 Felly, os we move on to the next item of business, which is a business debate on motion 102 одfawr, in the name of Gillian Mackay on environmental impact of single use vapes. The debate will be concluded without any questions being put. It is heavily subscribed, so members will have to stick to their speaking alliances. In those speaking later in the debate, I have already spoken to, will be required to speak to a slightly tighter time schedule. I invite Gillian Mackay to open the debate for around seven minutes, Ms Mackay. Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. I want to begin by recognising the strength of feeling on this issue in the chamber and to thank everyone for contributing today. The fact that we are so tight on time is very heartening in points to how seriously this chamber is taking this issue. I know that there is work going on in many offices across the chamber to tackle this, and I want to thank those who attended one or both of the roundtables on this issue that I have chaired. I also want to thank campaigners such as Laura Young, the Marine Conservation Society, Ash Scotland, Asmal on UK, the British Heart Foundation, the Royal College for Pediatric and Child Health, The Daily Record, The Inverness Courier and many more who have helped and contributed to the campaign so far. There is more to do and more roundtables to come, and I encourage everyone here to join in the discussions. As mentioned in my motion, I would like to thank the Scottish Government, particularly my colleague Lorna Slater and Zero Waste Scotland for the work that was commissioned into the environmental impact of single-use vapes. The review showed that the total emissions associated with single-use vapes in 2022 was estimated to be between 3,375 and 4,292 tonnes of CO2. That is the equivalent to 2,100 cars on the road. It also showed that the weight of packaging and materials discarded as a result of single-use e-cigarette consumption in Scotland is currently between 800 and 1,000 tonnes per year. Other figures also showed that last year 1.3 million single-use vapes were thrown away every week in the UK, although that is likely to be far higher now. This is a looming environmental catastrophe. For local authorities and waste processing companies, there is a real concern about the fire risk associated with the incorrect disposal of those devices. They are also difficult to recycle in the first place, as they are made of mixed materials and the lithium batteries are particularly resource intensive to make. Many of those discarded batteries are ended up in our beaches and green spaces, as well as in our towns and cities. I have seen discarded batteries in between cobbles in Edinburgh and at home in Falkirk. Some of our most iconic streets are being littered by those products. The sheer number being thrown away is astonishing. In the middle of a climate crisis, the last thing that we need is to have another polluting single-use product. A ban on disposables, in my opinion, is the minimum that we have to do to protect the planet. There are issues with the packaging on refillable vapes, too, and we need to look at that now to ensure that we are not merely moving the litter problem along the line. There is also an issue with illegal vapes, and we do not know if they are any more environmentally damaging than others. The composition of those vapes is much more difficult to find, especially when new products come on the market. Preventing the importation of them by looking at how the current registration and licensing scheme is done should also be a priority. We will need to take that approach on a four-nations basis to ensure that the importation of vapes is tracked, and I will write to the Scottish Government and UK Government ministers in the coming days to ask them to work with me on a way forward on that. It is essential that we see the health, environmental, trading standards, licensing and regulation issues as a whole when we are dealing with single-use vapes. To see less vapes discarded, we need to help people to give up nicotine altogether, regulate tax and licence those products better, stop the supply of single-use vapes to young people and, crucially, I know for many people in this chamber, prevent young people from being tempted to take vaping up. We need retailers to step up and do what they can to reduce the environmental and health impact of those products. I wrote to retailers to ask them to put those behind cover and treat all nicotine-based products in the same way. I got very few responses and those that I did said that they would wait and comply with whatever regulations come forward. We should be using the current regulation-making powers that we have to make retailers put these products behind cover. We need to bring in plain packaging and ensure that flavours are either removed or restricted heavily so that we do not have blue bubblegum, candy floss and rainbow unicorn just to name a few. I do expect that in talking about flavours we will get the usual cries of, but adults enjoy colours and flavours too. I know no adults, and this is coming from me who loves a picking mix or two, would be influenced by the name rainbow unicorn to try it. I do however know plenty of young children who would be tempted by that. Advertising and the presence of those products in TV programmes and on social media needs to be taken seriously. I am grateful to the ASA who wrote to me in the last couple of days detailing action that they are already taking to address this, but we need to remain vigilant. We often get branded as kill joys when we try to do good things in both environmental and public health policy areas. We are seen as stopping people from doing things that they enjoy, but this is far too important an issue to be worried about being seen in that way, and I encourage colleagues from across the chamber to take a bold stance on this. For the sake of the environment and, importantly, for all of us, the sake of the health and wellbeing of children and young people, that has to be done. They should have been the generation that had the lowest ever rate of nicotine addiction. That is still absolutely achievable, but only if all of us put their needs at the forefront of our minds. I now call the first speaker in the open debate, Rona Mackay, to be followed by Alexander Stewart, up to four minutes. I welcome today's important debate, and I thank my colleague Gillian Mackay for bringing it to the chamber. The motion for today's debate and Gillian Mackay's opening speech really says it all, and I won't repeat the shocking statistics in the motion regarding the devastating environmental impact that disposable vapes have, and the impact on children and young people. I will go on to say a bit more about that. Firstly, I am delighted that the Scottish Government has committed its programme for government to take action to tackle the damage done by single-use vapes and are consulting on a proposal to ban their