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House of Assembly - Fifty-Third Parliament, Second Session (53-2)
2015-05-14 Daily Xml
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World No Tobacco Day

Mr PICTON (Kaurna) (12:57): I move:

That this house—

(a) recognises World No Tobacco Day, taking place on 31 May 2015;

(b) acknowledges the thousands of South Australian families who will be impacted by the damage caused by smoking this year;

(c) continues to support measures to reduce the smoking rate, especially those designed to prevent young people from becoming new smokers; and

(d) congratulates the state government on strengthening anti-smoking measures, including outdoor dining areas to be smoke free by July 2016.

I look forward to these two minutes of debate on this very important motion before we have to adjourn. On 31 May, we again mark World No Tobacco Day, and that has been marked every year around the world since 1987, so it is important to get this into Hansard before that date, even though the debate will occur much later. What this day does is draw attention to the negative effects of tobacco consumption and aims to try to prevent those harms occurring in the future.

We have had 50 years of hard work by doctors, scientists and public health advocates around the world, and now it is very hard to find anyone in Australia who does not know that smoking is harmful for you. The days when tobacco companies would lie about the dangerous health effects have luckily long since past, and our nation and our state lead the world in measures that we can take.

Unfortunately there are still some six million deaths worldwide every year, and we know that some 15,000 of those tobacco-related deaths each year are Australians, and some 679 Australians have died from smoking over the 50 years from 1950 to 2000. But it is not just the deaths. Unfortunately, we have many people who live with the diseases every year that are caused by smoking.

I was struck by a passage in a recent book called Removing the Emperor's Clothes by Professor Simon Chapman, a book I was asked to do a review for for the Crikey newspaper. It had a message from Karen and Karen's story, and I will quote just a small passage of that. It says:

I was diagnosed in 2007 at 46 years. Yes, I smoked for several years. I have endured 12 surgeries since 2007 trying to improve my quality of life. Almost my entire tongue, lower jaw, gums, and beautiful teeth have been removed and reconstructed because of the treatments to remove cancer. Bone was taken from my hip to construct my jaw; normal function is gone permanently.

Many smokers say things like, 'Oh, well, I'm going to die anyway,' or, 'I could get hit by a bus tomorrow.' Well, from my experience I can honestly saying dying immediately would be much easier than the low slow, slow suffering this disease puts patients through. In 2007, while in hospital, I had had the cardiac arrest because the tracheotomy blocked. Once resuscitated little did I know I had years and years of pain, ongoing treatments and loss of normal function ahead of me; it's devastating.

I think that really sums up the suffering that many people go through day by day in Australia that we are aiming to alleviate. I seek leave to continue my remarks.

Leave granted; debate adjourned.

Sitting suspended from 13:00 to 14:00.

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