Tassie fooled by smoke and mirrors
The TCCI should support NZ tobacco reforms, says Kathryn Barnsley
THE Tasmanian Chamber of Commerce and Industry pointed out that New Zealand visitors will have to leave their vaping equipment at home when they visit Tasmania, and poured scorn on the T21 (raising minimum sales age of tobacco to 21) legislation defeated in the Tasmanian Legislative Council (Talking Point, April 19).
Fortunately, the New Zealand government has just released a comprehensive discussion paper “Proposals for a Smoke-free Aotearoa 2025 Action Plan” which proposes to ban the sales of tobacco products to anyone born after
2004, a far superior proposal than T21 and which would wipe out smoking in a generation.
A similar Bill was introduced in Tasmania, the Tobacco Free Generation, by MLC Ivan Dean but lapsed in 2014 when the government prorogued parliament.
Further, the NZ proposal includes measures to:
REDUCE the level of nicotine allowed in tobacco products.
PROHIBIT the use of filters.
SET a minimum price for tobacco.
REDUCE the number of tobacco sellers.
LICENSE all tobacco and vaping product sellers (Tasmania already does this)
REDUCE illicit trade.
MAKE tobacco products less addictive and less palatable.
INCREASE mass media campaigns to go smoke free and vape free.
This is a comprehensive plan which should be adopted in Australia. However, despite receiving more than $18bn a year in revenue from tobacco taxes, the Commonwealth (states get nothing) has failed to revive the National Tobacco Strategy and the National Tobacco campaign, and ignored reports sitting in its offices since 2014, recommending regulation of the content and engineering of tobacco products.
Already the malign forces of the tobacco and vaping industries are galvanising to oppose these reforms.
My piece in the British Medical Journal Tobacco Control Journal in March outlined the way tobacco and vaping groups, funded by big tobacco, successfully campaigned against T21, and gained government support for their own policies.
Both retailer organisations and vaping advocacy groups campaigned vociferously against T21, the latter under the guise of “harm reduction”. Advocates also organised meetings and events with members of parliament. During the debate on the T21 Bill, some MPs used tobacco industry-favoured language … and claimed the supposed ineffectiveness of policy measures.
Rather than adopt this strong, evidence-based measure, the government opted to support a weak program of school-based education, which already exists and has not been found to be effective in Tasmania.
The TCCI also quoted the long discredited “95 per cent safer” claim relating to vaping, which was put forward by Public Health England (PHE), based on no evidence. This has been comprehensively discredited.
Researchers from the Respiratory Translation Research Group in Launceston have published in peer reviewed journals and concluded that vaping is no safer than tobacco cigarettes, and causes lung damage.