Tammy Tyrrell (Tasmania, Jacqui Lambie Network) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I come from a family of heavy smokers—my dad smoked, my uncle, my sister, my brother, and me too. I remember the first smoke I ever had. I was 17 or 18 years old, I was at a party, and everyone else was smoking, so I tried one too. It was bloody awful. I hated it. But the more I drank the more I smoked. Everyone else was doing it, and I didn't want to be the odd one out. Smoking has always been a sliding habit for me. I'd smoke for a bit, then I'd feel bad about my health, so I'd stop. Then the peer group pressure would get to me, and I'd start again. When I met my partner, Tim, he smoked too. Our kids grew up watching us smoke, and, when they became adults, one of them started smoking too.

Smoking is something that has been normalised for generations of my family. It has just always been happening in the background. As a kid, I was rolling smokes for my dad. When you rocked up to a family event, there was always someone in the backyard with a durry. It took a surgery for me to stop smoking for good. I was able to kick the habit. But it's not an easy thing to do. You can't understand addiction if you haven't been there. It eats away at you day after day. You try to cut back to stop. You know you need to for your health. But it's like it's in your veins: you need to smoke more than you need to sleep or breathe; air is an option.

That's why so many heavy smokers are turning to vapes to try and get off the smokes. I've had family members do it. They didn't get a vape through a prescription. Not a lot of doctors are keen to give you something they think is harmful for your health. So this family member got the vape from overseas. It's technically illegal to do that in Australia. But this person was determined to improve their health, and they saw vapes as the best way to do that. And it worked. This person no longer uses any inhaling products. They've quit nicotine for good, and I'm so proud of them. I've seen a lot of people make the transition from cigarettes to vapes. They see it as an achievement, a sign that they're on the way to stopping their addiction once and for all.

Meanwhile, Labor sees vapes as—I quote—'insidious devices'. I'm not saying using a vape is healthy. I'm not saying kids using a vape is okay. But what I am saying is that vapes are a legitimate way for people to try and stop smoking. For whatever reason, Labor doesn't want that. So I'm a bit confused about what they want to do. Banning vapes will only achieve one of two things. The first is that it will push people back onto smokes and push money back into big tobacco. We might be in a cost-of-living crisis, but, if you know a heavy smoker, you know that they will make sure they have money for smokes above anything else. It also continues to put pressure on our public health system. The other option is that the black market thrives. You can get a vape from China for $2 and sell it here in Australia for $30. That means there's no regulation on what's in the vape or the juices, and you don't have any idea of what you're buying. We're actively creating an environment for criminal activity to grow. That's why I back regulation over banning.

We already have rules in place to make sure kids can't buy cigarettes. We make sure they're not packaged in ways that appeal to kids, and we tax them to high heaven. That money goes back into funding our health system. We could have done the same thing with vapes—rules around age requirements, rules around advertising and a healthy tax. That would mean more money to fund essential health care. It would mean that people would have access to vapes if and when they needed them.

My general principle in life is that everyone is addicted to something. Some things are obvious, such as alcohol, cigarettes, drugs and gambling, but there are other things that are much more normalised—addictions to coffee, sugar or fast food, for example. None of these things are good for you, but as adults we have the freedom to make our own choices. That's why I don't agree with banning anything. Vaping won't help everyone stop smoking, but I've seen it work with people I love, and I know there are so many other stories out there just like theirs. It would be hypocritical of me to say that it's good enough for my loved ones but to not allow anyone else to have their choice.