Chris Franzi felt "sick" when he heard the federal government was going to ban the sale of e-cigarettes in retail settings.
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Owner of three Canberra vaping shops, SHOOZITECH, he says he may be forced to sell real cigarettes instead.
Mr Franzi said it was ironic give he had "helped over 50,000 people quit smoking in the ACT".
"[But] if they take the vapes away from us, we'll probably have to sell cigarettes. We have to use our tobacco licence to survive as a business," Mr Franzi said.
Nicotine for vapes are already only legally allowed to be sold with a prescription; they are supposed to help people wean off cigarettes.
Now they will only be available through pharmacies or via a healthcare professional.
The federal government says vapes with nicotine are regularly sold on the black market through tobacconists, convenience stores and social media - including to children.
Mr Franzi agreed, but said this was caused by tight regulations and bad policing.
SHOOZITECH sells e-cigarettes and flavoured e-liquids. The liquid is added to the battery-operated cigarette, heated and the consumer smokes the vapour.
The "vast majority" of his clientele were former smokers or trying to quit, Mr Franzi said.
"Probably at least 70 per cent of our customers vape with nicotine. The hand-to-mouth action and the puffing is probably the biggest appeal, anyway, just purely because it keeps the habitual side of the addiction," he said.
"The sheer majority of our clientele are public servants, they're police, they're army people."
However, federal Health Minister Mark Butler said vaping was a gateway to cigarette smoking.
"I want vaping to return to the purpose that we were told it was invented for; that is a therapeutic product to help long term smokers quit," he said.
"If we knew now back then when cigarettes were being introduced, I would hope that governments would have stopped it, would have snuffed it out immediately, which is what I want to do to vapes."
The government will restrict flavours and colours, force plain-packaging and reduce allowed nicotine concentrations. Single-use vapes will be banned.
The tobacco tax is also being increased 5 per cent.
Mr Franzi does not sell e-cigarettes with nicotine.
Nicotine is only available from a pharmacy.
He said his businesses ID every customer, refusing to sell to under-18s.
The business also made its own flavours in-house, which were presented in "plain" packaging.
The banning was a "knee-jerk reaction", Mr Franzi said.
"If this was about public health or not about anything else, then they would ban cigarettes, alcohol and vaping altogether, because they're all responsible for issues," he said.
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"Smoking and alcohol are responsible for way more issues in society than vaping is."
Vaping is 95 per cent less harmful than smoking and the risk of cancer is estimated to be less than 1 per cent, Adjunct Professor at the National Drug Research Institute at Curtin University Dr Nicole Lee wrote in an article for The Conversation.
The Lung Foundation said all vapes contained chemicals with unknown effects on respiratory health and 62 per cent contained chemicals likely to be toxic if vaped repeatedly.
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