sale. Scotland is leading the way in the UK on this hugely important issue, and this is a perfect example of our government saying, no, we will not allow this damage to continue in our country. Good legislation protects people and the environment, and I am proud that we are leading the way. The harm disposable vapes does to our parks, rivers and beaches is incredibly serious. With millions of vapes littered every year, there is a significant and increasing cost to local authorities through litter clear-up and waste management. The vapes contain copper wires and lithium batteries, incredibly dangerous to children and animals, and they are hugely difficult to dispose of responsibly. My understanding is that, so far, a total of 29 out of Scotland's 32 councils, including the local authority in my constituency, East and Bartonshire Council, have come out in support of a ban after discussing motions. The upsurge in vaping by young people, highlighted by leading health charities such as Scotland and Asma along UK Scotland, is also incredibly concerning, driven by the popularity of cheap, sweet-flavoured, brightly coloured disposable vapes, as Gillian Mackay has highlighted. They are hooking children in just as alcohol pops to a world of addiction. In a previous debate on the subject, I highlighted the supposedly cool online merchandise aimed at kids to allow them to be undetected by parents or teachers. Make no mistake, this is an insidious industry. As Ash Scotland has pointed out, most vapes include nicotine, which is highly addictive and toxic e-liquids that I have not been safely tested for for inhalation and could risk damage to growing lungs. The number of primary school children who vaping has reached epidemic levels and is a major public health concern. A single disposable vape can last for 600 puffs, the equivalent of smoking a pack of 20 cigarettes. According to Zero Waste Scotland, the lithium batteries used in the most popular disposable vapes could be recharged up to 500 times if the programme design allowed. The dangers of single-use vapes in the environment are immense. Let's be clear, they were never a good thing and are produced simply to make profit for large companies. An investigation by The Daily Record revealed that a school fire in the borders just before the start of the summer holidays this year was blamed on vape lithium battery shorting on the inside of a metal bin on a stairwell. The Daily Record has been at the forefront of calling for a ban on single-use vapes and highlighting health concerns, and I really commend them for that. As campaigner Laura Young, known as the vape crusader, told the newspaper, teachers have a hard enough job to do without being on monitoring duties making sure kids don't have vapes. A survey last month showed four in five Scots back outlawing disposable vapes. Yugof Pove found that 77 per cent of adults in Scotland either strongly or somewhat support a ban on the products with identical figures for the UK as a whole. In conclusion, I just backtrack earlier this year. Keep Scotland Beautiful called on all Scottish retailers to voluntary stop displaying single-use vapes following in the footsteps of waitress who have taken them off their shelves, I believe. In conclusion, let's get rid of those harmful products. They do nothing but harm to Scotland's people and environment. I am pleased to contribute today and acknowledge Gillian Mackay for securing this member's debate and congratulate her on the work that she is doing in the field. As you know, I am very happy to work alongside my colleague Emma Harper as co-convener of the cross-party group on lung health. It is my privilege to, once again in this session, continue my role as the parliamentary smoking cessation champion for asthma and lung UK. The ticking time bomb of youth vapes and especially those of single-use disposable type appears to be one of our biggest challenges that we face, Deputy Presiding Officer. It is in no small part due to the age and the demographics of the audience that the manufacturers are unashamedly and scandalously targeting. Indeed, Gillian Mackay's motion recognises that, in the year ending January 2023, there have been reported of estimate of 543,000 vapes in Scotland of which 9 per cent were under 16 and 14 per cent were under the age of 18. That is only set to get worse unless something dramatic is done, Deputy Presiding Officer. During the last few months, the local government association in England has reported that, for the first time, its members in council have called for single-use vapes to be banned on environmental and health grounds. The LGA also points to the single-use vapes that are designed as a unit and that the batteries cannot be separated from the plastic making it almost impossible to recycle without going through some special treatment. The lithium batteries inside the plastics can sharply increase in temperature, we have heard that already, and they can become flammable and that is a major concern. This costs the taxpayer millions of pounds in damaged equipment and specialised treatment and it is dealing us with a hazardous waste. Research from the non-profit organisation material focus has shown that there could be up to five million single-use vapes units are being thrown away in the United Kingdom. That would mean four times the figure that we have talked about during 2022. The sum amounts to eight vapes a second being discarded with lithium batteries products that are enough to create 5,000 electric car batteries a year. Frightening statistics, Deputy Presiding Officer, but we must challenge them. I echo the extreme concerns that groups such as Asma and Lung UK Scotland and Ash Scotland and parents and carers and teachers have talked about the impact that vaping is having on children and young people. We know from the reports that we have seen and the campaigns that are being dealt with how harmful this is becoming. The phenomenon is deeply worrying and it has been targeted primarily at young people and children. It appears to be very fashionable at present and the displaying that takes place is encouraging peer groups to be thinking that something of this nature is something good to do, it is cool to do. That is anything but and we need to manage that and challenge that. In conclusion, Deputy Presiding Officer, anti-smoking groups and charities as well as medical professionals and especially concerned about the vaping that is taking place. Their designs are flavoured and they appear to attract children. There is an attempt with their fruity and bubble gum flavours and the ice flavours and the whole idea is trying to encourage young people and children, especially the packaging does that. They are often right at the point of sale and we know that. The retailers have to take a strong view because that is very similar to what sweets and confectionery may be. Strict new measures to regulate the display and marketing are definitely needed in the way that we deal