Mr GAFFNEY (Mersey) - Mr President, I thank the member for Windermere for his work on this issue. This has been culminated in the bill we are discussing today. I will support the bill to go into the Committee stage. I believe it is the right thing to do. I acknowledge and recognise the wonderful support he has received from a number of individuals and organisations as well. I think that is really important. I believe the member would be the first to say he has had some valuable support.

This bill represents an opportunity to affirm our ongoing commitment to improving the health of Tasmanians. Naturally, I am supportive of any such legislation. I was a physical education teacher for 20 years, so the gambit of health education was probably my responsibility in many of the schools.

Whilst this is not a humorous subject, in my early years as a student teacher, I thought I would take a section on cigarette smoking. I had had a year in the States. In the States, in the baseball team, all the kids used to chew tobacco. I did not realise that chewing tobacco and cigarette tobacco were two different products. In my grade 9 science class I made them tear open a cigarette, get the tobacco and shove it under their lip and chew on that. When they started to go green, I thought 'I have made a mistake here', but I do not think any of those kids ever touched a cigarette again in their life. It was something I lived and learned.

I intended to begin today by discussing the impact smoking has on individuals and our wider community. Members have provided insight and valuable information regarding the dangers of cigarette smoking. I will provide further detail but will try not to repeat previous comments from members. I will then detail my thoughts on changing the minimum legal sales age.

I am certain all members are aware of the many negative aspects of tobacco smoking. These are consequences that have had profound impact on the health of individuals, as well as representing a significant emotional, social and economic cost to the community. Cigarettes have been referred to by physician and now US politician Dr Richard Creagan as 'the deadliest artefact in human history'. Indeed, it has been suggested that nicotine is more addictive than heroin. A statement provided by the Alcohol, Tobacco and Other Drugs Council Tasmania reads:

We're not a community that shies away from taking the lead in these matters. We were the first state or territory in Australia to ban smoking in all indoor areas of pubs, bars and clubs in 2006, so the acceptance of these amendments would not be the first time that Tasmania has taken the lead in tobacco control legislation.

The impact of smoking cannot be overstated. Quit Tasmania outlines the health risk of tobacco smoke as follows:

Smoking harms nearly every organ in your body. It damages your health, and among smokers who never quit, one in two will die from a disease caused by smoking. Tobacco smoke is made up of over 7000 chemicals. Around 70 of them cause cancer.

Probably many of us in this room and those tuning into the debate have been impacted, or know of individuals, families and their friends who have suffered, observed or experienced the debilitating effects of cigarette smoking. Not only is there a desire to quit among smokers, but many wish they had never started. According to a 2014 survey, 90 per cent of Australian smokers said they regretted it. It should be also noted that smoking is a uniquely addictive habit: 70 per cent of Australian smokers want to quit, and most try repeatedly and fail, even with the best treatments. Continuing smokers remain at high risk. Up to two in three will die from a smoking-related disease.

Mr Bruce Mansfield, Chief Operating Officer of the Eliminate Cancer Initiative, who commissioned the YouGov poll wrote:

Australians are ready for innovative action by Government to tackle smoking, action that trials policies, that have the potential to be the catalyst in driving down smoking rates and ultimately will prevent the deaths of thousands of Australians by restricting access to harmful tobacco products to future generations.

Dr Kathryn Barnsley of SmokeFree Tasmania provided the following information:

Tobacco kills more Tasmanians every year, more than alcohol, car crashes, suicides, homicides and illicit drugs combined. Seventy per cent of acute admissions to Royal Hobart Hospital are smokers. Smoking does not kill people immediately. It causes chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, blindness, diabetes, gangrene, deafness, cancers, heart disease and stroke, which may leave the smoker alive, but with significant health deficits.

Tobacco smoke is linked to SIDS, which can kill babies, and meningococcal disease, which can kill both babies and adolescents.

In Tasmania, smoking prevalence is related to socio-economic disadvantage. The proportion of Tasmanians living in the most disadvantaged areas who are current smokers is 25 per cent, whereas in the least disadvantaged areas the figure is 10 per cent.

