Smokefree Environments and Regulated Products (Vaping) Amendment Bill

As I was saying, public health experts for many decades have grappled with the curse of tobacco. In 1976, in a paper in the British Medical Journal, Professor Michael Russell wrote that people smoke for the nicotine but they die from the tar. That simple statement is as true today as it was 44 years ago. In his paper, Professor Russell believed the answer to helping smokers was to find a cigarette that maintained a sufficient level of nicotine, the addictive substance that is craved, while reducing the amount of tar.

Professor Russell would not have been able to foresee that three decades later, the first modern electronic cigarette would be able to deliver a chosen amount of nicotine without the need for tar at all—that people would be able to inhale the nicotine they craved while being spared from the fatal cocktail of tar and burning tobacco and the thousands of toxins in the smoke.

The credit for this technological development is frequently given to the Chinese pharmacist Hon Lik, who was himself a heavy smoker. Desperate to quit after seeing his father die from the same addiction, the products inspired Hon’s breakthrough, representing, arguably, the most disruptive technology for breaking the addiction of tobacco the world has ever seen. Of course, I’m referring here to vaping. Many people want to quit smoking, but quitting is very challenging. I know this from friends who smoke as well as from a number of people who have shared their journey of quitting smoking with me. While vaping is not harmless, because it does not burn tobacco or produce tar and toxins—which occurs in cigarettes—we know that vaping is significantly less harmful compared to smoking tobacco. It is a disruptive technology and has a role in helping us reach our smoke-free 2025 goal.

If the only concern this Government faced in drafting this legislation was to encourage vaping for smokers who wish to quit, our job would have been relatively simple, but regulating vaping is not that simple. Indeed, there are two sides to the issue. Nicotine is a highly addictive substance that companies have, in the past, chosen to introduce to children and young people and non-smokers in order to create dependency and therefore create customers to line their pockets with profit, if you like. Vaping products carry the same risk.

I’m deeply concerned that some vaping companies have demonstrated aggressive marketing towards our young people in other jurisdictions, and that danger exists in Aotearoa New Zealand too. In recent months, I’ve seen vaping advertising on TV, on billboards, on bus shelters, and even on my teenage daughters’ social media feeds.

Academic research reveals what they’re up to when it comes to our young people. A recent paper from Stanford University school of medicine found that JUUL Labs’ advertising imagery in its first six months on the market was patently youth oriented. The research has cast light on what most people watching this tidal wave of trendy nicotine products felt: that JUUL claiming that it was marketing to smokers was not congruent with JUUL’s image, branding, or presence on youth-focused platforms.

The practices nicotine companies engaged in when their ads ruled the airwaves belong solidly in the 1950s. We expect better because this Government, more than any in recent memory, addresses the issues in the best interests of our tamariki and our young people. Our Prime Minister, the Rt Hon Jacinda Ardern, has made making New Zealand the best place in the world to be a child a priority for our Government. So when I hear from parents, teachers, and school principals—as I’ve done in recent months—reports that vaping is becoming far too common, especially in schools, I am deeply concerned.

While recent data from anti-smoking group Action for Smokefree 2025 suggests that there is no vaping epidemic in New Zealand—let me repeat that: there is no vaping youth epidemic here—now is the time for action to prevent such an epidemic from happening in our country.

With this bill, we are acting to stop the sale of vaping products to young people under the age of 18; require child-resistant packaging, like they have in the UK; ban advertising, including the kind of aggressive targeting of these products to children and young people that we’ve seen; be able to restrict flavours like watermelon, cherry cola, “berry-a-peelin”, apple pie, and others from being sold at corner dairies, supermarkets, and service stations; stop the kinds of promotions that were seen in the last two years where vaping companies were in our rugby clubs and promoting their nicotine products on our beaches over summer; and prevent the normalisation of vaping by extending the currently legislated smoke-free areas for tobacco to vaping, such as our schools, hospitals, workplaces, bars, and restaurants. All of this adds up to an important protection of our young people.

What about adults? While we know we don’t want young people vaping when they have never been smokers before, because we don’t want a new generation getting hooked on nicotine, adults will still ask: is it safe? The Government’s advice is, if you don’t currently smoke, do not take up vaping; however, if you are a smoker, vaping is substantially less harmful to you and your body than smoking. Only vape to quit.

This is a futureproof regime that will ensure Governments of the future can be swift in their response to emerging problems and evidence on vaping and, in particular, vape products. At the heart of our product safety regime is a notification system. This bill requires manufacturers and importers to notify products to the Ministry of Health before they market them. This will enable the ministry to follow up rapidly if any safety problems arise. The bill will also contain the ability for regulations on maximum nicotine levels.

