Misuse of Drugs Amendment Bill

Hon PETER DUNNE (Associate Minister of Health) Link to this

I move, That the Misuse of Drugs Amendment Bill be now read a first time. I intend to move that the bill be considered by the Health Committee, that the committee report finally to the House on or before 20 November 2010, and that the committee have authority to meet at any time while the House is sitting except during oral questions, and during any evening on a day on which there has been a sitting of the House, and on a Friday in a week in which there has been a sitting of the House, despite Standing Orders 187 and 191(b) and (c). At the outset—

Hon RUTH DYSON (Labour—Port Hills) Link to this

I begin my contribution this evening by saying that I intend to move an amendment to the referral motion, and that amendment is to delete all the words after “committee”. I have to say that it is a measure I take out of frustration and surprise, because the Minister who has just resumed his seat, the Hon Peter Dunne, is probably the person who I considered—prior to this evening—as the least likely member of this House to use a process for the consideration of legislation that was unnecessary.

That Minister has been a stickler for good process in the past. He has prided himself on that and chided others for their abuse of a process that was unnecessary. He has hung out to the nth degree of time in opposition to—and we will not worry about the policy issues—the unnecessary use of urgency and to the extension of select committee sitting times when it was not necessary. But here we have that very same Minister using what I consider to be the proper process of Parliament and the select committee for an exceptional circumstance in what is clearly not an exceptional circumstance.

Classifying pseudoephedrine and ephedrine-containing medicines as prescription-only drugs, changing the classification of thalidomide, and extending the controls over drug paraphernalia are not things that need extended sitting time. I am gobsmacked that that Minister has changed his behaviour so quickly, clearly at the determination of the National Government. I think it is unnecessary and we should stand up against it. I urge the Minister to do what he has for many years lectured others about doing. He used to be a man of principle, but he is now moderating that measure of principle.

Having said that, Labour supports the referral of this bill to the select committee. One of the reasons is that we want to play our part in what, I think, will be a near-unanimous decision of this Parliament. We want to play our part in doing everything we can to stop the damage done by P in our families, our communities, and our society. Labour will do everything it can to reduce the use of P and therefore reduce the damage that is done to individuals and their families. I have grave doubts about whether this bill will do that, but why not hand it over to the experts who will be able to appear before the select committee and give us the benefit of their wisdom? That is why we want to support this bill’s referral to a select committee.

The other concern I have about this bill is that there is a real contradiction. We have this great leap forward by asking every New Zealander to get a prescription for over 20 percent of cold and flu medications because of the ingredients they contain and the possibility that they will be used for manufacturing P. But, at the same time, we know that the majority of P is manufactured from imported ingredients, and we are cutting back the resourcing for police and customs to do the job of protecting our borders against the importation of this material.

Another consideration I urge the select committee members to keep in mind is the additional cost that this measure will impose on ordinary New Zealanders who have done nothing wrong—other than having a bad cold and wanting to get rid of it in a hurry. They want to be like the person in the ad who is sitting at the bus stop and not sneezing while the person next to him has a very bad cold. That is the worst that most New Zealanders will have done. They will have caught a very bad cold and they will want to take some medication to get rid of it in a hurry. But now they will have to get a prescription, and because they will need to go to the doctor to get a prescription, they will have to pay for the visit as well. So there will be quite an additional financial cost on individuals at a time when more and more New Zealanders are feeling financial pressure.

More people are out of work, and more people are working reduced hours, and we have not seen the pay increases we might have hoped for in past days, but the Government will load another cost on to people. This measure will clearly be a challenge for some people, because in many parts of the country it is very difficult to see a doctor and people have to wait for quite some time. The waiting lists for doctors are increasing. Some people have moved to different parts of the country—Wainuiōmata, Timaru, Levin—where doctors’ books have been closed, so people new to town cannot get in to see a doctor at all. I am not quite sure how those people will get their prescriptions.