with tobacco because it is needed now to support that. I would like to begin like others have by congratulating Gillian Mackay for securing this Members Business debate on the environmental impacts of single use vapes and also for the work that she and her team have done to raise this issue in Parliament. As MSPs, we have a unique position to use our platforms to amplify the work of campaigners across the country, so I hope that everyone in today's debate will join me in commending the efforts of environmental campaigner Laura Young for her tireless work on this issue. In fact it was after hearing about Laura's work that I first became involved in the issue. Laura was kind enough to take me out on a vape walk. This was an opportunity to go out with her, walk the streets of Dundee and see if we could find any discarded vapes on the streets and also to learn more about the issue along the way. As well as giving up her time to tackle this issue and to meet with me, to educate me, Laura also encouraged local student activists to get involved. She is inspiring the next generation of environmental campaigners so I would like to take this opportunity to put my thanks on the record today to Laura for her perseverance and commitment and I would like to say to Laura, keep campaigning, you're getting results. Back in Dundee on our vape walk, in just an hour Laura and I found 63 single use vapes discarded on the streets in and around the university campus. Laura explained that this wasn't unusual, especially following a Friday or a Saturday night out, so we decided to make some enquiries on campus and in the local shops that sell these disposable vapes to try to find out what the realistic alternative to littering was. What we found was that there weren't any safe disposal points in the shops and around the shops that were selling these products and so the best that we could hope for was that people would dispose of these single use vapes in ordinary waste bins but the problem with simply putting them in the bin is that yes it would keep them off of our streets so it might look nicer but it wouldn't actually make our environment any cleaner because they would eventually end up in landfill or in incinerators and would still be polluting our soil and our air and worse still there have been multiple instances as we've heard today of improperly disposed of vapes or what's known as zombie batteries causing fires and hazards at waste processing sites which puts the workers there at risk so this has led to calls for improved recycling facilities to help deal with the mounting number of disposable vapes but disposable vapes don't just harm the environment when they're discarded after use they're also having an impact at source these vapes many of which will be used for just a day or night use scarce resources and we simply cannot afford to discard things like the lithium in the batteries which power the vapes after just one use that lithium could instead be used to power our transition away from fossil fuels so I don't believe that improved recycling or design regulations are the answer instead we must see an outright ban on single use vapes in Scotland and since my first vape walk with Laura support for a ban has grown starting with Dundee city council in the region I represent until the you do need to conclude miss okay support has risen to 26 councils and a range of organisations thank you miss well but I'm going to have to ask you to stop I did indicate at the beginning I was going to rigorously enforce the time limits to allow everybody a chance to speak I now call Kenneth Gibson to be followed by Brian Whittle up to four minutes mr thank you Presiding Officer and I to congratulate Gillian Mackay for securing dating debating time on this vitally important matter and just after the debate began I received the answer to a written question in which I asked whether the Scottish Government was going to increase the fines for retail to sell to under 18s as has been proposed by the UK vaping industry association and the answer from the minister Jenny Minto was no so I would hope that the Scottish Government will reconsider that by 2021 the number of scots has smoked to drop to 11% following legislative changes including banning smoking and in close public places and workplaces the sale of packs of 10 cigarettes and menthol cigarettes but there's still a huge issue in many communities with 32% of adults on their poorest income quintile smoking compared to 6% and the most prosperous and it's now evident that one nicotine addiction has been replaced by another upon entering the market vapes were said to deliver nicotine whilst avoiding many of the harmful ingredients and cigarettes nevertheless scientists are still unclear about the extent of damage vapes caused particularly to children and young adults well i've only got four minutes so i'm sadly i don't think so unfortunately although i would love to and with an estimated 76,000 under 18s vaping in scotland primarily using single use vapes it's evident in these colourful fruit flavoured cheap devices and the longer only a means to quit smoking for as long as single use vapes are sold place beside sweets and shops often in special offer we're encouraging younger people to damage their health i welcome recent reports that the UK government will also explore the banning of single use vapes following consultation on youth vaping however last week it was reported that the Tories accepted a 350,000 pound donation from sandeep sing chad a director of supreme eight limited a UK based company that distributes elf bars a vape that regularly is found littered around scotland and elf bar flavours include watermelon bubble gum and cotton candy ice unequivocably aimed at enticing children and young people and the UK government's official briefing on banning free vape samples being distributed to children and dos dual labs claiming the company was a leader in combating youth vaping this same company has received the most complaints of any vape producing company for fueling an epidemic of youth vaping in the us agreeing to pay out over one billion dollars to settle claims that the unlawfully promoted products to children this is highly concerning suggest that the UK government policy on youth vaping could be determined by the interests of the industry rather than evidence we know tobacco companies profit from industry induced nicotine addiction attracting people as young as possible the UK's cigarette market is the largest in western europe worth 2.6 billion in 2021 so given it the UK's five top selling tobacco companies held over a one third of shares in global e-cigarette market as of 2021 the so-called health benefits of vaping are clearly not the driver to further increasing sales. WHO described tobacco industry interests as a quote fundamentally and irreconcilably opposed to the aims of public health these same companies are currently dictating the vaping market that tens of thousands of