Ms O’CONNOR (Hobart) – Mr President, I have just received some intel from the House from an ‘informed source’ about the cost of a vape. The average cost of a vape can be anywhere between $35 and $65. When I asked what the average cost was, the question that came back to me was, ‘Do you mean an illicit vape?’ I said, ‘Well, yes, presumably.’ That is what they are now. I was told that it is more expensive in Tasmania to purchase a vape, and if you want to buy one outside a pharmacy, ‘you have to know where to go’. That is the quote that I received back from an informed source.
Ms Forrest – They are more difficult to get. That is what you are saying?
Ms Armitage – If I could ask, does one vape last the same amount of time as a packet of cigarettes or longer? It is a hidden cost, I suppose, too.
Ms O’CONNOR – Yes, that is a very good question. I think in the evidence that we were presented with yesterday in the briefing, a vape does last longer, so it has more nicotine hits in it, if you like. When you recall that the average packet of cigarettes costs somewhere in the vicinity of $100, and if you want to buy rolling tobacco, that is more than $100. It is all very expensive.
The bottom line here is, we are talking about one of the most addictive substances human beings have ever produced. You can talk to cigarette smokers who have tried over and over and over again to quit, and they are convinced that it is harder to quit than any other drug.
I watched my mum, for example, who was a chain smoker. We had little Volkswagen. She packed the three kids into the car, opened the front window that much, because her understanding of physics was that if she had the window open just a little bit, it would suck all the air out. However, we were being gassed in the car on a daily basis. She knew it was a problem. We were living on a parenting payment. She tried to give up smoking I don’t know how many times. She did not end up giving up smoking until she was in her late 60s, after having a health scare. In the end, it was her lifelong smoking that took her out. I saw firsthand how an intelligent, driven woman can struggle with the addiction of nicotine. This is why every public health measure that we can take to genuinely reduce people starting their nicotine addiction, but also provide the supports to people to quit, we should be doing.
I believe this bill is a valiant effort. In some ways it comes from good intentions, particularly to stop young people from vaping. We can all agree that they are awful; they are quite a disgusting thing. What is inside them remains a mystery, and where they are manufactured, and what kind of regulations are around the stuff inside vapes is certainly a mystery to me. It is a complete mystery to many people who take it up. It is alarming to see the number of young people who have taken up vaping.
The issue here is, is this bill the right instrument to prevent young people from taking up vaping, particularly given the changes that have been made at a Commonwealth level, which the Greens did support? What I think, on the evidence that we have heard, is that young people who, in the past might have taken up smoking because that was the cool thing to do, are now taking up vaping possibly in higher percentage numbers. The potential unintended consequence of this bill, which requires a GP’s prescription in order to access a vaping product if you are over 18, is that if you cannot access a vape and you are over 18 and you are on a journey to nicotine addiction, you are much more likely to purchase a tobacco product than a nicotine replacement product.
Other members, including the member for McIntyre, have talked about the huge challenge that we have not having enough GPs. There are access issues for GPs, there are equity issues because of people living in rural and regional areas, and there are huge cost issues just to go to the doctor. Those potential unintended consequences of this legislation, for all its good intentions, is why we took the position in the other place not to support this bill. We did, however, successfully move a clause that provided for a review within two years of this measure, which I think is important.
If you have a look at what the federal parliament enacted, they were world‑leading and pragmatic, supported by the Greens. It was the Therapeutic Goods and Other Legislation Amendment (Vaping Reforms) Act 2024, which came into effect on 1 July 2024.
The federal legislation’s primary objective is to reduce harm from vaping by restricting access, in particular, for young people under the age of 18 and children, who we know are preyed upon by tobacco companies.
The member for Murchison talked about bubble‑gum flavoured vapes. They are not for the likes of us, even if we were inclined towards vaping or even bubble gum. Those flavours are very much targeted at young people and getting them hooked on vapes, and more specifically, getting them addicted to nicotine ‑ that pernicious and destructive nicotine.
The federal legislation makes sure that vaping products are not available at corner shops, but restricted to selling to people over 18 at pharmacies. I totally hear and accept what the member for Launceston has said about monitoring and compliance, because if the code amongst young people is ‘you have to know where to go’ to get your vape, we have a monitoring and compliance problem.
There is also likely to be a quality problem. If illicit vapes are being imported into the country, they are coming, completely unregulated, through unknown and mysterious manufacturing processes and ending up on shelves here in places where young people know they are, and talk to each other about where they are.
Tobacconists will no longer be able to sell vapes, obviously. There will be enforcement by agencies at the Commonwealth level, such as the Illicit Tobacco and E-cigarette Commission and Border Force, to control those illegal imports that I was talking about earlier. There has been an allocation of four years of funding by the Commonwealth of a bit over $60 million to beef up our import controls on illicit tobacco coming into the country.
The last, and very important, component of the federal legislation also looks at addressing vapes entering the waste streams, including Aboriginal lands and waterways. This is because vaping is not only a health and disease burden, and a growing health and disease burden, as we heard in our briefing yesterday, it is also a toxic new element to the waste stream. I am sure many members have seen those images of literal mountains of vapes that have gone to landfill. Those vapes are made out of useful materials. They have metal in them that might be put to better use than single‑use products which are going into landfill. We have seen evidence of vapes and their associated paraphernalia ending up in our rivers and waterways, scattered through the environment, on roadsides, in our landfill. We know that they are leaching toxins. They are poisonous at so many levels.
Single‑use vapes have now been banned through this federal legislation which, it is hoped, will reduce the amount of vapes entering the waste stream. I feel really conflicted about this legislation. There is a lot to commend it, but I do not think that the almost‑certain consequences of this legislation have necessarily been fully thought through. It is of a concern to us that young people will now be more vulnerable to taking up smoking itself.
It was reassuring in the briefing yesterday to hear that the Cancer Council is working with government and public health on education and engagement of all nicotine addicts or users or potential users, as part of a broader education and training program. That is quite encouraging. However, it is pretty clear from my earlier conversation I had with my ‘informed source on vaping’ ‑ that is, someone who has enabled themselves to become addicted to a vaping product ‑ that the problem is not going to be solved by requiring a person who has a nicotine addiction to get a GP prescription in order to access a vaping product, which we know is not a health product. That explains the pharmacists’ discomfort, generally, with having to distribute vapes. They are not a health product, and while they were initially sold as a helping‑to‑quit product, we can look back now and see that was, well, a lie. It was a lie that I believe was perpetrated by ‘big tobacco’.
They are not a health product. There is very little evidence that they help people quit smoking itself. They are a disgusting product. They are obviously having significant health impacts, particularly on young people who are taking them up. Young people who are, right now, becoming nicotine addicts through their vaping habits are not necessarily going to be dissuaded from finding that product, because they will find out where to go and be in the know, or they will take up smoking itself. Much progress has been made on lowering smoking rates, although it is one of those wicked problems in Tasmania, often connected to poverty and disadvantage.
It is with a heavy heart that I can say the Greens cannot support this bill. We think it is improved by the review clause. We hope that it has the intended effect. We very much do. However, at this point, we cannot see the evidence that it will have the intended effect. We hope very much that we are wrong.