Of course, the even bigger concern is that one of the significant positive contributors to supporting people who might have drug and alcohol addictions is being taken away from them—our mental health and drug and alcohol treatment centres. My colleague Iain Lees-Galloway, who I hope will have an opportunity to contribute to the debate later on this evening, has recently asked the Minister about the cuts to the St Marks Adult Drug and Alcohol Treatment Centre in Blenheim, the Care New Zealand clinic in Otāhuhu, and Ashburn Clinic in Dunedin. Those places give support to people who want to get away from their drug and alcohol addictions. Those places are laying off staff because of funding cuts signed off by the Minister of Health.

So here we have the so-called great commitment from the Prime Minister and the Hon Peter Dunne to wage a war on P. They will ensure that ordinary New Zealanders have to go to the doctor to get a prescription for cold and flu medication, but, at the same time, they are taking away resourcing for police and customs officers, and they are cutting the funding for drug and alcohol treatment. How does that package make sense? I do not understand how there can possibly be a serious war on P when the very parts of the picture that actually make a difference are being taken away.

There are a couple of other things I would like to mention. The first is the concern that the Hon Chris Finlayson has raised. In his view, the legislation raises an issue in relation to the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act, because it sets out a presumption for supply. The message that Peter Dunne is giving to the good New Zealanders not only in his electorate but in mine as well is that if they go to the chemist to ask for a packet of whatever medication happens to have pseudoephedrine or ephedrine in it, then the presumption from the Government is that they are buying that in order to manufacture and supply P. I think that Chris Finlayson’s concerns are justified; most New Zealanders do not do that.

The final point I want to raise is with regard to the regulatory impact statement. It is coming from a Government that has led the charge on regulatory reform, and the Hon Rodney Hide must be a bit embarrassed by it. The regulatory impact statement is meant to set out regulatory options; it is meant to look at all the options and the impact of those regulations. This regulatory impact statement states: “There are no other regulatory options proposed at this time since Government has already decided this course of action.” What sort of regulatory impact statement is it? Its job is to provide all of the options, yet it states that it did not bother because the Government has already taken its course of action and made the decision.

It seems to me that the intent behind the legislation is sound. As I said at the beginning of my speech tonight, Labour is 100 percent behind any moves to rid society of the scourge of P and the harm it does in our families and communities. This bill raises more questions than answers, and I look forward to the select committee considering it.

Dr PAUL HUTCHISON (National—Hunua) Link to this

Thank goodness for the National Government for progressing this war against pure methamphetamine! Undoubtedly, this bill is part of the five-point plan to wage that war. Pure methamphetamine adversely affects every strata of New Zealand society. It is very interesting to note a recent Business and Economic Research Ltd study, which has shown that the cost of non-alcohol financially adverse effects—that is, effects relating just to drugs—amount to something like $1.5 billion.

Clearly, the adverse effects emotionally and for family are just absolutely enormous. An example in our community of Pukekohe in the Hunua electorate is that over the last year or two, a chemist in his 60s has been caught supplying pseudoephedrine and ephedrine over a long period of time. This man was regarded as a doyen of society—he was a churchgoer—but he was suddenly found to be heavily involved in the supply of those drugs.

It is important to reinforce the fact that the Prime Minister’s Chief Science Adviser, Sir Peter Gluckman, has stated that there are safe and effective alternatives to pseudoephedrine and ephedrine; a variety of countries around the world have banned these products in mixtures for colds. This bill, among other things, classifies ephedrine and pseudoephedrine as class B drugs, which carries with it very, very significant penalties. As was noted by the excellent Minister Peter Dunne, the presumption of supply threshold is 10 grams.

IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY (Labour—Palmerston North) Link to this

It is a pleasure to follow the chair of the Health Committee’s surprisingly short contribution on the Misuse of Drugs Amendment Bill, a bill important enough to have its first reading under urgency. Like the chair of the Health Committee, I look forward to there being a vigorous and rigorous debate on it at the select committee. There are a number of things in this bill, and if I get a chance to do so, I will cover more than just the question of the classification of ephedrine and pseudoephedrine. But given that to this point that issue has occupied the minds of most of the speakers, I will pick up where Dr Hutchison and my colleague the Hon Ruth Dyson left off, with the regulatory impact statement.