children and young people buy into the earlier children young adults become addicted to nicotine the higher the likelihood they will continue to buy vapes for the rest of their lives or switch to cigarettes 10% of young vape users admit to throwing the devices on the ground after use as Laura Young's band disposal vapes campaign highlighted through regular litter picks and I'm doing a litter pick on the beach myself on Monday so no doubt I'll find some too almost half of young vapors said the packaging doesn't provide any disposable information such as where to send use batteries and in the last year 13 million disposable vapes were incorrectly disposed of in Scotland including 2.6 million that were littered given these cigarette companies are not taking responsibility for the health impacts of waste pollution they cause it's essential that the Scottish government is Scottish government acts to ban these devices that harm both environment and the wellbeing of scots with several other european countries considering bans scotland taking steps to stop the sale of single vapes a significant opportunity to establish ourselves as a leading public health nation I support this motion thank you thank you Mr Gibson and now called Brian Whittle to be followed by Claire Adamson up to four minutes Mr Whittle. Thank you Deputy Presiding Officer can I also join with others in thanking Gillian Mackay for bringing this debate to the chamber it's an issue that I've spoken about before and is one of real concern and it doesn't seem that long ago Deputy Presiding Officer that vaping companies were lobbying me in meetings in my own office trying to get their support support for them and to their surprise I was very strongly against the universal access they thought I would support them because they were being marketed as a tool to quit smoking which is the one area I would support their use particularly as a medical intervention recommended by a medical professional. I remember one particular vaping company asking one particular vaping company who owns the vaping company of course I knew it was a tobacco company so the question I put to them was are you really suggesting that tobacco companies are producing these products to help their customers stop using their products and therefore putting them out of business because by that logic Deputy Presiding Officer once they have helped every smoker quit there would be no need for any of their products if they are so weak for so smoking cessation why are there so many flavours and additives to draw in users and potential users I did inform them I wasn't that gullible but I know that Stephanie Callahan and I attended one of those meetings and she got to see my frustration at this particular vaping company and one of the things that really concerns me is you can go into significant high street confectionary stores and there are walls of these vaping products these single use vaping products and everything I was concerned about back then has manifested and then some I have a daughter in secondary school and I was shocked at the level of vaping among pupils there's anecdotal evidence and she seemed to think that as much as half of the student population had tried or is regularly using vaping products more over there's a whole micro industry with students around buying and selling these products in schools evidence the quantity of products confiscated daily by the campus policemen more over and more significantly the level of students smoking tobacco marijuana or even worse remains high and climbing vaping is a door to addiction and a step towards using these more harmful products instead of their marketing use of smoking cessation I also would suggest that single use vapes in and out of themselves a health hazard as Gillian Mackay has said there's so many single use vapes being found on our beaches and in our open spaces and till cycle lithium is incredibly difficult especially from these these vapes so I think that an overshort of time Deputy Presiding Officers I'm going to try and give you some of that time back but we do need to regulate the use of vapes much more effectively keep them out of the hands of school children the marketing budgets of tobacco firms have been used to entice entirely new users into their usage and then to even more harmful products their use is a habit as well as a social statement to their users peer pressure is a care driver and after all it's not really smoking is it and the wonderful flavours bubble gum flavour for goodness sake yep actually aimed at adults wanting to quit no Deputy Presiding Officer it's too easy for pupils to be drawn in making the step to the next level of substance use substance use and a bit easier so as a Parliament surely we can come together there are things that we can do and steps that we can take steps that we have to take to make sure that we can we stamp out single use vapes and I say once again I thank Gillian Mackay for giving me the opportunity to raise this once again Deputy Presiding Officer thank you Mr Whittle I now call Claire Adamson to be followed by Colin Smyth up to four minutes Miss Adamson thank you very much Presiding Officer can I also thank Gillian Mackay for securing this debate today and thank the many contributions from across the chamber who have covered many of the aspects of this I'll try and limit myself to the cross party group on accident prevention safety awareness which I chair and the work that we have done in the these areas and highlight areas that haven't been mentioned already so the child action prevention trust have recently issued a warning about hospitals reporting growing numbers of children accidentally swallowing liquid nicotine from e-cigarettes refills and disposables there's a risk of poisoning from swallowing e-cigarette liquid the symptoms are usually mild and include nausea or vomiting but serious poisoning can happen after swallowing larger amounts as with medicines or cleaning products e-cigarettes should be kept away from children and toddlers and while no deaths have yet been reported in the UK a two-year-old girl from Israel was fatally poisoned from swallowing an e-cigarette refill this remind us to keep nicotine products of all kind away from children and toddlers as Katrina Phillips from Catz says babies put everything in their mouths it's how they explore the world around them toddlers are intensely curious so if you leave your bag on the floor they're at it like a shot and remember and keep the harmful things like e-cigarette refills where a small child can't find them that's the tip of the expert disposable vapes and refillables as we know contain lithium ion batteries this is an area that the cross party group has returned to and many times because of the danger of ingestion of lithium ion batteries for babies and toddlers and we are discarding these into our environment where as Gillian had said they can easily be picked up the reveal soon these things break up when they're