THE BIG PHARMA QUICKMIST CON

Why Calling It A Vaping ‘Cessation Treatment’ Is Pure Nonsense!

By Pippa Starr – Director, ALIVE Advocacy Movement

Research credit- Simon Willson

28 August 2025

So here we go again. Another headline about “vaping addiction” and another triumphal announcement that Australia has its first approved vaping cessation treatment.

And what’s the miracle cure?

None other than Nicorette Quickmist, the same mouth spray that’s been flogged for years as a stop-smoking aid, now repackaged as the saviour of people “trapped” by vaping.

Let’s be honest: framing mist sprays as a vaping “cessation treatment” is absurd. For the overwhelming majority of people who vape, it is not a disease to be cured, it is a harm-reduced way to consume nicotine and a proven ramp off smoking.

Smokers are switching to vaping because it delivers nicotine with a minute barely traceable fraction of the toxicants found in cigarettes, not because they were waiting around for Big Pharma to come to the rescue!

Vaping was created by a Chinese Pharmacist 22 years ago because although Big pharma had the chance to, they didn't!

Why? It wasn't in their business plan!

Vaping is at least 3 times more effective in keeping smokers away from smoking than any other big pharma product!

Quickmist vs Vaping – What’s Really in the Bottle?

So what is the difference between legal NRT like Quickmist and a standard vape?

• Quickmist is supposed to be sprayed in the mouth for absorption through the oromucosal membrane, but let’s be real, people breathe. A mist sprayed into your mouth is naturally going to find its way down the throat and, yes, into the lungs. That’s why they now add a big fat warning: “Do not inhale.” A warning they didn’t bother with until vaping forced them to admit the obvious.

• Vapes, on the other hand, are simple: propylene glycol, vegetable glycerin, nicotine, and flavouring. That’s it.

• Quickmist contains a cocktail of extras, ethanol, Trometamol, Poloxamer 407, artificial sweeteners, cooling agents, hydrochloric acid (yes, brick cleaner!), and let’s not forget preservatives like butylated hydroxytoluene that don’t even get listed in Australia anymore but show up in overseas safety data sheets.

• Anti vaping lobbyists love to scream about vape “chemicals”, but if we applied their own logic to Quickmist’s ingredient list, the headlines would write themselves:

• “Pharma puts alcohol, caustic soda, fabric conditioner, artificial sweeteners and embalming fluid into children’s mouths!”

  
  

When you actually look at the breakdown, vaping exposes users to far fewer intentional chemical additives than Quickmist. That’s not conjecture, that’s chemistry.

If I was wrong I could be sued big for saying so!

The Safety Illusion

Quickmist requires buffering agents, anaesthetics, and acids to counteract the stress it puts on the mouth’s mucosal membranes. That alone tells you the product is not benign.

If overused, it can cause sensitivity, irritation, even ulceration.

Why? Because it’s designed to chemically punch nicotine through your tissues.

Meanwhile, vaping achieves the same effect without requiring this chemical circus. The vapour aerosol droplets mimic the way smoke delivers nicotine, but without the tar, carbon monoxide, or thousands of cancer causing combustion by-products.

That’s the real harm reduction.

Even when pressed, the head of the Cancer council admits that there is no good reason that vaping nicotine causes cancer!

Yet somehow, in the upside-down logic of our regulators, the chemically-stuffed spray gets the gold star of approval, while the simpler, safer option remains criminalised.

The Bigger Picture

Let’s not miss what’s happening here. Quickmist’s “approval” for vaping dependence is not about science. It’s about optics, politics, and keeping the pharmaceutical industry’s products on the pedestal while vilifying consumer-driven harm reduction.

The TGA wants to sell the idea that you need Big Pharma to “treat” vaping.

But the reality is this: most vapers aren’t seeking treatment, they’ve already solved their smoking problem by moving to something dramatically less harmful. And millions of Australians could too, if only policy stopped blocking access.

Instead of celebrating consumer choice and the public health miracle right under their noses, our government prefers to play nanny state and hand another monopoly to the pharmaceutical lobby. Meanwhile, smokers keep dying, the black market keeps thriving, and Australians keep being lied to.

The Bottom Line

Quickmist is not a breakthrough, it’s a rebranding exercise. The real breakthrough was vaping itself, and it came from consumers, not corporations.

Calling vaping an “addiction” that needs “treatment” while pushing a chemical-laden spray as the solution is nothing short of ridiculous. The public deserves honesty:

• Vaping is safer than smoking.

• Vaping is simpler and cleaner than Quickmist.

• Vaping works as harm reduction.

Anything else is smoke, mirrors, and marketing.