This bill has elegantly dealt with the challenge of seeking to encourage vaping for current smokers and discouraging vaping for non-smokers and children. How we’ve done this, in part, is to confer a greater set of rights and responsibilities on to R18 specialty vape stores. What I’ve learnt through developing this bill is that there are some very responsible vaping retailers, particularly some of our specialist vaping retail store owners. Our regime gives them an important role in helping smokers to transition with advice behind the counter on how to quit cigarettes while vaping. This bill restricts the sale of flavours available at general retailers to tobacco, menthol, and mint, while still allowing adults to access a full range of flavours available in these specialist vaping retail stores.

The bill also contains a number of provisions unrelated to vaping and smokeless tobacco products that I look forward to discussing further when the bill progresses through this House.

Finally, I want to conclude by bringing it back to my focus—our children and our young people and tamariki. We are ambitious for our tamariki, and we would like our children to be the smoke-free generation in Aotearoa. We also want them to have more time with healthier parents and grandparents by seeing other generations also kick the smoking habit. We know that vaping is a disruptive technology with a lot of potential to contribute to smoke-free 2025, but we also know that we must be smart and careful to prevent this addictive product from becoming normalised amongst children and young people and non-smokers. This bill achieves that balance.

I look forward to the Health Committee’s consideration of the bill and the opportunity for all of New Zealand to have their say. I strongly commend this bill to the House. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

Well, the first thing to say about this bill is simply this—

💬 Hon Jenny Salesa: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I move that the Smoke-free Environments—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Adrian Rurawhe): Oh, no—we do that at the end. Sorry.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. The first thing to say about this bill at the outset is it’s about time. This has taken far, far too long to get before the House. It would have been understandable. The Associate Minister of Health Jenny Salesa said regulating vaping is not that simple. Well, guess what! It’s not that difficult either. One of the reasons why it was not that difficult was they had a virtual carbon copy of this bill handed to them because of the work that the Hon Nicky Wagner had done as Associate Minister of Health in the previous Government and then as a member introducing a member’s bill into the ballot. It took years.

Even the Ministry of Health was imploring the Minister to get on with it. I understand these things are complicated, but the Minister has an army of resources not only ready, willing, and waiting to help but telling her that they wanted to get on with it and get the bill into the House. We’re here now—2½ years in and with not sufficient time—

💬 Darroch Ball: Do it once; do it right—not like the National Party.

Do it once and do it right, says Mr Ball; it’s about time they just did it. Talk’s cheap, Mr Ball. Governments need to deliver, and, in order to be able to keep their citizens safe, they need to do it a great deal more quickly.

💬 Hon Mark Mitchell: He’s misguided.

Well, I suggest that he’s probably strolling through the situations vacant in The Dominion Post as we speak, because one thing’s for sure: he ain’t gonna be here in six months’ time.

We offered—we offered—to support the Government on vaping, and the Minister’s reply to the Leader of the Opposition and my offer to get around the table with officials so that we could speed this up and to help that process was, “We look forward to that once the bill’s introduced.” Now, that was six months ago.

What they’re doing now, according to the Minister’s first reading speech in her introduction, is that we are now going to rush it. They’ve spent years getting it here, and now we’re going to rush it through the select committee process. We’re going to support this bill, but, for reasons which we will come to—and they’re pretty obvious—in the debate on the report-back motion, we will strongly oppose that, because we believe there are plenty of things still to be done in this.

In fact, while I describe Nicky Wagner’s bill and this one as carbon copies, there are some very important things that are in Nicky Wagner’s bill that are not in this bill. It doesn’t require, for example, vaping products to be child-resistant. I would have thought, given the debate that committee of the whole House has just had, that that would have been front of mind for the Government. Requiring vaping products to have a mechanism for ensuring refilling without leakage, restricting refillable vaping tanks to a capacity of 2 millimetres, and constant dose monitoring and reporting for the vaping devices—all really important things that, I think, the select committee will hear about and want to discuss.

Now, I also want to point out something that I’m not sure the Minister mentioned, and that is that the Attorney-General has—and this is another reason why this needs a thorough going over—issued a report under section 7 of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act (BORA), saying that the restrictions on advertising in the absence of scientific evidence on the harm associated with vaping is a restriction on freedom of expression that cannot be justified under that Act. Now, we know a bit about that because we’ve just had the funded family carers bill that the Minister seriously criticised the previous Government for ignoring a BORA vet. Well, I’ll be fascinated to know what her attitude is to this vet, because we have, again, been asked to consider a piece of legislation that is going to have a significant curtailment on the freedoms of New Zealanders to do certain things, and, I think, for that reason this really behoves the select committee’s consideration.

