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Speaker 1: My name is Lily Maddon and I'm a proud Arunda

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Speaker 1: Bungelung Calcottin woman from Gadighl Country. The Daily oz acknowledges

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Speaker 1: that this podcast is recorded on the lands of the

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Speaker 1: Gadighl people and pays respect to all Aboriginal and Torres

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Speaker 1: Strait Island and nations. We pay our respects to the

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Speaker 1: first peoples of these countries, both past and present.

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Speaker 2: Good morning and welcome to the Daily os It's Tuesday,

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Speaker 2: the sixth of June. I'm Zara, I'm Nina. Now this

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Speaker 2: might surprise you, but smoking is on the rise, especially

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Speaker 2: for young people. New data revealing this morning the number

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Speaker 2: of teens using cigarettes in Australia is rising for the

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Speaker 2: first time in twenty five years.

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Speaker 3: It is being called a public health emergency as a

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Speaker 3: new generation of smokers, those under the age of thirty emerge.

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Speaker 2: We know vaping is popular among young people. You know

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Speaker 2: we've spoken about it and number of times on this

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Speaker 2: podcast alone. But what is leading to an uptake in

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Speaker 2: smoking cigarettes, those olds full hard cigarettes and what is

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Speaker 2: the federal government planning to do about it? Well, we're

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Speaker 2: gonna let you know in a deep dive. But first Nina.

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Speaker 2: A big day for Kathleen Folbig.

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Speaker 3: A huge day for Kathleen Folbig, who was released from

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Speaker 3: prison after being pardoned by the new South Wales government

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Speaker 3: on Monday. Fallbig was sentenced to a minimum of twenty

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Speaker 3: five years in prison in two thousand and three after

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Speaker 3: being found guilty of killing her four children. She was

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Speaker 3: released after new evidence cast out over her guilt. And

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Speaker 3: if you want to know more, we've done a deep

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Speaker 3: dive on this. There's a link in the show notes.

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Speaker 2: Former New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Adern has been appointed

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Speaker 2: a Dame in honor of her services to the country.

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Speaker 2: Ardan was given the appointment as part of the King's

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Speaker 2: Birthday honors on Monday. She resigned from her role this

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Speaker 2: year after over five years as PM.

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Speaker 3: A Queensland man in his forties and two camels have

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Speaker 3: been killed in an accident. The man was driving a

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Speaker 3: bus when he crashed into the animals in central Queensland

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Speaker 3: on Monday. The man was the only person in the

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Speaker 3: bus at the time of the crash.

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Speaker 2: And the good News a global study has found that

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Speaker 2: a new pill used for patients with lung cancer can

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Speaker 2: have the risk of death. That was a significant improvement

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Speaker 2: in survival rape compared to those given a placebo. The

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Speaker 2: trial was conducted in over twenty countries spanning over five continents.

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Speaker 2: The federal government has revealed draft legislation, which basically just

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Speaker 2: means that they have showed us what's going to be

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Speaker 2: in a bill that they will introduce to Parliament in

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Speaker 2: the future that is designed to reform smoking here in

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Speaker 2: Australia and it's part of this bigger plan to reduce

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Speaker 2: the proportion of daily smokers to five percent or less

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Speaker 2: by twenty thirty. To put that into perspective, currently over

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Speaker 2: ten percent of adults are daily smokers. That is shocking

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Speaker 2: to me.

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Speaker 3: It is shocking. I feel like what you see at

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Speaker 3: the moment, the thing that seems to be everywhere are vapes.

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Speaker 3: You see the parties, you see people in the streets

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Speaker 3: having a vape. You so rarely see someone smoking a

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Speaker 3: real cigarette these days.

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Speaker 2: I think we're showing our age here, but it is

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Speaker 2: I was like, even reading the government's response to all

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Speaker 2: of this, I have been shocked because you're right, all

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Speaker 2: we have thought about, spoken about, read about, is this

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Speaker 2: rise of vaping, especially among young people. We know that

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Speaker 2: data on vape use from the Cancer Council shows that

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Speaker 2: there were fewer than one percent of fourteen to seventeen

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Speaker 2: year olds reported vaping in twenty eighteen, and now that

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Speaker 2: figure is close to fifteen percent. Of course, you know,

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Speaker 2: anecdotal evidence shows it's probably much higher than that. But

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Speaker 2: just because vaping use is on the rise doesn't mean

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Speaker 2: that cigarette use has just stopped all together. And new

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Speaker 2: research also shows concerning trends in cigarette use actually rising.