Under the heading of “Problem definition”, we actually have a problem. It states that the “New Zealand Police has reported that one in three clandestine methamphetamine laboratories detected contain traces of domestically sourced PSE. This does not suggest that 30% of methamphetamine in New Zealand is manufactured using domestic PSE, however Police consider that the levels diverted for illegal purposes is significant.” So we know that not even 30 percent of the problem is caused by domestically sourced pseudoephedrine, but we know that the domestically sourced amount is significant. We do not know exactly what “significant” means; we do not know whether it is 5 percent, 10 percent, or 15 percent. We do not actually know the extent of the problem, the extent of the question, that we are trying to address with this bill. It is perfectly valid to seek out the sources of P and to try to crack down on them, but, as my colleague Ruth Dyson said earlier on, this requires a whole-of-Government approach. We are cutting back on Customs Service resources, yet the vast majority of the sources of methamphetamine are coming into the country illegally from offshore. That is where we should focus our attention, not on the locally sourced product here in New Zealand, of which we do not even know how much actually contributes to the problem.

Further down in the regulatory impact statement we see that “While a significant amount of PSE currently available in over-the-counter medications is considered to be diverted for non-legitimate purposes, the majority of PSE used to manufacture methamphetamine is illegally imported.”—a continuation of the same problem. It goes on to state: “This proposal may have the unintended consequence of increasing levels of illegally imported PSE, however Customs is concurrently increasing its capability to deal with methamphetamine and precursor trafficking at the border.” Well, the Customs Service may well be trying to do that, but the fact of the matter is that the Minister and the Government are cutting its resources for doing that. So although this bill in itself is perfectly reasonable, sensible legislation that seeks to address a problem in our communities, if we actually look at what the Government is doing right across the spectrum, we find that it is shooting itself in the foot. This legislation will be a drop in the bucket in comparison with the cuts that the Government is making to those who are trying to combat the source of the real problem. The fact of the matter is that in dealing with drug abuse and alcohol abuse, we need to take a whole-of-Government approach.

It is interesting that this bill comes up during the period of time when the Law Commission is considering its review of the Misuse of Drugs Act. Of course, we all look forward to finding out the results of that review, which may actually make this legislation completely obsolete. We could find ourselves back in here to rewrite the whole thing. The Law Commission actually got to the bottom of the problem in saying that harm minimisation requires “a broad and integrated approach”, and that there are essentially three pillars to that approach. The first is supply control, which is measures that control or limit the availability of drugs, and that is what we are talking about here tonight. But there is also demand reduction and problem limitation. Again, when we look across what the Government is doing in those areas, we find that it is essentially undermining itself, and it is undermining the work that it is trying to do here tonight.

We have seen cuts to front-line services, and cuts to community-based alcohol and drug services that actually deal with the issues of demand reduction and problem limitation. We know that the Care NZ clinic in Ōtāhuhu, the St Marks Adult Drug and Alcohol Treatment Centre in Blenheim, and the Ashburn Clinic in Dunedin have already suffered cuts. They have laid off staff and they have reduced programmes that would actually deal with the other side of the problem. Supply limitation is just one part of it; there is a lot more to it than just that. So while the Government continues to take that approach, legislation like this will not have the effect that is sought. We just have to look at some of the other Government decisions: $186 million in low-priority funding has been cut, and that includes $12 million from mental health services.

METIRIA TUREI (Co-Leader—Green) Link to this

The Green Party will not be supporting the Misuse of Drugs Amendment Bill. It is inconsistent with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act—

Hon Dr PITA SHARPLES (Co-Leader—Māori Party) Link to this

Tēnā koe, Mr Assistant Speaker. I will take a short call on the Misuse of Drugs Amendment Bill. The bill amends the Misuse of Drugs Act 1975 and the Misuse of Drugs Amendment Act 2005 by inserting a complex drug vocabulary into the statute. The basic incentive of the bill is to reclassify ephedrine and pseudoephedrine as class B2 controlled drugs, remove thalidomide as a class A controlled drug, allow hazardous substances to be scheduled as restricted substances, extend the definition of amphetamine analogues, and extend the controls over drug paraphernalia. The bill prohibits the supply, importation, or possession for the purpose of sale and supply of a pipe, other utensil, or identifiable component of a pipe. That is the paraphernalia part. The bill also amends the Land Transport Act 1998 to reflect that thalidomide is no longer a controlled drug. Previously, it was an exception to the offences of driving under the influence of schedule 1 controlled drugs. As it is no longer a controlled drug, it does not need to be an exception to those offences.

