Scott Lynda: Smoke-free Environments Amendment Bill — Procedure Referral to Health Committee Instruction to CommitteeCWH In Committee 
Scott Lynda: Smoke-free Environments Amendment Bill — Procedure Referral to Health Committee Instruction to CommitteeCWH In Committee 
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Dr LYNDA SCOTT (NZ National—Kaikoura) 
: 
 The title of this bill is very descriptive of what it is intended this bill will do. The idea is to have the air as clean as one possibly can. A smoke-free environment is designed to protect not only workers who are working in an area where people are smoking but also to protect children in school-grounds and young people under the age of 18 from having access— 
The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson) 
: I draw it to the member’s attention that she should be discussing the title. 
Dr LYNDA SCOTT 
: Yes I am. I will try my very best to stick to the title. The words “smoke-free environments” relate to the areas where people work and to the environment of children who are at school or pre-school—to the grounds in which they play. 
The bill’s title was previously Smoke-free (Enhanced Protection) Amendment Bill because we already have smoke-free workplaces. That came in some years ago and has been well accepted amongst workplaces in New Zealand—workplaces being one environment in which initially there was some resistance. I can remember a lot of people saying to me how awful it was to have to work in an environment from which they could not escape. They could not move away from an environment that was filled with smoke and had to work in it day after day. The reason the bill had that title was so that we could look at passive smoking. 
People can make their own choices about whether they smoke—and cigarette smoking is highly addictive. But the problem is that if they are in an environment that is filled with smoke then there is passive smoking. More evidence has mounted over time that passive smoking can also affect a person’s health. We know that health is severely affected by cigarette smoking and as a doctor who was a geriatrician I am well aware that we need to have smoke-free environments. In geriatric medicine one deals with all the end results of people smoking and being in smoky environments—the effects on cardiovascular disease the airways and the lungs. Cardiovascular disease affects people by their having heart attacks strokes and arterial disease of the legs so that they have to have amputations. As a geriatrician I dealt with those effects a great deal of the time—the end effects of cigarette smoking that had affected people’s health. 
But we also have to look at children who are affected by their parents smoking. In that particular situation we want to have smoke-free environments because passive smoking by children leads to asthma and reduces the status of their heath. Later on in the debate on this bill we will be talking more about the environments that we want to see smoke-free and schools pre-schools and early childhood centres certainly will be some of those. We do not want to see role models—parents and the teachers in those facilities—smoking. So those environments will become smoke-free. 
There has been a lot of debate about whether the occupational safety and health legislation covers the concept of enhanced protection for workers and whether we need to be here tonight debating this bill and this title. Occupational safety and health legislation looks at whether an employee is subjected to a hazard in the workplace. As more and more medical evidence mounts about the fact that passive smoking is a hazard we have to look at whether a bill about smoke-free environments covering enhanced protection needs to be in this Chamber being debated tonight. But the decision was made that this bill needs to go forward whether or not occupational safety and health legislation covers smoke-free environments. So tonight we are talking about how we can enhance protection. 
Not everyone in the National Party will vote for this bill—by any means. It is a conscience vote for us because we have always treated such issues as a conscience vote. So when I am speaking tonight I am speaking simply from my own personal point of view as a doctor who has worked in this area.