LEGISLATIVE COUNCIL Wednesday, 20th November, 1991 ______ The President took the chair at 10.30 a.m. The President offered the Prayers. PETITIONS Abortion Petition praying that because of recognition of the right to life of the unborn child, the House support the Procurement of Miscarriage Limitation Bill, received from the Hon. Elaine Nile and the Hon. J. R. Johnson. Stray Dogs Petition praying that the Premier fulfil his promise to ban the sending of stray dogs to laboratories within New South Wales, received from the Hon. R. S. L. Jones. BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE Precedence of Business Motion, by leave, by the Hon. E. P. Pickering agreed to: That as a matter of necessity and without previous notice so much of the standing and sessional orders be suspended as would preclude general business taking precedence of Government business today with the following order of business: Tobacco Advertising Prohibition Bill Procurement of Miscarriage Limitation Bill Medical Practitioners (Amendment) Bill Nurses (Conscientious Objection) Amendment Bill TOBACCO ADVERTISING PROHIBITION BILL Second Reading Debate resumed from 14th November. The Hon. Dr B. P. V. PEZZUTTI [10.35]: Last Thursday afternoon when I was interrupted by extraordinary circumstances when the Hon. Elisabeth Kirkby made offensive remarks I was speaking about the evidence of a correlation between cigarette smoking and advertising. I bring to the attention of the House a survey of secondary schoolchildren within the age range of 13 to 17 conducted by the Victorian Government and also in New South Wales. As honourable members will be aware, in the past few years there has been a difference between New South Wales and Victoria, and the harsh edge of the effect of advertising should best be seen on those people beginning to take up this most addictive habit. The Anti-cancer Council of Victoria showed that in Victoria there had been a decline in the level of smoking by students across all age groups. The Page 4935 difference between Victoria and New South Wales can be shown only on the basis that the New South Wales figures relate to current smokers and the Victorian survey related to weekly smokers. The survey showed that there is a difference between cigarette smokers in the two States. Among males in years 7, 8, 9, 10 and 11 New South Wales has lower smoking rates. Though that represents a decline in Victoria, the number of current smokers versus weekly smokers in Victoria is substantial. Allowing for the difference of methodology, it is more alarming that in New South Wales 19 per cent of females in year 9 smoke as against 16 per cent of males. In year 10 the difference is even more remarkable, with 19 per cent of males and 27 per cent of females smoking, which is an absolutely horrendous set of figures. In Victoria the rate is high, with 24 per cent of females in the year 10 age group being smokers. Those figures are important because the effect of advertising on young people can be gauged not so much by the incidence of smoking across the nation but by looking at what happens when people start feeding into the bottom end of the smoking population. I shall discuss both those points in detail later. At this stage it is important that honourable members realise that on the 1989 figures, which are the last figures I have, in New South Wales society 27 per cent of young females and 19 per cent of young males in year 10 were described as current smokers. In Victoria the figure is 23 per cent for young males and 24 per cent for young females, equally high figures and statistically not a different result. Therefore, there must be something other than advertising driving this process because in Victoria there has been no advertising for a long time. Its Health Promotion Foundation has been going for some years. We must attack other issues as well as advertising. I will speak on my position on that matter later. The patterns and trends identified in the report are generally consistent with the findings of similar studies conducted in other States. There is a decreasing level of use, but the level is still most alarming. The Thoracic Society of Australia produced an editorial by William Musk and Ruth Shean in the Medical Journal of Australia, dated 1988, "Cigarette advertising increases consumption". This is the first time that I have seen that bald statement in a scientific journal open to review. I looked for the references. One is an article by a researcher named R. J. Reuijl from Boston dated 1982 entitled "On the determination of advertising effectiveness". I could not get a copy of that article because the full report could not be obtained. However, the other reference was anonymous and was from a journal called Tobacco International dated 17th April, 1987. Again I was not able to obtain a copy of that. Both articles, sourced to back the statement that cigarette advertising increases consumption, are fairly obscure. The reference from the Thoracic Society is much more interesting. It says: Children constitute a small, but important, part of the tobacco market that is created thereby. Children smoke the brands of cigarettes that are advertised most heavily, and children who approve of cigarette advertising are more likely to smoke. That is an important message for all of us. When reviewing further articles, I found some other information. In an abstract of an article dated 16th January, 1989, from the Medical Journal of Australia by Michael Gliksman and others it is shown that by the age of 15 years 32.4 per cent of girls and 26 per cent of boys in the study sample had smoked at least one cigarette in the seven days before they were surveyed. This information reveals a remarkably dangerous situation. It shows that more young girls than boys aged 15 years are smoking. This is a complete reversal of the trend. Whilst we had been targeting young males in our health promotion information and in many Page 4936 other ways, as a result of this article, from 1989, we have moved towards targeting the young female market. The conclusion of this study is as follows: These findings should encourage a serious reappraisal of the role of cigarette advertising in the promotion of smoking in young persons. The article indicates that there is no hard, scientific evidence of the nexus between advertising and cigarette smoking. However, the article goes on to say that perhaps we have been doing our research in slightly the wrong way. I will come to that matter again further in my contribution. The concern is that the findings are in marked contrast with those of many earlier surveys, which found that boy smokers consume more cigarettes than girl smokers. This is the first indication that we have had of a growing threat to the health of young Australians. I now turn to an article dated 1988 from the Medical Journal of Australia. It is an original article by David J. Hill - not the David Hill of North Sydney and Australian Broadcasting Corporation fame. He has a master of arts degree and a doctorate of philosophy and is an important researcher for and director of the Centre for Behavioural Research in Cancer at the Anti-Cancer Council of Victoria. He did a major survey of 9,500 Australian men and women over the age of 15 years. He was able to show that the percentage of current smokers amongst men was 32.9 and amongst women 28.5 with the peak prevalence of smoking in the age groups of 20 to 24 years for both men and women, both being at 40 per cent. This is a horrendous figure if we think about how far we still have to go. Amongst men some 27.7 per cent were past smokers and amongst women 16.5 per cent. If more young women continue to take up smoking, we will start seeing a major increase in the reversal of past smoker and present smoker categories as these young 15-year-olds move into the 20 to 24 years age group, which is the peak age for smoking. That is a matter of grave concern to me. I commend that article to honourable members. It is an important article. It is also important to recognise that this report found that the incidence of smoking in the category of lower blue-collar working women was more than double that of upper white-collar working women. Amongst men a similar, although not so strong, differentiation was made. The possession of a university degree was the index that was most closely associated with low smoking prevalence in both men and women. That article tries to point out that the people most at risk are those who have not attained higher education. It is also important to look at what has happened in the past. David Hill wrote another article in exactly the same journal, looking at trends in male and female smoking from 1974 - which was just before we introduced the ban on television and radio advertising, to 1986 - this is an Australia-wide survey. Given slight differences, we can see that the incidence of cigarette smoking by men has dropped from 42.2 per cent to 31.9 per cent, which is 10 per cent over the last 12 years. There has been no change for women, with figures going from 29.5 to 28.8. It is important to recognise that there was a hump in the number of women smokers within that time.