Let us be clear: the real purpose and value of the bill is to add to the campaign against P. Technically speaking, this legislation defines ephedrine and pseudoephedrine as class B2 controlled drugs, whether or not they are contained in a substance, preparation, or mixture. The key point is that the risk of pseudoephedrine being diverted into the manufacture of methamphetamine outweighs the requirement of its ongoing availability over the counter.

Anyone who has experienced the havoc that P wreaks on families and communities will tell us of the devastating impact this drug has on health and the well-being of a community. We have, however, done some amazing things in our communities in fighting the scourge of P in our midst. For years, besieged communities have run programmes responding to the effects of P and trying to help keep people away from it. The Patua Te Ngāngara programme at Hoani Waititi Marae is one such programme. I am proud to say that I initiated that programme and I ran it for 4 years, and it is still going now. We took that programme around New Zealand to educate people about P, and we stopped at various towns from Kaitāia to Invercargill. We heard devastating anecdotes and we heard of situations from police and people attending those hui. We heard of mothers sending their children out to prostitute for them, so that they could get money for their P habit. A little girl tried to hang herself at school, and was cut down. She said she was on P, but she was not; she was prostituting for her mother who was on P. We heard of a man coming home from work to find a gang in his house with his wife who owed $10,000. We heard story after story. We heard of a man who wanted to shoot his son because he had caused such havoc within his family because of his P habit, and so on. It is really horrific. P is the most antisocial of all drugs, and it attacks society.

However, towns and communities around the country have declared themselves to be P free. There are rāhui set up in certain places against P, and generally there is a spirit in the community that it is not good to use P. Even amongst gangs, there is some work being done on getting rid of P. Denis O’Reilly is leading a lot of that work amongst the community. We know that children as young as 9 years old have been sold P in fruit-flavoured tablets. There are all sorts of different things going on. It is all scary stuff, and anything at all that stops the assault of P on our young lives has to be considered. So the Māori Party will support any initiative to curb the underbelly of the P industry. If this reclassification will help towards that end, then we will support it.

I commend the local councils for working together with iwi, police, and Government agencies to remove the pushers, cooks, and suppliers of this drug. But I hope that low-income families will not incur additional costs for doctors’ prescriptions for cold medicines that contain pseudoephedrine, if those families are merely visiting the doctor to get those prescriptions only. The Māori Party will support this bill, and let the kōrero be had at the select committee. Thank you.

Dr JACKIE BLUE (National) Link to this

I am pleased to speak on the first reading of the Misuse of Drugs Amendment Bill, which amends the Misuse of Drugs Act 1975 in order to reclassify ephedrine and pseudoephedrine as class B2 controlled drugs and remove thalidomide as a class A controlled drug, to allow hazardous substances to be also scheduled as restricted substances, to extend the definition of “amphetamine analogues”, and to extend the controls over drug paraphernalia.

Ephedrine and pseudoephedrine are precursors of P. In the first 7 months of this year 23 kilograms of methamphetamine were seized, which is four times the amount seized in the same period last year. Members should make no mistake: this is a huge business in New Zealand, and it is worth hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars. There are close associations with gangs and their clandestine operations in suburban homes, and let us not forget that gangs are associated with weapons, which they use to protect their operations.

Tackling P and the drugs trade is a huge priority for the law and order team, and I acknowledge the work done by the Minister of Justice and the Minister of Police. We have created a dedicated anti-drug Customs Service task force, and we have made it easier for the police to go after gangs and to go after the proceeds of crime. That is why we are restricting access to the precursors of P, which are pseudoephedrine and ephedrine. We have heard from Sir Peter Gluckman, the Prime Minister’s Chief Science Adviser, that suitable alternatives to these medicines can be bought across the counter, though pseudoephedrine and ephedrine can still be obtained through a prescription.

