Marcroft JennySMOKEFREE ENVIRONMENTS AND REGULATED PRODUCTS (VAPING) AMENDMENT BILLFirst ReadingDebate resumed.JENNY MARCROFT (NZ First): Tēnā koe. Thank you Mr Speaker. It's a pleasure to take my call on this the Smokefree Environments and Regulated Products (Vaping) Amendment Bill. New Zealand First stands in support of this bill and acknowledges the work with the Minister the Hon Jenny Salesa working together with this to progress this bill because it is important for the health of all New Zealanders that we take this bill through all its stages. The Smokefree Environments and Regulated Products (Vaping) Amendment Bill introduces vaping regulations that strike the right balance between making sure vaping is available for smokers who want to use it as a quit tool while ensuring that these products are not marketed or sold to children and young people. So this bill will achieve a few very important things. It will ban the sale of vaping products to under-18-year-olds. It will prohibit the advertising of vaping products and smokeless tobacco. It will restrict the sale of flavoured vaping products and e-cigarettes to R18 specialty stores and will limit the general retailers—including dairies supermarkets and service stations—to only selling three flavours. Also and probably more importantly it will introduce a product safety system which enables the Ministry of Health to recall suspend and issue warnings about vaping products. As a member of the Health Committee I'll be very pleased to hear the submissions that will come to us as we all are in the Health Committee I think in agreement that this bill is very much needed and timely as well. Just making note of the Minister the Hon Jenny Salesa's comment as she set out in her statement this morning that the public health in New Zealand has battled against smoking and tobacco for decades and that Governments of all descriptions in fact have pursued and progressed policies that sought to reduce the harm the deaths that come from smoking-related diseases inflicted on our communities.The areas that I'd like to talk to in my contribution today relate around flavours and advertising in particular. Vape flavours really have come about as some sort of creative writer's dream. They must sit around thinking up really cool names for these flavours: Nectar of the Dragon; Banoffee—bit of a dessert one that one; Bad Blood which is Exotic blackcurrants and a chilling sensation that will excite the tongue". Maybe there's going to be a New Zealand flavour: Chur Bro. Even the musical genre is part of vaping flavours: Afternoon Delight.Advertising and in particular cigarette advertising goes way back to the 1950s. Marlboro advertised and they had a campaign which had more influence on society than any other advertising campaign. Originally Marlboro was a women's brand of cigarettes and it targeted women because they had these filter tips because they knew in the 1950s that actually there was harm from smoking cigarettes. So they first of all targeted women by saying "Ivory tips to protect the lips". They also went on with the Camel cigarette brand to have doctors used in advertising and their slogan was "More doctors smoke Camels". So we know that advertising is a really powerful tool to change the minds and persuade the populations. So what they did with Marlboro was that they used macho masculine types of characters and then eventually they settled on the cowboy because he was a strong hard-working silent man in a hat with spurs. They had this tagline: "Come to where the flavour is. Come to Marlboro country." Now the influence of this advertising campaign saw Marlboro become in a very short space of time—in one year—the fourth-largest tobacco company in America and within four years it was the biggest tobacco company across the country. The influence was absolutely huge and in fact 90 percent of schoolchildren knew who the Marlboro Man was yet they weren't targeting children. However at least four of the Marlboro men died of smoking-related diseases. Probably the most famous of them was Wayne McLaren who died at 51 years old after 25 years of smoking. So we know that tobacco companies are masters at advertising and we have in New Zealand—and my colleague from across the House Matt Doocey talked about it in his contribution about the advertising: we don't know how much money is being spent in New Zealand because we haven't taken that data and had a look at what they are advertising in terms of dollar figures with vaping. But we do know that they are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars. Half a dozen large vape clients in one media company are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars. One client in particular is spending $200000 on a campaign. They are finding creative ways to skirt around rules and regulations. Maybe if it's a visual for a digital advertisement they're using things like a very gorgeous looking woman and instead of a cigarette in her fingers she's holding a piece of broccoli. There's no mention of the word "vaping". There are no other words other than very small ones at the bottom that will be the logo of that particular organisation. There is one company JUUL. Their vape is like a USB stick. They are called the iPhones of vapes because their cool tech makes people young people in particular attracted to vaping addicting a whole new generation to nicotine. So we know that vaping and the advertising ban that will come in place with this piece of legislation is extremely important to protect in particular our young people.I'd like to finish my contribution by acknowledging the work that will be done in the select committee but also too the connection that New Zealand First and the close work we've been doing with Action for Smokefree 2025 over the past 12 months to ensure that we get world-leading legislation that has been properly peer reviewed internationally. Action for Smokefree 2025—I'm sure they will come to select committee and we look forward to their contribution on this piece of legislation. This is a very sensible bill that we've worked with our coalition partners on and we very much are pleased that it is here today for its first reading. I commend this bill to the House."