We have laws about the age at which a person may drive a motor vehicle, be sold a firearm or receive the age pension. We seek to improve the health of Tasmanians and legislate safeguards in our community, which may impact our lifestyle. The introduction of seatbelts has become accepted as part of our lifestyle. We hardly batted an eyelid when tanning salons were banned, knowing that they contributed to real potential skin cancers in our fellow Tasmanians. Some people lost their jobs, but the members of our parliament were willing to listen and to stand up for the health of Tasmanians.

What is the difference this time? This time, the magnitude of harm is many times greater. There is no safe dose. Remember, every cigarette is doing damage.

Perhaps most staggeringly, we already have laws which restrict the age at which someone may be sold smoking products - 18 years - and it was in 1998, that it was 16 years, and we can go back to those days. Those of us who went through college - you would walk into the canteen and you could hardly see the other end of the room because of the cigarette smoke, and that is where your classes were. Even if you were not a smoker, if you wanted to get an education, you would be subject to passive smoking.

The Minderoo Foundation agrees with this point, stating the following:

Current legislation in Australian states, including Tasmania, already prohibits the sale of tobacco products to persons who are under a specified age. If enacted, the Tobacco21 bill would increase the specified age at which a person can purchase tobacco products incrementally over a period of three years.

Further, the Minderoo Foundation explains that compliance with T21 laws would not be in breach of federal anti-discrimination law. Under the Anti-Discrimination Act 2004 (Cwlth), it is not unlawful for someone to refuse to provide goods to a person on the ground of age where such refusal is in direct compliance with a state act - that is in section 39. A person may therefore refuse to sell cigarettes to a person in Tasmania who is under age for the purposes of Tasmanian legislation without being at risk of age discrimination under Commonwealth legislation. Therefore, we can rest assured that the legislation itself is not discriminatory, and also businesses and their employees who comply will not be discriminating against 18- to 20 year-olds.

In raising the minimum legal sales age, new laws would not seek to punish those who smoke. It is to prohibit sales to, and thereby protect, a particularly vulnerable segment of the community. To my knowledge, there is no legally enshrined right that permits an individual to sell a toxic product anyway.

While there will be reservations and arguments about raising the procurement age of cigarettes from 18 to 21, for a whole range of seemingly valid reasons, I support an even greater age range, contrary to some of the information we have been provided.

I am suggesting that members consider that the age for purchase of cigarettes is raised from 18 to 25. I understand and appreciate the arguments presented by members and the member for Windermere. They do not agree with the legal smoking age being 18, while the legal purchase age under the bill is 21, and that is fine.

If you agree with the bill and the change of age, I would like to present a case for an amendment that I would be pursuing - that 25 should be the age, and not 21.

The effect of maturation on the human brain with regard to the propensity for addiction has scientific backing and should feature in this legislative debate. All members need to be aware of the scientific reality of brain development, and the impact substances may have on that development.

Mr President, it can be argued that the immature and impulsive behaviour exhibited during adolescent life is actually part of the continuing development of the brain.

The available data tells us that the later in life a person is allowed to begin smoking, the better. The Tobacco-Free Kids website tells us the following:

Nicotine is a highly addictive drug; and adolescents, who are still going through critical periods of growth and development, are particularly vulnerable to its effects. Research on nicotine dependence shows that key symptoms of addiction - strong urges to smoke, anxiety, irritability and unsuccessful quit attempts - can appear in young kids within weeks or only days after occasional smoking first begins, and well before daily smoking has even started. Some users experience tobacco dependence within a day of first inhaling.

Dr Nitin Gogtay pinpointed maturation date of the prefrontal cortex at 25 years of age. He and his co-authors wrote that the PFC is a late-maturing region; it is not fully developed until individuals are approximately 25 years old.

Arain and others say the following of the prefrontal cortex:

The prefrontal cortex offers an individual the capacity to exercise good judgment when presented with difficult life situations. The prefrontal cortex, the part of the frontal lobes lying just behind the forehead, is responsible for cognitive analysis, abstract thought, and the moderation of correct behavior in social situations.

The prefrontal cortex is one of the last regions of the brain to reach maturation, which explains why some adolescents exhibit behavioral immaturity. There are several executive functions of the human prefrontal cortex that remain under construction during adolescence.