I took some time out today and went to a conference in the Banquet Hall hosted by the Sensible Sentencing Trust. It was incredibly powerful. There was a wall of photographs of people who had been murdered—young men, young women, and children. Many of those people, I would say, had been murdered when their assailant was high on P. Susan Couch was present at the conference. Her assailant, William Bell, was high on P; she was almost beaten to death, and he unfortunately killed three innocent victims. There was a picture of Coral Burrows, aged 6, who was murdered by her stepfather, Steve Williams, while he was high on P.

P is a tragedy of huge proportions in this community, so this bill is a step in the right direction and I commend it to the House.

Hon LUAMANUVAO WINNIE LABAN (Labour—Mana) Link to this

Kia ora, talofa lava, and warm Pacific greetings. Thank you for the opportunity to speak on the first reading of the Misuse of Drugs Amendment Bill. As the bill is an attempt to get pure methamphetamine, or P, off the streets of New Zealand, I am very happy to support it going to the Health Committee. However, I have a number of concerns, which I will discuss later. For now I will discuss some of the effects of P and what it does to New Zealand and New Zealanders.

As we all know, methamphetamine is incredibly addictive—more so than other drugs such as cocaine. The Expert Advisory Committee on Drugs has noted that users of methamphetamine move more quickly from initial use to regular use than other drug users, and are more likely to move on to dependency—and we all know the results of that. Even if someone receives treatment and overcomes his or her addiction to P, the psychological and emotional consequences are likely to remain with that person for years. The long-term effects of P on the individual have been well documented, and include fatal kidney and lung disorders, brain damage, depression, violent and aggressive behaviour, and lowered resistance to illness.

But, as we all know, the effects on the individual, although extremely harmful, are only half the story. The impact on the family and close friends of addicted individuals is devastating, not to mention the impact and effects on our communities and on wider society. We all know about the links that P and the manufacture of P have with crime. P is hugely profitable for gangs and for many other groups, including white-collar criminals, and addiction to the substance can spawn criminal activity in itself.

This bill intends to make the manufacture of P more difficult by restricting access to ephedrine and pseudoephedrine, which are some of the active ingredients of methamphetamine. Currently, pseudoephedrine is available over the counter in cold and flu remedies from pharmacies. Reclassifying both pseudoephedrine and ephedrine as class B2 controlled drugs will make their availability impossible in the future, will, hopefully, lead to restriction of supply to the manufacturers of P, and will help to control the prevalence of the drug.

I will quote Iain Lees-Galloway, my colleague and the spokesperson on alcohol and drugs for this side of the House. He has made an interesting comparison with alcohol and has said that far more people are affected by harmful drinking than by drugs.

As I said before, the bill is an attempt to get P off the streets, and that is enough to warrant its progress to the select committee, where I hope it can be further deliberated upon. But I have some concerns. Firstly, one of the things that my colleagues have emphasised, which I hope will be discussed, is the possible effect on the availability of cold and flu remedies to New Zealanders. Approximately 20 percent of cold and flu remedies available currently contain pseudoephedrine, so attention will have to be paid to securing effective alternatives to those remedies. Certainly, it should never be the case that New Zealanders who have never approached methamphetamine, or the manufacture of methamphetamine, have to pay a doctor’s fee and a prescription fee for cold and flu medicine. If that is what results from this bill, then we have a clear case of most of the population of New Zealand being adversely affected by the actions of a small minority.

Secondly, we are not sure, as yet, how much of the ephedrine and pseudoephedrine used in the manufacture of P is actually sourced in this way. It is likely that the vast majority of it has been obtained overseas and imported separately. Therefore it seems strange that at the same time as the Government is supposed to be restricting P manufacturers’ access to their ingredients it is also cutting funding to the Customs Service and the Police. It is restricting access in one sense and opening up opportunities for criminals in another. To be effective, this measure needs to be combined with more targeted border enforcement, not a weakened Customs Service.

Another area that I am concerned about is mental health services, where the Government is making huge cuts. That has led over the last 2 years to the restriction of services that would help with addiction and addiction-related problems, and provide support for families. Just this year $12 million was cut from mental health services. They were cast as low-priority services, and district health board funding was cut. Surely, in order to have an integrated and effective plan to rid New Zealand of P and associated problems, we need to be funding the services that provide the much-needed support that can help people remove the scourge of P from their lives.

