Andrew Laming (Bowman, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I am devastated by last week's Therapeutic Goods Administration decision to continue the ban on e-cigarettes. Everyone here would know that two-thirds of Australians who smoke are helped to an early grave not just by carcinogens, not just by toxins, but also increasingly by a nation that will not contemplate alternatives where the rest of the world does. New Zealand put us to shame this week by legalising e-cigarettes. The UK has openly trialled them and even developed locations for vaping around hospitals. In the USA they are freely available, as they are across the EU.

For those in the gallery who do not realise, these are small implements with nicotine solution that recreates a sense of smoking and delivers nicotine without any of the harmful effects. I can appreciate the primum non nocere notion that we first do absolutely no harm but, surely, if you are going to ban e-cigarettes, how can you possibly collect the evidence? We have the rest of the developed world recognising that we can lower the years lost due to smoking by turning to these devices. Sixty-eight per cent of smokers will tell you they would use them if they were a similar price or less. Three-quarters of Australians in surveys say they would contemplate this as an alternative.

I am not about to tell you that there are no other concerns with nicotine solution. Surely if a child drank a litre of it, that would be a problem. Yes, if it touches your skin, it can be absorbed. This is the case with every drug that we have at our disposal—it has benefits and it has risks. But it is the Royal College of Physicians that we should perhaps be listening to. This august group in the UK, where clearly vaping is not the enemy of the state that it is in Australia, said provision of the nicotine that smokers are addicted to without the harmful components of tobacco smoke can prevent most of the harm from smoking. And, I add, it is without a single cent's cost to the taxpayer.

We spend billions trying to combat smoking, and here is a ready alternative available to the Australian public. But, no, we will suppress it and continue this ban purely on the argument of lack of evidence. The result is mislabelling of this product, selling it not on the free market but selling it on the black market and importing it from overseas. For goodness sake! We are not talking about cocaine. We are talking about nicotine. If we redesigned the system, we would have no cigarettes and no e-cigarettes, but that is not how it is. Millions of Australians who are addicted need something at their disposal other than a patch. This recreates the sense of having a cigarette. It is reasonably socially acceptable in every other wealthy country except Singapore. That is right; we are lining ourselves up with the absolute prohibition model of Singapore. Many times I have come in here and spoken about the benefits of Singapore. But we are talking about a massive public health battle. We are talking about billions being spent, not just in prevention but in trying to save the lives of people in hospital.

I have seen it for myself, as an eye surgeon treating people who, after a life of smoking, suffer cataracts, macular degeneration and even glaucoma—all of which have smoking related impacts. I do not want to see another person going blind if we can avoid it. I do not want to see another person going to an early grave if we can avoid it. These things are already on the market but are simply not available. We need a TGA that does not take an absolute no-risk approach. We need a balanced approach to this. With a black ban, you cannot even do the trials.

Having reviewed the research in the area, the Royal College of Physicians—it is great, isn't it, Deputy Speaker Vasta; they have done the evaluation, the research, for our TGA—came to the conclusion that e-cigarettes are one of the most useful aids to quitting. They also found that the hazard to health arising from e-cigarette use is unlikely and—please remember this, after I am long gone—the dangers of e-cigarettes are less than five per cent of the dangers of smoking. There is a net benefit of 19 out of 20, and we cannot get a trial in this country.

There are some very smart people in the Therapeutic Goods Administration. I am not advocating for civil disobedience. I am not telling smokers to put their packs above their heads and go down and picket the joint. But it is time we had a more open approach to data and evidence. It is time we had a trial like this, because I do not want to relive the five years when we fought against medical cannabis, only to have a Eureka moment and discover we should not have taken the attitude that the evidence was not complete. You know what? The evidence will never be complete as long as we ban something that is already broadly available. We should be more open to work with our supermarkets, with our points of sale, and through education and the public health groups to make sure that vaping is possible in Australia. It is already there. We should stop turning a blind eye and work together to beat the scourge of smoking.

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