disposed so you get the plastic you get the broken bits of copper you get that all that environmental issue and so these are really really serious issues for for children of course the cross party group also works very closely with trading standards officers from Scotland and they have been talking about the complexity of the regulatory landscape regarding the these products those bought online you don't often get them coming from reputable production i use reputable ironically in that sense i don't think any of it is particularly reputable but they have identified that products coming in through the internet and delivered direct from homes contain mon nicotine and is recommended under the EU british standard more complex chemicals that have not been tested for human use in this area and also containing greater volumes and poorly designed products more likely to lead to the other area which has been of concern to the cross party group and that is the zombie batteries as mentioned already then a runaway can happen on any lithium battery if people want to know how important this is for those who went on holiday but through an airport today you're asked if you have any lithium iron battery products in your luggage and that is because it's too dangerous for those to go in the hold in case there's a thermal runaway during a flight and yet we're discarding these and in the volumes that were mentioned by alexander in the report that he quoted which i was going to to use as well so for everyone in the chamber today as a complete consensus on this we have to do something about this and i welcome the scotish government consulting on the ban of disposable dates and i hope that it can lead to greater regulation of this product throughout the UK and thank you Presiding Officer thank you very much miss adamson i'm conscious of the we still have a large number of members who wish to participate in the debate so i'm minded to accept a motion without notice under rule 8.14.3 to extend the debate by up to 30 minutes and i call on jillie mackay to move the motion moved Presiding Officer thank you are members agreed to extend the debate that's agreed thank you very much indeed and with the discipline shown by members speaking today i should be able to protect the four minutes of the remaining members and with that i call Colin Smith to be followed by Stephanie Callan but up to four minutes thank you very much Presiding Officer and thank you to jillie mackay for lodging her motion for debate Presiding Officer the great debate is often are e-cigarettes saving smokers or creating new addicts i think the reality is it is probably a bit of both smoking rates in scotland have seen a welcome decrease from 28 percent of adults in 2003 to 11 percent in 2021 thanks to policy interventions such as the ban on smoking in public places and given that vaping is clearly dangerous but does appear less damaging than smoking i'm prepared to accept that cigarettes can help people quit smoking tobacco and hopefully continue that trend but as i've heard thank you the pediatrician we heard from at the round table on Monday raised the concern that actually what we're doing is we're trading two health harming products off against each other rather than recognising the health harming nature of vapes themselves so the member agreed with me that we need to recognise that health harming product itself and treat it on its own rather than trading it off against cigarettes color smith absolutely accept that and i think what's also important is we've heard from a number of members that actually with vaping we're facing a growing avalanche of children and young people who never smoked never had any intention of smoking but have now turned to choose vaping as as scotland highlighted in march using the government's own figures regular cigarette e regular e cigarette used by 15 euros has actually tripled in the last five years and it's more than doubled for 13 euros with single use vapes the product choice for the vast majority of young people and that's not surprised and as we've heard these products the brightly colored flute flavored cheap vapes are obscenely being marketed in shops displays and on social media platforms to specifically and quite clearly target young people the answers behind many of these products frankly are no better than those in big tobacco firms who glamourized smoking in the 60s and 70s when they knew they were killing people so providing officer i'm frustrated that the government hasn't yet listened to that the long standing calls from asma and long uk scotland and ash scotland and others and fully enacted the remaining regulations from the 2016 health tobacco nicotine care scotland act to restrict the marketing and promotion of vaping products and i hope we'll see that soon but we do need to go further as this debate has shown alongside the health impact of e cigarettes the toxic and single use plastic waste caused by disposable vapes has become a new environmental crisis last week we saw the start figures from material focus that the number of disposable vapes thrown away in the uk has quadrupled to five million a week in the past year more than seven million are bought every week and just 17 recycle those vapes and a shop a local recycling centre inspirational campaigners like lorry young have highlighted that the choice of disposable is often the choice of disposal of our vapes is often on the streets and in our playparks across scotland industry has failed to show responsibility by providing proper information on its products and how and where to dispose of vapes in a safe sustainable way and they've failed to put in place a proper network of take back schemes calling for a bit more recycling is not the answer there are already alternatives that also need to be better regulated but disposable vapes are an unnecessary evil that could and should be banned yes we need to make the detail right any laws need to be future proof so they can be easily adapted through regulations if any new products are developed the up and coming circular economy bill is an opportunity to follow the lead that wales are showing in england too it seems this week possibly under the current government but certainly under the next Labour government so if the Scottish government don't include a ban on the sale of disposable vapes in their circular economy bill and I hope that they do but if they don't Labour MPs MSPs will amend that bill to try to take disposable vapes off our shelves and away from littering our streets thank you mr smith I now call Stephanie Callaghan to be followed by Mark Ruskell up to four minutes miss Callaghan. Presiding Officer thank you for doing your absolute best to make sure that we all get to make a contribution today and thanks also to Gillian Mackay for bringing this debate and I can certainly back up with my colleague Brian Whittle was saying earlier on today too that we're so pushed for time today as a testament to just how