Louise Miller-Frost (Boothby, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Tobacco use is responsible for around 21,000 deaths a year in Australia—more than one in every eight fatalities. Around 15,000 people are diagnosed with lung cancer every year in this country, with 90 per cent of them tobacco related. Tobacco is responsible for 9.3 per cent of the burden of disease in this country. A pack-a-day habit costs around $14,600 a year. For us as a community, the AIHW estimates smoking costs Australia around $5 billion in lost productivity, $2 billion for family members caring for someone with smoking related disease and $6.8 billion in healthcare costs, including 1.7 million hospital admissions. If you factor in premature death, the total cost to the Australian community is estimated at $136 billion annually.

Imagine if we could travel back in time. Imagine if we could go back in time and prevent tobacco being normalised in Australia. Imagine all those Australians, 21,000 every year, not dying. Imagine 21,000 families every year not having the sorrow of the premature death of their loved one. Imagine 15,000 Australians every year not having to go through the rigours, physical pain and distress of lung cancer treatment—operations, chemotherapy and radiation therapy. Imagine saving that cost in our health system. That is where we are now with vaping.

Vaping was initially introduced to Australia as a therapeutic product to help people stop smoking, and there are some people for whom this works. This week I spoke to a man in my electorate who told me he had given up smoking seven years ago through the use of vapes, so it does work for some people. For those people, therapeutic-grade vapes will still be available via prescription. But more broadly we find that people, particularly young people, are taking up vaping recreationally—and vaping is a gateway drug, with one in three people who vape going on to smoke cigarettes. While around 9.4 per cent of people aged 18 to 24 smoke cigarettes, down from 32 per cent in 2001, 25 per cent of people in that age group have used vapes. So it is no surprise that this age group is now starting to record an increase in smoking rates as well. Vaping is not helping people in our community get off smoking. Instead it is addicting them and providing the gateway to smoking. It is creating the next generation of lifelong consumers, because addicts make for an excellent consumer market for companies.

Vaping itself is not a safe activity. Just as cigarettes contain a lot of chemicals beyond the addictive nicotine, so also do vaping fluids, which can contain up to 200 chemicals including those found in nail polish remover, weedkiller and paint stripper. Vaping carries the risk of nicotine addiction; nicotine poisoning; serious injuries and burns, including internal burns; and seizures. Of course, we do not yet know the long-term effects of vaping, but I think as a general rule we can say that inhaling chemicals into your lungs is not a good thing.

Lung cancer is already a cancer that causes the most deaths in Australia—21,000 a year. Worse than that, we know that children are being targeted by vaping companies. Just as the cigarette industry targeted children and young people to create lifelong consumers, addicts for their products, so too is vaping. Vaping is marketing itself with bright colours, with images like unicorns and rainbows, with sweet flavours. Vapes are disguised as highlighter pens so they can sit undetected in a pencil case, and it's working. Teachers and school principals tell of children so addicted to vaping that they can't sit through an entire class or an exam without nicotine patches. Nicotine increases anxiety and depression, increases sleep problems and affects memory and concentration, particularly in developing brains. Students are sneaking out of class or skipping classes because they're experiencing nicotine withdrawal.

Australia has world-leading tobacco legislation, and we have made significant inroads into decreasing the impact of smoking on the health of Australians and the associated personal and financial costs to individuals, families and the community. But if we could go back in time and put the genie back in the bottle, wouldn't we? If we could stop tobacco taking hold in Australia, wouldn't we? Wouldn't we want to save those lives, save the sorrow, the misery, the pain, the cost to the health system and the cost to the community? This legislation to curb vaping is our opportunity to do just that, to put the genie back in the bottle. It is the new public health challenge, an entirely preventable one, and we should learn from the past. I commend the bill to the House.

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