New South Wales has now banned cruel forced swim and forced smoke tests in medical experiments thanks to an Animal Justice Party bill that I took carriage of in the Legislative Assembly.
Not only are forced swim and forced smoke tests cruel; they have no scientific merit. In forced swim tests, mice are dropped into beakers of water while experimenters watch them struggle to stay alive. Mice are terrified and often drown. The test has been used to assess anti-depressants with the theory being that animals on functional anti-depressants will swim for longer. But the time it takes for a mouse to stop swimming in a stressful experiment tells us nothing relevant to the complexities of human depressive disorder.

Smoke inhalation studies confine animals in tiny plastic tubes where they have cigarette smoke pressure pumped into their nostrils to induce disease, but animals often die during the experiment; the stress of the process interferes with results and there are alternatives.   

Most credible researchers have stopped using forced swim and forced smoke tests with Commonwealth grants no longer available for them. But a few laboratories continued to use them and the ban will finally see them eradicated.  

My speeches on the bill > HERE and HERE.