seriously we all take the environmental and health impacts of vaping and firstly I do want to welcome the consultation there really is no place for single use vapes in a zero waste Scotland and the array of discarded shiny coloured used vapes that are scattered everywhere is a really hot topic when I'm out and about dog walking the meteoric rise in vaping amongst young people has wrought all of us I think and the Scottish youth parliament report released earlier this month single use many voices highlights the 84% of young respondents have seen no information on where and how to dispose of single use vapes we must take that seriously our responsibility to provide good information around disposal and use the same platforms the tobacco industry do to glamourise vaping the ones that young people use every day. Presiding Officer repair plenty in the health and wellbeing impacts of vaping and none of us want to imagine how these could impact families across Scotland in the future and let's make no mistake the tobacco industry will continue to promote misinformation and sell vaping as a positive lifestyle choice to our young people and we need to help them fight back so this will be the focus of my speech today. Presiding Officer I recently spoke to a young constituent of mine in our early 20s who talked to the shocks she felt on realising the high levels of nicotine and the range of chemicals that are in e-liquids she tells me that pubs and clubs are full of young people openly vaping believing that social vaping on weekends is pretty much harmless it's merely water vapor with no real consequences known the facts she has stopped vaping completely now aware that the high nicotine intake impacts brain development and the increased vulnerability of her age group to nicotine addiction she quite rightly sees herself and her friends as victims of a targeted marketing campaign and trust me she is really angry and she is setting all her friends straight on what she sees as the dangers Presiding Officer as my young constituent demonstrates our minority young people with the facts is the biggest weapon that we have in this fight against tobacco industry propaganda unfortunately the large sums big tobacco spends and influence in social perceptions often do work and with the report I mentioned earlier telling us that young people feel anxious and trapped with their vaping consumption that's incredibly sad quite frankly it's devastating to think that what we once used as a smoking cessation tool has been used to pedal a lifestyle con. Presiding Officer I could also say much about the amazing work that's happening across my constituency by public health literature and organisations such as landed who've worked tirelessly to educate and inform over the last six years but my wear were very short of time today so let me finish today with this we already know enough to take action on vaping we must not delay we must choose the legislation we've got let us not repeat the mistakes of the ffifties when emerging dangers are around smoking first arrows let us act now thank you thank you very much miss Callaghan and now call mark ruskell to be followed by Emma Harper up to four minutes mr ruskell yeah thanks very much uh deputy presiding officer can i start and join others by thanking jillian mackay for a leadership on this issue both inside and out of parliament you know working with tireless campaigners such as lauri young and the many groups and organisations both health and environmental who are who are backing this call for a ban on disposable vapes i mean what we often see these days particularly in this parliament is that whenever changes proposed particularly increase regulation we often get calls of you know catastrophe for whatever vested interests that's resistant to the change but what's really striking about the call to restrict vapes is that there isn't really much of of that kind of debate at all you know there's a lot of unanimity on this issue i mean i'm i'm now the 10th speaker in this debate and every single speech in this debate so far has backed the call for a ban on disposable vapes and i think that's a point that i'm sure you know won't be lost on the minister in closing this debate and i think it's all the more remarkable because there has been a huge lobby from the vaping industry over the last five years in this parliament i think brian whittle talked about some of his experiences of how that's played out and i i too went through several years of just seeing constant requests in my inbox from pr companies fronting up vaping industries who are wanting to meet with me but it's probably because vape products are so uniquely problematic that we're seeing that unanimity of concern and i think it's why we've we've seen our 29 out of 32 local authorities across scotland all passing motions calling for vapes to be banned or controlled because if you if you wanted to sit down and actually design a cheap disposable product that litters a countryside with plastics electronics and batteries causes a fire risk can't be recycled or reused and puts young people at risk of bronchitis breathing problems and nicotine addiction it would pretty much be the perfect target for a ban and yet this is exactly what disposable vapes are and as lawmakers we're still really catching up with the reality of that and it's clear that communities are seeing the impact everywhere five street champions for example picked up 664 disposable vapes in one month this spring keep scotland beautiful surveys show that 44 percent of people are seeing disposable vapes far more often littering their communities and i'm sure that many of the coastal communities that are going to be involved in the mcs beach cleans in next week are going to see increasing numbers of vapes appearing on their beaches and all of this of course builds up to that staggering national picture that we've heard of in this debate where you know zero a scotland estimated last year 2.7 million vapes were littered in scotland alone i mean hardly surprising given that we're now seeing an 18 fold increase in the in the use of disposable vapes from one year to the next now the health impacts on young people are truly concerning precisely because we don't know what kind of ticking time bomb actually exists here i think a point that was made very well by rona macai and this is yet another example of why following the precautionary principle is so important because corporate interests shouldn't be allowed to mess around with the unknown long-term health of our children just because there's a big short-term market opportunity so presiding off so i'd like to thank you to the mci again for leaving this debate and i'm certainly going to be looking forward to the minister's response about what the next steps towards banning vapes in scotland and across the rest of the uk will be so thanks thank you mr rascal and i call emma Harper to be followed by carl mochen up to four minutes miss harper thank you