But all of that aside, I think, actually, the bill comes to this House and will be referred to the select committee in pretty good shape. I think the policy framework is there for the intent to be achieved, and that is to encourage people who are addicted to tobacco products to transition to the significantly less harmful vaping products at the same time as not encouraging people who don’t currently smoke to take it up, and particularly our young. I agree with the Minister that that’s a delicate balancing act that in the absence of a regulatory framework has actually been let go where these so-called responsible vaping traders have—there’s no doubt in my mind—created a marketing framework that is designed to attract people who are not currently addicted to nicotine to try vaping. I have relatives who are adolescents, teenagers, young adults who admit to me that that’s exactly what’s happened, and they can’t probably say why they did it, whether it was peer pressure or whether it was just what you did at a party or whether it was, to some degree, a part of that seductive advertising—the colours, the flavours, the groovy sort of advertisements you’re seeing on the TV.

So we’ve got to take a really, really close look. I understand what the Attorney-General is saying, and I highlight potential inconsistences in the Government’s response to that, but I think we’ve got to be really, really careful about striking the right balance between that freedom of expression and the goals of making sure our young people don’t take up vaping. I see the Health Committee chair, Louisa Wall, nodding in agreement with that. We heard—didn’t we?—from some fantastic submitters from Wainuiōmata and the Hutt Valley about what they are seeing in their schools.

Action for Smokefree 2025’s report into the incidents of vaping by year 10 children is probably unhelpful for two reasons. One is that if I was a fourth-former I wouldn’t be admitting to vaping if I did. I was smoking behind the bike sheds in fourth form—

💬 Dan Bidois: Ha!

—and I wouldn’t—only smoking behind the bike sheds, Mr Bidois—admit, even in an anonymous survey, that that was the case.

The second thing they told us was that, actually, this is a thing that starts in years 12 and 13; it’s the older kids as they get to 17, 18 years old, and they’re going out to the first XV parties and they’re doing those other things—that’s when the pressure comes on. I think if we were to do a survey on the incidence of even casual vaping on those age groups, we would be seeing a different and much higher and, in my mind, more concerning incidence and prevalence of young people vaping.

So I think we’ve really got to take a good look at whether we’ve got the balance right. I think it’s a really, really good start, but we’re going to hear from the vaping industry. I think we’re going to get some really slick submissions. As members of that select committee know, I had a pretty big BS radar for the smoking industry coming into the select committee; I’ll be turning that radar on for the vaping industry, recognising that they actually have an important role to play in this, and they have advised me that, actually, they haven’t been part of the development of the bill to date. So that’s going to mean that if the House does prevail in the Minister’s request for a three-month report back, we’re going to need to be on our toes, I think, to give really good consideration to those submissions.

I want to just put on record the issue around flavours. Again, I think the balance between specialist vaping stores and other retail outlets like supermarkets, service stations, and dairies is about right as a starting point. But I’ve got a concern, and I’ve been misconstrued in the articulation of that concern around flavours. I don’t oppose flavours; actually, I think they are a pretty good tool to transition away from tobacco if that’s what the smoker wants. But I am concerned that constituent products in those flavours, despite having been approved by things like the Food and Drug Administration in the United States and other jurisdictions, is not appropriate for inhalation; they were approved for eating. So if you’re putting vanilla essence or cinnamon or other flavours into these vaping products and then you inhale them into your lungs, there could well be a harm that is not known for a long period of time. So, regardless of where we land on that, I think it’s going to be important that the officials follow the longitudinal studies globally, participate in them, and make sure that when we see signs of bad outcomes as a consequence we need to be quick to act to restrict those flavours. The Minister’s nodding in agreement, I’m sure she understands that and supports it.

It is a problem, though, because we didn’t know—and the Surgeon General in the United States used to endorse certain brands of tobacco; it was years before we realised how harmful it was, thanks to the tobacco lobby, before we actually got the regulatory framework in place. So I hope we can be more nimble if we see the harmful effects of vaping emerge, and I hope it’s earlier than that.

With that caveat and with, overall, I think, a very strong support for the start point where we’re at, I want to commend the bill. I look forward to the select committee process.