The fact that brain development is not complete until near the age of 25 years refers specifically to the development of the prefrontal cortex.

Therefore, Mr President, a young person's heightened capacity for addiction is linked to the underdeveloped nature of the adolescent limbic system.

Arain and others explain that:

The nucleus accumbens, a part of the brain's reward system located within the limbic system, is the area that processes information related to motivation and reward. Brain imaging has shown that the nucleus accumbens is highly sensitive in adolescents, sending out impulses to act when faced with the opportunity to obtain something desirable. For instance, adolescents are more vulnerable to nicotine, alcohol, and other drug addictions because the limbic brain regions that govern impulse and motivation are not yet fully developed.

With regard to nicotine addiction specifically, Arain provides the following insight two pages later when discussing several competing scientific theories:

A unifying hypothesis has been proposed based on animal studies, and it suggests that adolescents (as compared to adults) experience enhanced short-term positive effects and reduced adverse effects toward nicotine, and they also experience fewer negative effects during nicotine withdrawal. Thus, during adolescence, the strong positive effects associated with nicotine are inadequately balanced by the negative effects that contribute to nicotine dependence in adults.

This is affirmed by John Oyston, Assistant Professor at the University of Toronto:

As evidence about the harm caused by tobacco smoking accumulated, physicians encouraged people to quit smoking. Subsequently, because governments were convinced that many cancers and other diseases were associated with smoking, and were apprised of their associated costs, public health measures (e.g. banning cigarette advertising) began to gain traction. Once the dangers of second-hand smoke were understood, smoking in public places was prohibited. Now that we know that the addictive substance nicotine is a neurotoxin that damages the developing brain, from fetal life to young adulthood, a new measure is needed to protect young people from tobacco. Increasing the minimum legal age for access to tobacco products to 21 or even 25 years would reduce smoking initiation substantially, reduce the prevalence of smoking, improve health across the lifespan, improve the outcome of many teenage pregnancies and save lives.

It is clear from the information I am presenting that when making crucial lifestyle choices, a young person is not always going to do so with a rational mind and logical thinking.

I am sure my fellow members would agree that these decisions are often made based on social factors such as peer pressure, nothing else to do and a general desire to simply fit in - a decision made without consideration of longer term health consequences that could be present with a fully developed already nicotine-affected prefrontal cortex.

Dr Nick Towle, from the UTAS Rural Clinical School said:

I am fully supportive of your intention to seek to amend the sales age further from 21 to 25. The evidence is on your side, though I acknowledge this is coming down to a showdown between the medical profession and the legal profession, with a long history of antagonistic views.

He says:

I realise the tobacco industry by way of retail associations and some sympathetic lawyers are pursuing the argument that changing the sales age would remove civil liberties of those turning 18. In my view, we must stop treating tobacco as a rite of passage. So long as anyone argues that it should be a right of an 18-year-old to purchase tobacco, then they are reinforcing the argument that tobacco smoking is an important part of our society.

I believe that if the minimum legal sales age were raised, consideration of health factors and longer term goals would take priority over those strong but transient social impulses. In simplistic terms, it could be argued that a 21-year-old is more rational and aware than an 18 year-old and a 25-year-old is more rational and aware than a 21-year-old, and has, at that stage, a fully developed brain. Peer influence, pressure and wanting to appear cool or grown up, the rite of passage effect or a badge of coming of age - Imperial Tobacco - are the two biggest reasons for taking up smoking.

This is supported by the results of a secondary school survey conducted in 2011 of nearly 2000 students from years 7 to 12 in Tasmania, where students' most common sources of cigarettes quantified these issues and were: 62 per cent of cigarettes were from their friends, or their peer influence; 19 per cent asking someone else to buy their cigarettes, opportunistic or seeking to manage a new addiction; 12 per cent purchased illegally, actively seeking out tobacco products themselves; 4 per cent were provided by parents; and 3 per cent by their brothers and sisters.