presiding officer i to congratulate my colleague jill mci on securing this debate it's hugely important to be obviously by the amount of msps that are speaking in it i also want to thank asmalung uk scotland british lung foundation and ash scotland for their engagement and very helpful briefings ahead of this debate and there's a couple of people i need to give a shout out to in denfries and galloway council at the youth work department kelly ross and mark malloy they've met with me and we've been starting to work together to highlight and tackle the issues of vaping in our young people across denfries and galloway and as co convener of the lung health cross party group and as a registered nurse i'm really interested in the impact of of vaping not only on lung health especially with the very serious health concerns that have been expressed by medical experts but i'm also interested in jillian mci's motion as it states that she's extremely concerned about the environmental impact of the single use vapes and the safety of these devices presiding officer i'll just pick up on a couple of things because i know what time is is a bit challenged today and the materials used in disposable vapes they do make them a potential hazard to the human wildlife to humans to wildlife and the environment when they are thrown away and the lithium is used for batteries it's a precious metal which is already facing a global shortage over 10 tons of lithium was thrown out with disposable vapes in the UK in the last year and that's enough to make batteries for 1200 that's 1200 electric cars if we're going to address a climate emergency and enable a green transition we need to make the best use of scarce materials like lithium if disposable vapes were rechargeable they could be reused up to 300 times and this would drastically reduce the number of vapes ending up in landfill every day vaping vaping can reduce the function of the lungs due to the disturbance of gas exchange and the inflammation in the tissues that causes so in my nurse career in the operating room i used to work on people's lungs laparoscopically and sometimes you would see directly the damage of lungs by cigarette smoking but we're now starting to see e-cigarette vaping associated lung injury which is also known as evali and a public health investigation in Illinois and Wisconsin in the US found the median age of patients suffering from evali was 21 21 years old presiding officer despite what the industry might say nicotine does have a detrimental health effect adolescents are more vulnerable to nicotine dependency than adults chronic nicotine exposure can impact brain development and we heard from Dr Jonathan Coots at Gillian Mackay's round table on Monday and Dr Coots presented at a lung health cross-party group that my colleague Alexander Stewart and I attended a few months ago and he presented the facts around the the harm that vaping does to young people's brains we know that there's an impact on brain development and it can contribute to cognitive and attention deficit conditions and worse mood disorders including depression and suicidal thoughts so this is a huge issue it's clear that something needs to be done and one of the statistics that I found was that one vape is like smoking 52 cigarettes so it's it's something that you know clearly we need to be concerned about and one thing I would like to know from the minister is that the internal market act might need obviously consideration if we are going to propose changes to regulation so I'd be interested to know whether there needs to be some kind of exclusion in the internal market act for regulations to be taken forward and you need to conclude miss harper it's my last sentence i'm thanking Gillian Mackay again thank you thank you very much miss harper and I call Cal Mokhan last week and open debate up to four minutes miss mokhan thank you thank you and like others can I take the opportunity at the beginning to thank Gillian Mackay for bringing this debate to the chamber really important as members have mentioned as we have seen today there is willingness across the chamber to to progress a response to this issue with purpose and I therefore hope the government will outline soon how it will do that and it will consider giving some government time to this debate so we can have a more in-depth discussion I think it is right that we talk of the serious environmental impacts of single use vapes what they have created is a throwaway culture as we've heard damaging to our environment and damaging to our efforts to tackle the climate emergency i'm not going to restay all the effects that members have so well put to the chamber today as I do know that we are you know marching towards the second sitting of the chamber so however I do want to use a small amount of the time that we have to talk about something that is mentioned has been mentioned before and mentioned in the motion is the concernedly high usage rate amongst our young people and I want to quote from Sheila Duffy who is from Ash Scotland who has quoted that single use vapes are creating addiction among young children and young people including very young children in primary school and lower secondary schools where we haven't seen much of an issue with tobacco and she made that statement and I thought it was really concerning the content of these vapes are such that they're becoming addictive for people of an age where tobacco addiction was generally unheard of and this has been exacerbated by the fact that the products are easy to access they're bright colourful if we've heard from other members they catch the eye and in comparison to similar products they can be cheap so that brings together the health and the environmental impacts of the single use vapes I want to just move on quickly and I have been trying to ascertain the numbers of people presenting to hospital addiction or other health services with complications linked to vaping and what has become very apparent is that there may need to be some discussion with government to liaise with the health boards to consider having a separate logging option for health concerns or complications relating to vapes because it is really difficult to find out what the actual figures are like for that and I do think it would be useful for us to separate out smoking and vapes as other members have mentioned I know we're so tight for time so I really am just going to conclude I think this has been a very worthwhile debate and there's been many reasonable suggestions right across the parties right across the chamber and being brought forward by members and so it is clear that we need to deal with it this environmental impact I look forward to the minister's contribution and I do understand it as an environmental debate that we're having and you have responsibility for the those environmental impacts so I would like to ask what will the government do now I think picking up on Stephanie Callahan's point what we're