Tēnā koe e Te Māngai o Te Whare. Tēnā koutou katoa. Can I firstly acknowledge the Minister Jenny Salesa and her ability to work across Government with our New Zealand First colleagues and also our Green colleagues in bringing this Smokefree Environments and Regulated Products (Vaping) Amendment Bill to the House. I acknowledge her and our coalition partners because, I think, as my colleague the Hon Michael Woodhouse has acknowledged, this is a comprehensive piece of legislation that, actually, in the end ended up trying to do two things.

The first was to ensure that those smokers had access to a product that was 95 percent less harmful. So we’re talking about people who smoke. The reality is that here in Aotearoa New Zealand, 5,000 New Zealanders die every year because of smoking-related diseases. A lot of the lobbying around access to these vaping products is from people like Professor Beaglehole, who know that these vaping products do work in minimising the effects of the addiction of nicotine, actually.

The other part of this bill is that we have to ensure that it doesn’t become a gateway product for our young people. I again want to pick up on something that the Hon Michael Woodhouse said in terms of our assessment of the smoke-free cars legislation. It was young people themselves who came and told us that it was cool to vape. They were seeing it from not the form 4 or the year 10 students but they were seeing it from the years 12 and 13 students. So it is a real issue.

I want to acknowledge that we will have, actually, some intense discussion, because if I look at what the law proposes to do: to ban the sale of vaping products to under-18-year-olds, to prohibit advertising of vaping products and smokeless tobacco, to restrict the sale of flavoured vaping products and e-cigarettes to R18 speciality stores—all to ensure that young people are not attracted to it—to limit general retailers, and to introduce this product safety system; as I said, incredibly comprehensive.

But the prohibition of the advertising, which has been highlighted by the Attorney-General—and I just want people to understand the context of the Attorney-General’s advice. Essentially, he’s saying that section 14 is about freedom of expression—that people have the right to seek, receive, impart, inform the public in a free and democratic society—and the limitations on that right have to be justified. They have to be reasonable limitations in a free and democratic society, and with tobacco products it’s been really clear: tobacco products harm. Tobacco products kill 5,000 New Zealanders every year. The issue with vaping is that, in and of itself, it may not kill 5,000 people every year. That’s the point of creating vaping products. They’re actually being created to help people who have addictions to still receive the nicotine but not the combustible part of the historic consumption through smoking cigarettes.

I guess the question then for us is: are vapes going to be a gateway product, and particularly for young people, and therefore that is why they should be deemed to be harmful? So I’ve already started looking at some of the evidence that we as a committee will have to assess, and there is a piece of research by Dr Blaha, who’s a cardiologist. He’s a professor of medicine at Johns Hopkins Medicine. There’s a study: the link between vaping, young people, and smoking. So the question before our committee will be: are vape products and e-cigarettes a gateway to smoking? Within the context of his research, there were 2 million young people, and he looked at their use of e-cigarettes as their first nicotine-based product. So these are young people who don’t smoke, and we all know that nicotine is highly addictive. The evidence from his research is that young people who vape are more likely to go on and use illicit drugs and tobacco products such as cigarettes, and so based on that research, we can say that, actually, vaping products are harmful for people who aren’t wanting to give up cigarettes. Therefore, is it going to be justifiable? The committee’s going to have to make that decision to prohibit advertising of vaping products that are specifically designed for young people that then may lead them to smoking. We have said we can’t advertise, because it’s justifiable, because it causes so much harm.

So that is going to be one of the crucial, I believe, decisions and discussions that we have in the select committee. I just generally, as the chair of the Health Committee, want to thank my colleagues on the Health Committee. The Minister has requested that we process the bill in an expedited time frame. You know, the time frames are usually six months; she’s asked us to do it in three months. But I have to say, she’s asked us to do it because, as we’ve heard, we must do it. Currently, these products are unregulated, and so we have an opportunity as a Parliament to progress this piece of legislation, which means that, from what I’ve just said, we reduce the risk to young people and we also provide those people who are smoking with a tool, with an ability, to minimise the harm based on the addiction of tobacco and nicotine. Kia ora.

Thank you very much, Mr Speaker. It’s a pleasure to rise and speak in support of this important bill. I just want to acknowledge the last speaker, Louisa Wall, and acknowledge the great work she does as chair of the Health Committee. I do respect her for her work not only as a local MP but as the chair of the health select committee, but I’ll tell you what: I disagreed with that last point. Respectfully, I think it’s more probably toeing the party line that, you know, “We need this. It’s got to be expedited—three months instead of six for the select committee process, for submissions.” But in a backdrop of the Government dragging its heels for the last 2½ years, when they could have got on and put this bill up a lot earlier, they’re clearly feeling the pressure of wanting bills passed before an election, to look as though they have done something. The impact of that is going to be select committees rushing bills through that do not give an appropriate time for the public to have their say.

