SpeechHon NICKY WAGNER (National): Thank you Madam Speaker. National supports this bill because we believe that vaping is a real game-changer. It's a game-changer in terms of helping smokers to quit but also it's a game-changer in moving us forward on the New Zealand Smokefree 2025 goal. I first discovered vaping back in 2016 and after taking advice from the Ministry of Health and reviewing the use of e-cigarettes and vaping overseas I prepared a bill to regulate vaping—I was the Associate Minister of Health at the time. What we discovered was that e-cigarettes and vaping had been available in the UK Europe and the US for over a decade and because they are significantly safer than tobacco they'd helped millions of people quit smoking.We also overseas saw overseas that where vaping had been regulated—regulated with an R18 restricted purchase age quality controls and minimal advertising—it had mainly been embraced by smokers and young people had not been attracted to the product and we saw this particularly in the UK. However where they were societies that had few rules such as in some of the states of the US and young people had easy access they were bombarded by advertising and that had encouraged them to take up the habit. So I absolutely support the Government's move. It is our job in New Zealand to regulate the sector so that vaping is still attractive and available to smokers to help them quit but it must be less attractive to young people and I think this bill mostly does that.The timing of the bill is unfortunate. Firstly the select committee process was truncated and also it was held during the time of the COVID-19 lockdown. I believe that the legislation as written has several parts which have got unintended consequences which will actually weaken the bill and I have provided three Supplementary Order Papers (SOPs) to correct these unfortunate and I think unintended consequences. So I just want to talk through those SOPs so that when we come to the committee of the whole House people will be able to vote for them.The first is SOP 536 and this concerns the qualification of becoming a specialist vape retailer. You've heard from the Minister that specialist vape stores can promote and sell a whole range of vaping products including a full variety of flavours but non-specialist vape stores—and they will tend to be local stores petrol stations and dairies—can only sell tobacco menthol and mint flavours. These are the flavours that actually are not the best-selling flavours and they're not the flavours that necessarily appeal to young people. The policy intent of this is to reduce the attractiveness of vaping to non-smokers.Now to qualify to be a specialist vape store 70 percent of your store's turnover must come from vape products. I agree that this is appropriate in most cases but there are a number of well-established specialist stores that also sell other products and so it's difficult for them to get that 70 percent turnover for vape products. I'll just give you an example of one of the chains the Cosmic group which was one of the very first stockists of vape products. It was the first store to voluntarily bring in an R18 age restriction and it is a respected expert in the sector so much so that the Minister actually sought advice from the company when they were seeking to regulate the vaping sector. At the moment they provide vaping products and advice to over 250000 New Zealanders so they are indeed a specialist store and I think it really is an unintended consequence that these types of responsible experienced and expert vape businesses are not considered specialist vape stores in the legislation.So I have come up with a solution. My SOP 536 says that the 70 percent threshold should remain because it makes sense but there is an alternative mechanism to allow businesses that meet 50 percent vape sales but are considered responsible retailers. There's a series of things that they would have to be able to tick off to be a responsible retailer and that would be approved by the Director-General of Health. I really don't believe we should be excluding experienced and responsible specialist stores just because they don't fit the cookie-cutter retail model that we are normally dealing with.I think it's interesting because the way the legislation is written any ratbag supplier or retailer who wants to open a store with no history of being responsible no history of any knowledge or advice even can open a store and sell 100 percent vape and that's not what we want. That threshold is really a proxy to say that these cover enough turnover that they are respected and can give good advice and that they will be part of the sector and support people to give up smoking. So I think it's really important that we do actually allow somebody with a slightly different retail model to be able to trade.The next one which is SOP 537 concerns alternative non-tobacco nicotine delivery devices. Now during the select committee process 53(2A) in clause 26 was inserted in the bill which bans oral nicotine products. Now when you consider that the stated purpose of the bill is to support smokers to quit by providing less damaging alternatives to cigarette smoking it seems rather odd that this would be the case that we would ban these alternatives. Interestingly enough because this clause was not in the original bill there were no opportunities for submissions on it and the issue was not discussed or debated. So it's been put in out of the blue and it seems to be at odds with the purpose of the bill.So my SOP deletes this section because there are already products in the market that are helping people quit which would be banned. For example these nicotine pouches—they are used by at least 10000 New Zealanders and there is absolutely no evidence that they are attractive to young people. Now nicotine pouches are placed in the mouth next to the gum and the nicotine is absorbed through the oral mucosa rather than inhaled so it's not damaging and the New Zealand Ministry of Health has already agreed that nicotine pouches are far less damaging than smoking cigarettes. Now it's interesting because a similar product used in Sweden is directly responsible for that country having the lowest cigarette consumption in Europe by far the lowest lung cancer mortality and the lowest percentage of smoking-related deaths in any developed country. So why in the world would we ban a product that can do that? Nicotine pouches also have specialist users. They were introduced to New Zealand by military people because they are useful and significantly safer than cigarettes for soldiers when they're in action. In talking to the Minister of Defence the Hon Ron Mark he has confirmed that he believes soldiers should be able to have access to the product.My final SOP is 545 and this is about community help groups which have been particularly successful in promoting vaping to help smokers quit. A good example of this kind of group is a programme called Vape2Save and that's been working very closely with Māori women. Māori women are a cohort that has the highest smoking rate in the country and it is difficult to reach those people through traditional quit smoking programmes. Vape2Save has produced spectacular quit rates. Now the current bill only allows the promotion of vaping to help people quit smoking to be done by a qualified health worker so Vape2Save would not be able to operate because it uses volunteers and peer supporters—and I think that's why it's been so successful. My SOP 545 provides an exemption for community health groups when they have been authorised by the director-general and the message has been approved by a qualified health worker. We don't want to lose these community programmes especially when they're getting great quick results in communities that have stubbornly high smoking rates.I think this bill is extremely important to public health. With nearly 5000 New Zealanders dying every year from smoking-related diseases we need to make every effort to help smokers quit. I support it passing as soon as possible. Thank you Madam Speaker.