SpeechJENNY MARCROFT (NZ First): Thank you Madam Speaker. It's a pleasure to rise and take a call on the Smokefree Environments and Regulated Products (Vaping) Amendment Bill. I am standing in support of this legislation because it does balance really well the prohibition on young people our children vaping. It's about taking care of their health and also too transitioning those who are cigarette smokers who do take a bit of the old tobacco bit of the old nicotine to find a tool that will help them quit. It will help reduce the comorbidities in their health and wellbeing. When you remove smoking from a person's life their health generally does improve. Therefore I am in support of this legislation. We had great discussions in the Health Committee. But I'd first like to acknowledge the Minister the Hon Jenny Salesa for bringing the bill to the House; the officials who worked with us on this bill; and all those submitters as well. We had around 1200 and 84 gave oral evidence. And as other members have noted this evening during the lockdown period we conducted those hearings via Zoom. Our committee was ably chaired by Louisa Wall and we had general consensus that this is a bill that does need progressing. I'd just like to acknowledge the Minister who said that it is necessary to keep the restrictions on flavours if we are to reduce the attractiveness and accessibility for these products particularly for our young people. However if any future Governments wish to make changes to the flavours that can be sold by generic retailers they can easily do this through regulations. That's an important note to make. We had much discussion about flavours whether it was rainbow unicorn flavours or berry or dessert vanilla-type flavours. Hon Maggie Barry: The unicorn.JENNY MARCROFT: The Hon Maggie Barry's favourite was the unicorn yes. In fact I think it was all our favourite—and really the attractiveness of those creative names because inside the tobacco industry back into the 1950s it was the creative advertisers who basically developed a new style of advertising. It was called lifestyle advertising and we're seeing the incredible advertising that vape companies are doing—really attractive advertising which helps to lure young people into taking up this habit along with creating the biggest cloud possible when they vape. That's another attractive quality of vaping. So restricting the ability of young people to be able to purchase vapes is a very important thing.Prohibiting the advertising of vaping products and smokeless tobacco restricting the flavours—and the reason for the mint and menthol flavours of tobacco is that those are the flavours that most people transition from when they are smoking cigarettes when they first take up vaping. Often it's that tobacco flavour or the mint or menthol that they may have smoked when they were smoking tobacco. That's the flavours they take up when they first vape. Then they can go to their specialist store if they're over 18 and try those other flavours which they then transition from that tobacco taste into something more like a dessert or a fruit.Limiting the general retailers including dairies and service stations to only sell those three flavours will help ensure that the vape stores actually will have business and customers who will go there. There was much discussion around the 85 percent threshold of those specialist stores. We did ask the officials why it was set at 85 percent. It seemed like some random number plucked out of the sky but actually it was to do with tobacconists. When tobacconists had a tobacco shop they had to have 85 percent of product and that's where that figure came from but we did agree in the end to reduce that down to 70 percent and there is that one-year transition period of 50 percent. Actually Action on Smoking and Health New Zealand has really been engaged in the whole process of this bill and I acknowledge them and their contribution. Their director Deborah Hart said that We are delighted that the Bill acknowledges the role vaping has in dramatically reducing the harms of smoking … it also discourages children and [young people] from vaping." They make a great contribution to society. They also mentioned that the rapid rise of smoke-free nicotine products especially vaping is the most disruptive influence on smoking in decades. It really is a game-changer. That is what we need this quit tool to help us reach those smoke-free targets. These products are challenging the smoking tobacco stranglehold on the nicotine market.I'd like to leave my contribution there. I commend this bill to the House."