's nothing to taper by and no way to tell whether today was heavier than yesterday.
Your cues are everywhere, not somewhere. Smoking is geographically contained; you go outside, you stand in a particular spot. That's a liability when you're quitting, but it's also a boundary. Vaping happens at your desk, in bed, mid-conversation, in the car. There's no single place to stop going.
The triggers are shorter and more frequent. Fewer big scheduled urges, more small constant ones.
And nobody can see you doing it, which cuts both ways — no social pressure to stop, and no social support when you do.
What actually helps
Create the unit that doesn't exist. Count puffs for two days, or weigh how much liquid you get through in a week. You can't reduce what you can't measure, and almost everyone's estimate is low.
Put it somewhere. A specific drawer, a specific shelf. Reintroducing the friction of having to go and get it recovers some of the boundary that smoking had by accident.
Make some places vape-free before you quit. Not the bedroom. Not the car. You're rebuilding the edges.
Use support, and don't assume it's not for you. Quitline counsellors cover vaping, not just smoking — a lot of people don't know that.
Quitline is 13 7848, free from anywhere in Australia. The Australian Government's My QuitBuddy app is free as well.
CURBi is a nicotine-free chewable formulated to support mood, focus and calm through the hard stretch. It contains no nicotine, so there's nothing in it to stay dependent on, and it can be used on its own or alongside nicotine replacement therapy.
CURBi is listed in the ARTG: Mixed Berry AUST L 527257 · Watermelon AUST L 527256 · Mango Passionfruit AUST L 527251. It is not a nicotine replacement therapy and does not contain nicotine, and it is not a substitute for advice from your doctor or pharmacist. Always read the label and follow the directions for use. If symptoms persist, talk to your health professional.
Sources
- Australian Institute of Health and Welfare. Vaping and e-cigarette use, National Drug Strategy Household Survey 2025.
- Leventhal AM, Madden DR, Peraza N, et al. Effect of Exposure to e-Cigarettes With Salt vs Free-Base Nicotine on the Appeal and Sensory Experience of Vaping: A Randomized Clinical Trial. JAMA Network Open, 2021.
- Therapeutic Goods Administration. Product standards for unapproved therapeutic vapes.
- Nicotine dependence among young adults: Comparing exclusive ENDS users to exclusive cigarette smokers. Addictive Behaviors, 2024.
- Quitting intentions and behaviours among young Australian e-cigarette users. Addiction, 2024.
- Department of Health, Disability and Ageing. My QuitBuddy app.