Now, look, I’m a pretty balanced person—well, I like to think I am—and there are some bills that, arguably, you mightn’t need the full six months, but I would argue this one needs its full time. Why? This is the first time in New Zealand we are going to be looking at vaping regulation. Even Darroch Ball, who was contributing to the Hon Michael Woodhouse’s speech earlier, was saying, you know, “Do it once. Do it right.” Well, if we are going to take Mr Ball’s approach and his advice, then why are we rushing through this bill? We want everyone to have their say, because I think there’s some real—well, there’ll be some quite contentious points, and I think that the last speaker, Louisa Wall, outlined them, I think, very articulately.

On one hand, we are needing to provide adults or young adults the ability to quit from normal smoking and transition to vaping, but how do we safeguard our children and our young people? What we don’t want is a perverse outcome that, yes, we allow some adults who’ve been smoking for a very long time and have failed to quit with the current tools the ability to move into vaping, but then find out that we’ve created a new market of young people who weren’t smoking traditional cigarettes and have gone straight into vaping. I use that word “market” on purpose, and quite provocatively as well, because I’ll tell you what: this is a very commercial market. Already, globally the vaping market is around $10 billion and expanding, literally, by the month. We don’t have any available data of what the commercial market is in New Zealand, but I would say it’s probably exponentially growing by the day.

I take the Hon Michael Woodhouse’s point of having his BS radar on during the submissions process, because I’ll tell you what: some of the submissions will be heavily influenced by players in the market seeing the commercial gain here. That’s why I think it’s very important that the regulations we bring in are informed by the right health approach, not necessarily informed by the right commercial approach, because what is going to play out in this debate—and it’s a classic dichotomy when you look at harm reduction versus abstinence. You know, the Government’s already fallen into this trap around the testing of party pills in dance parties, saying that testing will make it safe. No, it won’t. By informing a user of what the substance is, it might make it less harmful; it definitely doesn’t make it safe. The only safe way of using a drug is not to take it at all.

Then you have this argument of harm reduction versus abstinence, and I think, yes, some people have already started smoking, and, quite rightly, we are going to advocate that vaping is used as a tool to reduce the harm, but we must be very clear here: vaping is not safe. Yes, it’s apparently, by the research, 95 percent less harmful than current smoking, but it still carries risk. That is why we need to make sure we take the time and get the right regulation in place.

What’s disappointing is this current Government came in using words like “a new style of politics”. Things were going to be done differently. As we’ve heard, this was the ability to actually, well, put words into action. This could have been a cross-party, bipartisan bill. We’ve seen them in the House earlier, with the carbon zero bill, and the Opposition actually reached out, and the Minister declined that offer.

I think that’s disappointing for a Government that came in on the mantra that things were going to be done differently, because there was clearly a bill already put up. The Hon Nicky Wagner—how good is Nicky Wagner, I must say. Imitation is the best form of flattery, and that’s what this bill is. It’s an imitation of the Hon Nicky Wagner, the bill she had provided. So we had it. We lost 2½ years. But, respectfully to the Hon Nicky Wagner, there’s still more work to be done in this space, and that’s why we’re advocating to ensure that everyone is heard, because what we want in this argument and in this bill is a health approach.

I don’t think there’s anyone in this House that disagrees with the vision of smoke-free 2025, and we need to make sure that if we are really focused on achieving that in, dare I say it, five years to go—times are going quick—then we need to make sure we’re taking the best approach. I just hope that we are going to get this bill in the right shape.

So that’s why I encourage the main players in this space, and the public as well, to come forward and make their submission, because this is the first time New Zealand is going to have regulation around vaping. We need to make sure that New Zealanders have the right tools—the right tools to be informed by and the right tools to make their decision. But equally, we need to make sure we’re not providing the ability of a new cohort, a new generation, to come through with a new vice of their own. So that’s why I think there needs to be a lot of focus on this bill.

Finally, if I can just wrap up and say it is interesting that we have these approaches of vaping. We’re increasing the excise tax in tobacco products. We’ve got towns in my area of North Canterbury like Hanmer Springs, which is declaring itself smoke-free. So we’ve got the right things in train, but I do think one day we are going to have to face the real decision if, finally, we are going to outlaw and prohibit smoking products once and for all. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

Debate interrupted.