In short, as the bill is a measure to help restrict the manufacture of P, I support it going to the select committee. It is hugely important that we do what we can to rid New Zealand of P and associated harms. But I do see a number of weaknesses in the implementation of this plan, including the failure to adequately back up this measure with increased border control and increased funding for addiction and mental health services.

Our leader, Phil Goff, and our law and order spokesperson, Clayton Cosgrove, when talking about this issue in October last year, said that Labour supported any move that got P off New Zealand’s streets. There is a contradiction in resourcing, with most ingredients for P coming from overseas at a time when the Police and the Customs Services have suffered budget cuts. The Police and the Customs Service have been asked to do more with less.

There is concern that law-abiding Kiwis will be forced to pay doctors’ fees and prescription fees for cold and flu medicine because of the actions of a few. On the face of it, the innocent are being whacked with extra costs, and we are not sure what effect this bill will have on the perpetrators of crime. We question the depth of the National Government’s plan to wage war on P, with cuts to mental health funding in both Budgets, and with the closure of addiction and treatment centres under this Government. Thank you.

NICKY WAGNER (National) Link to this

I rise to support the Misuse of Drugs Amendment Bill, and I thank the Associate Minister of Health the Hon Peter Dunne for bringing it to the House. This is sensible legislation. It is designed as a response to public concerns about the harm of drugs—in particular, P—in our community.

P is a very New Zealand problem, as we have one of the highest percentages of P users in the world. This legislation is a first step in closing off the sources of precursor substances for the illegal manufacture of methamphetamine. We know that the ingredients for the manufacture of P come both from the reconstitution of legal, over-the-counter cold and flu drugs and from the direct importation of pseudoephedrine. This bill reclassifies ephedrine and pseudoephedrine as a class B2 controlled drug, so that it is available only on prescription. That will make it much more difficult to obtain over the counter and, therefore, it will make it much more difficult for P cooks to get ingredients. Right now our police tell us that local pseudoephedrine is found in one-third of all P labs.

There has been a lot of debate in the community about the loss of these over-the-counter cold and flu drugs, and I have even heard of some families stocking up on these remedies because they cannot live without them. But research tells us—and, indeed, Professor Gluckman, the Prime Minister’s chief scientist, concurs—that clinical evidence shows that safe and effective alternatives are available. But generally speaking, the public supports this legislation because it will greatly reduce the availability of source drugs. At the same time, New Zealand Customs Service officers are working hard to close the door on imports of pseudoephedrine from overseas. They are focusing on tightening border controls and are making it much more difficult for P labs to get imported source ingredients. It is true that many New Zealanders are in the grip of P. This legislation will make it more difficult to obtain this drug. Therefore, I commend this bill to the House.

Hon DAMIEN O’CONNOR (Labour) Link to this

I welcome the opportunity to speak on the Misuse of Drugs Amendment Bill. It is a very important bill. I guess it is one that the Labour Party supports. Who would not support a Government initiative aimed at reducing the harm from drugs? Parliament does a lot to try to minimise the harm from road crashes, and to minimise occupational safety and health issues in the workplace. On all sorts of things, Parliament, generally in unison, does its best to reduce harm.

This Government initiative is slightly misguided, I think. It will reclassify ephedrine and pseudoephedrine. It will make people go to the doctor to get a prescription for what are very effective drugs to deal with colds and flu, which seem to be on the rise these days, even with flu jabs, dare I suggest. People will inevitably get a new strain of flu, and on it goes. These drugs have been developed, and they are effective. But they have been used—or abused, I should say—to make methamphetamine, and P in particular. It is a New Zealand problem, because smart chemists here have managed to develop these drugs for destructive use, quite frankly—one could hardly say “recreational use”. They are a curse and a scourge on our community. I recall that when P first emerged, I was flatting with good mates Dover Samuels and John Tamihere, and they were both distraught. As the story started to emerge, it became apparent that these illegal drugs were a real scourge on our Māori community throughout the country. I do not think anyone would object to any effective initiative taken to try to reduce the harm.

