Wall LouisaLOUISA WALL (Labour—Manurewa): 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 5000 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 5000 New Zealanders every year. The issue with vaping is that in and of itself it may not kill 5000 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.