going to do right now how can we work across the UK because there has been some commitments made from the UK government and I would ask the minister if she could look to working across portfolio to see whether there is something that we can do about recording the damage and impacts of vaping in e-cigarettes particularly around these single use vapes thank you Presiding Officer. Thank you very much indeed Ms Mocken and I invite the minister to respond to the debate around seven minutes minister. Thank you very much Presiding Officer and I will join my fellow members in congratulating Gillian Mackay for securing this debate and thanking her for her ongoing campaigning on this issue as we can see from the contributions to the debate and the energy and focus that has been generated in the community and councils across Scotland about the seriousness of this debate. From the debate today I'm very comforted that we all understand the issues well and that we all agree on the seriousness of the concerns being raised. I'd like to also specifically thank some members of the Scottish Youth Parliament who have spoken to me about single use vapes on more than one occasion and really wanted to emphasise their concerns for their peers at health and also for the environment. This is very very much a matter that concerns young people. Carol Mocken, Alexander Stewart, Icon Smith and others all flagged up their concerns about young people's health that single use vapes have perhaps become more of a pathway into smoking than a pathway out of smoking and with five million single use vapes being discarded a week in the UK it is indeed hard to imagine that they are primarily being used by people who are trying to quit. I can imagine that parents must be terrified that their children are becoming a new generation, a next generation addicted to nicotine. Carol Mocken makes a really good point on the data collection and please be assured that I am working closely with the Minister for Public Health and Women's Health on this matter so absolutely across portfolio matter. On the environmental side, Rona Wackai makes really good points about litter and Emma Harper also highlights the waste of that valuable lithium that we know is so important to a transition and is also so dangerous potentially when discarded irresponsibly. I met last week with some managers of waste facilities who made a very emotional plea about the safety of their workers. Batteries have been implicated in 700 fires in bin lorries and recycling centres in the UK that is a serious danger to workers in that in that industry and the plea from the managers of those waste management facilities was for us to take urgent action to protect that worker's safety. Mercedes Vialba makes excellent points about litter on our streets. I see the same in my streets as Mercedes observed in Dundee. Retailers are obliged to provide facilities for people who buy the vapes to return them to those retailers or they must pay into a fund to provide recycling facilities for these. It is clear to me that retailers are not doing that, that work is not undertaking, so something that we must look at urgently in addition to considering consultation on the ban is the enforcement of those rules. Retailers need to be responsible and make sure that those products are not ending up in the hands of children and that they are meeting their obligations to provide adequate recycling. Many members in the chamber highlighted the difficulty of recycling those materials when you have a battery embedded in a single-use plastic product, single-use electronics, even worse than single-use plastics. I feel that we are too far along in the climate emergency for new single-use plastic products. We have been working very hard to remove single-use plastics and so many industries are working to do that to have this industry create a whole new single-use plastic product, which has tripled in numbers over the last couple of years and created this serious environmental and human health issue is of course a great concern to us. I want to thank Stephanie Callaghan, Brian Whittle, Kenneth Gibson for highlighting the nature of some of the companies that are involved in this marketing and the danger that they place to our children by putting profits ahead of human health and environmental health. I want to reassure members that we are taking serious action on this matter. In terms of Colin Smyth's note about the circular economy bill, it is actually not required. We already do have the powers to do this. We are looking at a range of options, but we have the power to ban problematic single-use products with our existing powers if there is sufficient evidence of environmental harm. The enormous growth of single-use vaping in the recent years absolutely provides that evidence of that, so we can use those powers to come forward. Although, as Emma Harper points out, such implementation of those powers could potentially come into conflict with the internal market act. However, yesterday I had a very constructive meeting with my counterparts in the Welsh and UK governments, and we have agreed to work together on our approach up to and including a ban. So that is something all the nations of the UK have in common to work together, and that would of course be the most effective approach to have a common approach. Now a ban will take some time to work towards if that is where we're heading, and there are other actions that we need to take in the meantime, as highlighted by members, on enforcement, on product design and on marketing, and I will be working with my counterparts in the other nations of the UK on this matter. Certainly, Brian Whittle. It occurs to me if we get to the place that we want to be in terms of banning, we're going to have a problem with those children who are already addicted to nicotine. What can we do when we're working with the cabinet secretary for health to address that particular issue? Minister, can I give you the time back? I take that point on board that we do have potentially a serious health public health problem of young people addicted to nicotine. I'll take that on board and let's work together, hopefully cross-party, but certainly with my ministerial colleagues on how we can address that issue. None of us want to see a new generation addicted to nicotine and to see potentially smoking numbers increase after having decreased them so successfully, and then to see the human health cost of that decision. Scottish Government is committed to taking the necessary action as a priority, and I am encouraged by this debate that our actions that we take forward on this will be widely supported by colleagues across the chamber. So thank you again to everyone for participating today in this debate, and I look forward to working with you as we work on options up to and including a potential ban. Thank you. Thank you very much minister. That concludes the debate, and I suspend this meeting of parliament until 2 o'clock.