Of course, another drug causes huge harm to society, and it is quite topical at the moment. It is called alcohol. It seems as though the National Government is not quite as determined to reduce the harm from alcohol as it is to reduce the harm from P. The harm from P is far more acute, but, thankfully, it is not used as frequently or by as many people across the country. We do want to reduce its usage, and there have been some good initiatives. The incoming National Government made a song and dance about what it would do, and I commend it for making this attempt, but this bill goes only part-way towards dealing with the problem. If we deal with the precursors purchased from New Zealand pharmacies, supermarkets, or whatever, then we might make some progress.

Australia has been trying to deal with this issue for some time. The precursors have been used to make different drugs. A system has been developed involving the Australian police and pharmacies, and it was being developed in New Zealand. I am not sure where it is up to at the moment, but it was an initiative whereby pharmacies would monitor the sale of ephedrine and pseudoephedrine products. They would look out for people buying them in bulk, and sometimes an odd pattern might emerge of an individual buying a lot. Australian pharmacies started to monitor that. With computers, it is quite easy to pick up patterns and pick up individuals, and, in fact, the police there apprehended many people as a result of that process. That initiative was being developed here; I am not sure where it is at the moment. I hope the Minister of Police, who is sitting over there, will get up and tell the House whether that initiative of monitoring pharmacy sales and contacting the police about suspicious sales is being done in New Zealand.

The reclassification in this bill and making people go to a doctor to get a prescription in themselves will not stop the problem, because we know that a huge amount of precursors is being smuggled into the country from other countries. I cannot say that it is just from China, but I know there have been some big seizures there. The point I am trying to make is that of course Labour will support this bill, because we want to reduce the harm from P and methamphetamine in this country, but let us get some consistency from the National Government. The thing that astounds us time and time again is the Government’s inconsistency.

There is a view that imposing a tougher penalty and restricting what can be done will solve the problem. Well, the harsh reality of P and methamphetamine is that people become addicted very, very quickly. What happens if people experiment, have access to P or methamphetamine, and become addicted? Well, there are only three options for that person: they die very quickly from an overdose or harm themselves; they continue to use, and become criminals because they need money to buy the drug; or they acknowledge that they have a problem and seek treatment. If the third option occurs, where do they go? It is hard to imagine that there will be more places to go, when this National Government has allowed the closure of some treatment places throughout the country. I am sure that my colleague Mr Iain Lees-Galloway will point to the fact that the St Marks Adult Drug and Alcohol Treatment Centre has closed. Is that correct? Yes, it has closed. It was in Blenheim. The Care NZ clinic in Ōtāhuhu is another example. [Interruption] I could go on. That member’s own patch of Dunedin includes the Ashburn clinic. Has it closed?

MICHAEL WOODHOUSE (National) Link to this

I am very encouraged by the fact that the biggest criticism the Opposition’s spokesperson on health has of the Misuse of Drugs Amendment Bill is that it is being referred to a select committee that will meet, work hard, and deliberate in a timely manner to report back to the House. I know members on the other side are a bit puffed at the pace of this Government, but I am afraid that pedantry is certainly not the answer. They will just have to keep up.

I am confused, though. We are getting a really inconsistent message from members opposite. On the one hand they support the bill and say that they support every effort to get on top of the scourge that is P, but on the other they decry the fact—as Ms Laban, Mr O’Connor, and Ms Dyson did—that some people may not be able to purchase their pseudoephedrine over the counter. They cannot have it both ways.

I am afraid, though, that that is pretty typical of a party that was asleep at the wheel when P came into the New Zealand lexicon about 10 years ago. Do members know what the previous Government did? It developed an action plan. This Government is about action, not action plans, and the results are already apparent. I looked at the 2008/09 financial review of the New Zealand Customs Service, and I was absolutely amazed to see that “the interception of illicit drugs and precursors entering New Zealand became a new priority for the Customs Service in 2009.”

Hon JUDITH COLLINS (Minister of Police) Link to this

I move, That the Misuse of Drugs Amendment Bill be considered by the Health Committee , that the Committee report finally to the House on or before 30 November 2010, and that the committee have authority to meet at any time while the House is sitting (except during oral questions), and during any evening on a day on which there has been a sitting of the House, and on a Friday in a week in which there has been a sitting of the House, despite Standing Orders 187 and 190(1)(b) and (c).