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Speaker 2: Data from the Cancer Council shows a threefold increase in

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Speaker 2: tobacco smoking by fourteen to seventeen year olds in just

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Speaker 2: four years, from two point one percent in twenty eighteen

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Speaker 2: to six point seven percent in twenty twenty two. From

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Speaker 2: the data we have on this year so far, twelve

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Speaker 2: point eight percent of fourteen to seventeen year olds reported smoking.

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Speaker 2: The insane stat to me is that, according to researchers,

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Speaker 2: this is the first time we've seen an increase in

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Speaker 2: teen smoking since the early to mid nineties.

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Speaker 3: So you mentioned that the government is proposing some reforms.

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Speaker 3: How are they planning to address this rise in young

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Speaker 3: people going back to these conventional cigarettes.

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Speaker 2: Well, there are a few things on the table. The

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Speaker 2: one thing I think captured our attention in the TDA

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Speaker 2: office is that there could be warnings printed not just

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Speaker 2: like we know it on the outside of a cigarette box,

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Speaker 2: but actually on each individual cigarette as well. Australia wouldn't

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Speaker 2: be the first to do it. We know that Canada

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Speaker 2: has done something similar and it's going to be rolled

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Speaker 2: out later this year. That's not all the government's doing.

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Speaker 2: The are also proposing to standardize the number of cigarettes

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Speaker 2: sold impacts to a maximum of twenty For tobacco pouches,

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Speaker 2: which is for those people that are rolling their own cigarettes.

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Speaker 2: There would be a maximum of thirty grams in each

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Speaker 2: of those pouches, so they couldn't vary too dramatically. There'd

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Speaker 2: also be a mandated length and width requirement for individual cigarettes. Interestingly,

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Speaker 2: they're also proposing putting slips of paper into each packet

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Speaker 2: of cigarettes to empower smokers to quit. So we know

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Speaker 2: obviously that it's currently on the outside, but they're looking

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Speaker 2: at putting something else on the inside.

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Speaker 3: So those reforms speak to the product themselves, the quantity

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Speaker 3: of cigarettes available, how they're made. Are there any proposals

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Speaker 3: from the government about how these products are promoted in

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Speaker 3: the first place?

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Speaker 2: Yeah, and I mean I think this isn't necessarily a

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Speaker 2: new idea. We've had successive governments of every political persuasion

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Speaker 2: try to tackle smoking, and one of the ways was

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Speaker 2: plane packaging, which has been around for a while now

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Speaker 2: and the evidence shows is working. So the government's now

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Speaker 2: proposing to ban messaging that suggests reduced harm or better quality.

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Speaker 2: So you might have seen cigarette packs that say something

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Speaker 2: like ultra light or smooth. The government wants to ban

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Speaker 2: that from being able to happen. Messages implying that a

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Speaker 2: product is organic or natural would also be scrapped.

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Speaker 3: An organic cigarette Yeah.

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Speaker 2: I cannot understand how that was happening in the first place,

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Speaker 2: or what an organic cigarette looks like, but there you go.

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Speaker 2: There's also a proposal to ban numbers and non alphabetical

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Speaker 2: characters on packages, things like exclamation marks and smiley faces.

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Speaker 2: And in line with what we've seen before, the government

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Speaker 2: wants those graphic warnings that we've all seen on packaging

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Speaker 2: to also be updated.

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Speaker 3: I think people who listen to this podcast and who

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Speaker 3: are on the feed looking at our updates on what's

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Speaker 3: happening with veeping and cigarettes might be surprised that the

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Speaker 3: government is focusing on these cigarettes. We still know that

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Speaker 3: young people are veeping more than their smoking conventional cigarett.

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Speaker 3: So what's the government's logic about pursuing this path.

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Speaker 2: I mean, I think it's important to say that they're

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Speaker 2: not pursuing this path at the expense of focusing on vaping.

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Speaker 2: I mean, we did a whole episode talking about the

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Speaker 2: government's crackdown on vaping, and they've made it like quite

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Speaker 2: a central pillar of their health policy. We had Health

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Speaker 2: Minister Mark Butler announcing restrictions to the so called black

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Speaker 2: market in vaping.

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Speaker 4: No more bubblegum flavors, no more pink unicorns, no more

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Speaker 4: vapes deliberately disguised as highlighter pins for kids to be

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Speaker 4: able to hide them in their pencil cases. Instead, we'll

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Speaker 4: have pharmaceutical style packaging and devices with playing flavors.

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Speaker 3: And I'll put a link to that episode in the

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Speaker 3: show notes as well if people want to go back

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Speaker 3: and listen. But when Mark Butler was making that announcement,

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Speaker 3: he did say that vaping can lead to an uptake

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Speaker 3: in smoking, and that there was a concern that cracking

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Speaker 3: down on vaping could actually, you know, with an unintended consequence.

