Task force tackles North Coast youth vaping

BY TIM HOWARD

A task force set up on the NSW North Coast to develop a response to the explosion of young people vaping has held the frst of two community forums.

The North Coast Youth Vaping Taskforce held the frst of two community forums in Coffs Harbour on June 7, with a second to be held in Ballina on June 20.

Task force co-chair

Nicola Kerr said the community response to the frst forum had been heartening with all the stakeholders represented.

“We had people from government, nongovernment, schools and young people there,” Ms Kerr said.

She said one of the disturbing aspects the forum learned from young people was how easy it was to vape, despite the legal prohibition on the sale of e-cigarettes to under-18s.

“Young people said vaping was very socially acceptable in the teens to early 20s age group,” she said.

She said the growth of youth vaping in just a few years was disturbing.

“In the 16-24 year age group the number of people who had ever smoked an e-cigarette had grown from 21.4% in 2019 to 43.2% in 2022,” she said.

“And in that age group those who are current or occasional e-cigarette users had risen from 4.5% in 2019 to 16.5% in 2022.”

She said this was beginning to indicate the effect of nicotine addiction in that age group.

“We have data that shows about one in three people who began vaping turn to cigarettes to feed their nicotine addiction if vapes are not available,” she said.

She said young people now made up the highest proportion of the community using vapes.

In 2020-2021, the NSW Population Health Survey found 32.7 per cent of people aged 16 to 24 had used a vape, and 11.1 per cent were current users.

Ms Kerr said one of the main aims of the task force was to support schools in getting information about the health issues of vaping.

“There’s no long-term evidence available yet about the dangers of e-cigarettes,” she said.

“But we know there are

400 poisons of different strengths in every e-cigarette and very high nicotine levels.

“We want to educate parents of young people about these dangers and the long term dangers of addiction.”

Ms Kerr said the packaging of vapes, with bright colours and fruit favours was another concern as it appealed to young people and encouraged them to take it up.

She said the Federal Government’s proposed changes to e-cigarette regulations were also welcome.

“We hope they will address a lot of the ease of access to vapes that we currently see,” she said.

“The issue of vaping across the North Coast requires a coordinated cross-sector response to tackle it.”

The taskforce recognised the highest users of vapes were young people and has been identifed as a real problem in local communities.

Earlier this month, NSW Health in partnership with NSW Police seized more than $400,000 worth of illicit vapes and illicit cigarettes, as part of compliance activities on the North Coast. The operation removed nearly 8000 vaping units from sale.

The North Coast Youth Vaping Taskforce is a partnership between Mid North Coast Local Health District, North Coast Population and Public Health and Northern NSW Local Health District.

Fast Facts

• Adults can buy e-cigarettes that DO NOT contain nicotine

• E-cigarettes and e-liquids containing nicotine are a prescription only medicine (over 18 only)

• It is illegal to sell e-cigarettes to anyone under 18

• It is illegal to sell e-cigarettes containing nicotine to anyone (including online sales).

Information about the harms associated with vaping is available at: https://www.health.nsw. gov.au/vaping

BY TIM HOWARD

Kathleen Folbigg, the woman convicted of killing her four children more than 20 years ago, walked free from Comment Clarence Correctional Centre early this month, courtesy of a long over-due pardon.

Long overdue, some might ask, wasn’t the science that cast doubt on her conviction only just confrmed?

Yes, but long overdue because Kathleen Folbigg, who protested her innocence throughout her trial and 20-year jail ordeal, should never have been convicted.

During the trial, the prosecution had no evidence Ms Folbigg had “smothered” her children, as the cause of their death.

But what they did have was her diaries, in which investigators found the smoking gun, which they believed showed she was capable of murdering her children.

Conscience and coincidence took the place of science and evidence.

The death of four children, all discovered by the mother and the rarity of such events, prepared the ground for the experts to confrm their worst suspicions.

They even had a freshly-minted term for it – Meadows’ Law – named after the British paediatrician Ron Meadows who in 1999 infamously opined “unless proven otherwise, one cot death is tragic, two is suspicious and three is murder”.

It only took a few years for the “law” to unravel, but 81 cases had to be overturned to reveal the faw. Sadly, Kathleen Folbigg’s was not one of them.

What the Folbigg case has revealed is the impossible standards society continues to set for mothers.

Motherhood as a concept is grounded in the notion of the “maternal bond”, a concept diffcult to defne, but quickly applied.

In Folbigg’s case she did not seem to ft the stereotype of the “natural mother” who wanted to do everything for her children.

The prosecution made her seem ambivalent about her children’s welfare and cherrypicked excerpts from her diaries added weight to this view.

A more rounded view would have looked at both her history – her father stabbed her mother to death when she was 18 months old –and her home life.

In her diaries she wondered if she were “her father’s child”, which prosecutors jumped on as evidence she could be a killer. There was of course another interpretation that a traumatic event like that could put doubts about their self worth into anyone.

At home her husband Craig was often an absent dad and exhausted and sleep deprived, Ms Folbigg took to her “babble books” as she described her diaries, to write out her trauma.

While the genetic evidence which has led to her pardon has only emerged in recent years, the “evidence” which convicted her could just as easily been interpreted the opposite way.

“Here we are looking at someone’s journal, where [she is] feeling guilty because she couldn’t keep her kids alive,” says Neil Schultz, a psychiatrist and lawyer who helped Folbigg’s supporters. “It doesn’t mean that she bears real