We have to find a way of interrupting this. If the Government's goal of becoming the healthiest state by 2025 is going to be achieved, which by all accounts and health statistics might appear unrealistic, I believe the restricting the sale of tobacco products to 25-year-olds and older is definitely a step in the right direction. It may not be the silver bullet, but it is a strategy we should at least explore. We should also recall this Government presented a public discussion paper incorporating the potential to raise the minimum legal smoking age to 25 based on some of what I have presented here and other modelling work undertaken in the US.

Sometimes those in leadership roles need to make difficult decisions for the good of the community and the health and safety of those individuals it ultimately represents. For this reason, I will support the changing of the age from 18 to 21, but I strongly believe ideally it should be changed to 25. If we choose to legislate based on the scientific consensus, this would lead us to select 25 as the age at which individuals may be able to be sold smoking products.

Why are we playing around the edges of a small three-year incremental inconvenience? Let us increase it by seven years to 25 years of age. Yvette Van Der Eijk, in 'An Ethical Framework for Tobacco Control Policy', aptly explains why 25 years is the appropriate age as follows:

Although people aged 18 to 25 years are arguably capable of making sound judgments, they are vulnerable to developing an addiction if drug use is initiated at this age. This is particularly the case for highly addictive drugs such as tobacco. An early tobacco addiction could, in turn, undermine their neurobiological development. Thus, there is an argument for protecting young adults under the age of 25, as well as adolescents from tobacco on the grounds of their neurobiological vulnerability to drug use and addiction.

In this Chamber and in the community, we have all heard the argument that smoking choice is for the individual, as it impacts only them, the individual. I wish that were the case. But as we know the impacts are much wider than just the individuals. Families and friends are directly impacted by someone who develops a smoking-related disease. I welcome any attempt to change the smoking age.

That said, if our objective here today is to reduce the smoking rate, the age should be raised to that at which a person is capable of making rational future-focused lifestyle choices and is less susceptible to addiction. That age is 25. It is abundantly clear that the later in life a person can be sold smoking products, the less chance they have of becoming addicted. Raising the minimal legal purchasing age to 25, first, will go to some way to reducing the peer to peer gifting of cigarettes; second, is more closely aligned with current literature as to why preventing uptake in those younger than 26 is so important; third, is very well targeted to reducing uptake during a time of crucial brain development; and, fourth, eliminates peer influence as the main driver for the smoking initiation.

If we go back to our youth, many of us as an 18-year-old might have a 21-year-old friend we could ask to purchase cigarettes. Fewer of us at the age of 18 would have an association with someone who might be 25, and from whom you could obtain that product. Therefore, from a social environment, I think having a wider gap would be better because a 25-year-old has the maturity to say, 'I am not going to buy you this cigarette because I do not think it is good for you', while a 21-year-old would say, 'Yes, I will buy them for you, mate, and put them on the bar'.

If we are going to do this, we should do it seriously and look at this as a strategy. For many years governments have been saying that they will put in more funding and will put more people into schools to run health education classes. We will do that and it has not worked. It is flatlining. In fact, in Tasmania, it has increased. We reached a certain stage when it went from 16 to 18, when they introduced certain things, but it has flatlined back and it is getting worse.

What are we going to do? Sit here and wait for things to change? Sit here to wait for our education to improve by 2030? I do not know. I think we have an opportunity to do something and trial it. It may not work, but it cannot get any worse than it is getting. It is not getting any better and as a state, we have the second worst smoking statistics in Australia.

Sometimes those in leadership roles - and that includes members in this Chamber - need to make difficult decisions for the good of the community and wear those decisions and the health and safety of those individuals we ultimately represent. Not only am I supportive of the bill introduced by the member for Windermere, I also hope that if we get to the Committee stage, the members in this place will also agree with my amendment to raise the purchase age of cigarettes to 25. If we are going to positively impact on the terrible health statistics in this state, let us not do it half-heartedly. Let us take this issue by the scruff of the neck and do something about it.

I like to believe that one day in the not the too distant future we will be here debating raising the legal smoking age to 25. The move to raise the smoking age to 25 is perhaps too distant from the principle of this bill being considered this time. I recognise that, although in my opinion the increase in the smoking age to 25 is the right one and one we should consider.