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Speaker 3: Push more young people to smoking cigarette instead, and so

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Speaker 3: the government cracking down on cigarettes is part of a

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Speaker 3: wider strategy to target smoking more broadly, and that's you know,

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Speaker 3: vaping and traditional cigarette use. I do find it really

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Speaker 3: interesting when we're talking about the risks of vaping versus cigarettes,

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Speaker 3: that so much of the emphasis on the dangers of

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Speaker 3: vaping is that pathway onto cigarettes and not really the

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Speaker 3: risk of vaping itself.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, and I mean I think that that can probably

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Speaker 2: just be attributed to the fact that there is so

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Speaker 2: little known about vaping. I mean, if you kind of

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Speaker 2: take a bird's eye view to all of this, it

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Speaker 2: is a fairly new concept and a fairly new phenomenon.

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Speaker 2: But there is now this rush to understand what's in vapes,

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Speaker 2: especially when you look at the percentage of young people

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Speaker 2: that are vaping. There is a health crisis that needs

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Speaker 2: to be addressed with evidence, and so we are slowly

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Speaker 2: starting to paint more of a picture about what's in

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Speaker 2: these vapes. I know that a couple of weeks ago,

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Speaker 2: Queensland Health took a study that was basically looking at

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Speaker 2: the composition of seventeen vape samples, and they were trying

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Speaker 2: to work out what was actually inside each of them.

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Speaker 2: I remember that story was of such interest to our

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Speaker 2: team because it is one of those moments where we're

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Speaker 2: starting to learn more about what is in a vape.

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Speaker 3: So what did that study find?

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Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean I think you know, the sky is blue,

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Speaker 2: water is wet, and vapes aren't good for you. All

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Speaker 2: of the samples contained chemicals that can irritate lung tissue.

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Speaker 2: The researchers found compounds used to manufacture paint in a vape.

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Speaker 3: That doesn't sound like it's good for your lungs.

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Speaker 2: No, it doesn't. Five to fifteen types of heavy metals

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Speaker 2: were found in each sample, and these included lead, nickel, aluminium, copper,

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Speaker 2: and iron. You know, many of those metals have been

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Speaker 2: found to cause serious health issues for smokers, including respiratory

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Speaker 2: diseases and neurological defects. So, again, a very small sample size,

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Speaker 2: but in just those seventeen alone, it wasn't a very

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Speaker 2: good picture that was being painted.

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Speaker 3: So that's the stuff you kind of don't necessarily know

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Speaker 3: is in a vape. What about the nicotine that some

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Speaker 3: people might be going to vapes for in the first place.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, So some of the vapes had only a small

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Speaker 2: trace of nicotine, but others had pretty significant levels. None

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Speaker 2: were over the maximum nicotine vape content that can legally

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Speaker 2: be sold in a prescription, And I think it's worth

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Speaker 2: saying there that nicotine vapes aren't meant to be sold

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Speaker 2: without a prescription at all. But the broader point here

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Speaker 2: is that a lot of people turned to vapes from

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Speaker 2: cigarettes to help them with an addiction, and if there

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Speaker 2: is significant nicotine concentration in these vapes, it would appear

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Speaker 2: that that doesn't seem to be working.

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Speaker 3: Zara, We've kind of been having this conversation like there's

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Speaker 3: two different products. There's vaping and there's cigarettes, and there's

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Speaker 3: two different issues with two different approaches. But I guess

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Speaker 3: I'm wondering if we're getting to the point where really

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Speaker 3: we should be talking about them all is one issue

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Speaker 3: for government to be addressed.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean it's very challenging, and you know, there

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Speaker 2: are some governments that have gotten it really right and

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Speaker 2: others that are still a fair way off. But when

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Speaker 2: we're thinking about the challenge that vaping plus cigarettes present,

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Speaker 2: I always think about what Mike Butler said when he

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Speaker 2: was announcing that vaping reform, which he said, and I quote,

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Speaker 2: let's be very clear about this. Big Tobacco has taken

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Speaker 2: another addictive product, wrapped it in shiny packaging, added sweet

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Speaker 2: flavors to create a new generation of nicotine addicts. And

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Speaker 2: I do think that that's true. And now the government

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Speaker 2: is facing this too pronged issue that is multilayered, incredibly

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Speaker 2: difficult and I'll be really challenging to address and will

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Speaker 2: likely take a fair bit of time to get right.

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Speaker 3: Thanks for listening to The Daily OS. If you learn

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Speaker 3: something from today's podcast, I'd love it if you could

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Speaker 3: give us a rating and review on whatever app you're

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Speaker 3: using right now. It really helps us to get the

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Speaker 3: word out there and grow. Have a great day, any