Misuse of Drugs Amendment Bill

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

It is a pleasure to speak on Part 1 of the Misuse of Drugs Amendment Bill. I say at the outset that Labour will be supporting Part 1, and will also be supporting the amendments in the name of Minister Peter Dunne, the Minister in the chair, as set out on his Supplementary Order Paper. Labour will also seek support for an amendment in my name, which is set out on a separate Supplementary Order Paper.

Firstly, I will address the amendments in the Minister’s name, which of course have received plenty of attention in the media over the last few weeks. This is, I suppose, the Government’s response to the issue of synthetic cannabis products—products that go by the name of Kronic, Dream, Spice, and that sort of thing. The issue that has been plaguing Parliament for some time is that these products can come on to the market, be perfectly legal, and escape the purview of the Misuse of Drugs Act as it is currently written. They also escape the purview of all sorts of other Acts; they do not come under the same regulations as would a food and they do not come under the Medicines Act. They have been sneaking in through a loophole formed because no legislation has been able to deal with such new substances.

What the Minister is proposing we see as only a stopgap, and I think the Minister would see it in the same way, as well. It is a stopgap measure in order to give Parliament more time to consider a more permanent solution to the issue of new substances coming on to the market. The Minister’s amendments will give the Government the opportunity to create a temporary class drug notice, which means that we will be able to temporarily classify a new substance and, by doing so, ensure that it is not sold in dairies, liquor stores, or the places where we have seen it being sold and marketed, clearly visible to young people and to anybody who goes into places where we would go to buy what we would think of as normal household items or goods.

So we support the measure to create what is essentially a 12-month ban, in order to give the Government and the Minister the opportunity to consider the harm that may be caused by these new substances. It is fair, though, to note that, as some people have been saying in the media this morning, this legislation does not allow the Government to block new substances from arriving and coming on to the market. It simply gives us an ability to respond in a much faster way, so that we can get substances off the shelf quickly if we believe they are harmful to users. That is not ideal, and it is fair to say, I think, that the process around that is not ideal. The amendments have been tacked on to a bill that was already proceeding through Parliament. These amendments have been proposed well after the select committee process, so we have not had an opportunity to consider them properly through the normal parliamentary processes.

However, I do not think that such niceties will be given much truck by the public, who want to see action—and have wanted to see action for some time, it is fair to say. Indeed, the Misuse of Drugs Amendment Bill was reported back to the House by the Health Committee in November last year, and it has sat on the Order Paper for all the months since then, when action really could have been taken by the Government. This issue could have been progressed. The question of Kronic has been around for some time. I think that most electorate MPs will have heard from their constituents about this issue, and this is the appropriate legislation to deal with the issue, rather than some others, such as the Smoke-free Environments Act, another area in which the issue had been considered somewhat, as well.

The legislation has been a long time coming, but I accept what the Minister has been saying about the need to get it right. In the end, though, it is not the solution to new psychoactive substances. The public is really looking for a solution that ensures that these substances can be properly tested before they come to market, rather than our having what is still the case—the need to respond once we realise they may be causing some harm. We want to be sure that the harm they cause is insignificant enough that they can come to the market safely.

I think this legislation also gives us an opportunity, given that we are buying a little time to get this matter right, to consider the other 44 recommendations in the Law Commission’s review of the Misuse of Drugs Act. We have picked on one, and we have focused very closely on that one, but a number of suggestions and recommendations in that review could very well be taken up by Parliament. In my view, what we actually need is new legislation to replace the Misuse of Drugs Act. That Act came into force in the mid-1970s, and it was a response to the drug environment of the mid-1970s. It was a response to what at the time was a whole raft of relatively new substances. Some were naturally occurring; some were created synthetically. But things have moved on in the 30-odd years since then. Indeed, new substances are being developed all the time, but our response to drug use and drug abuse has changed.

The concept of harm minimisation is much more to the fore these days. I believe that, given the opportunity we have through the amendments the Minister has put forward in relation to Part 1 to take the time to consider ways in which we can deal with new substances, we should also take the time to consider how we should really tackle drug abuse, and the supply and use of drugs in New Zealand in the 21st century, with a much more modern, more evidence-based approach. I think of things like the way we classify different substances, the role of the health system, and the role of the justice system. All those matters need to be taken into consideration in creating the legislation we need to replace the Misuse of Drugs Act. Having said that, I say that we do need an interim measure, and this is the interim measure to tackle that.

I would like to hear more from the Minister about how he proposes to use those temporary class notices, how quickly they can be brought into action, and how he intends to respond to the claim from the industry that it will be able to constantly bring in new substances. The idea that the industry might have one substance that would be on the shelves for a week before being pulled and replaced by a new substance is a concern. I would like to see that teased out a little bit more by the Minister and hear his explanation of that.

I would also like to hear exactly how the different temporary classes will be defined, and how a substance will be defined as being temporarily a class A, class B, or class C drug, a precursor substance, or a restricted substance. Those will have quite an impact on the way in which this legislation will actually work in practice. I also say that for people who have a small amount in their possession, it is excellent that that amount will not be illegal. In fact, I would like to hear a little bit more about how the presumption of possession to supply might assist in dealing with the stockpiling issue that we could see as people try to evade this legislation and these amendments before they come into force. So there are a few questions there for the Minister, and I would be very keen to hear his thoughts on them. I look forward to coming back to this in a moment.

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

I am happy to respond to the points the member Iain Lees-Galloway has raised. He is absolutely right; these amendments to the Misuse of Drugs Amendment Bill are a temporary measure, because the 45 recommendations from the Law Commission require a lot of work to be done on them. There is not just one recommendation in isolation; a whole comprehensive package needs to be assessed.

The member will appreciate that the commission’s recommendations are essentially at a very high level. They are not in a form that could be picked up and simply implemented, as some have argued. Quite a lot of ongoing work on the recommendations is occurring at the present time. The Government’s intention is that that work will be completed next year, and I imagine that what will emerge will be a new bill—a replacement for the current Misuse of Drugs Act—that will incorporate all of those changes. That is for another day.

In terms of the immediate problem we face with synthetic cannabinoids and other new psychoactive substances, we needed to act in an important and immediate interim way. I make the point that this is not just about synthetic cannabinoids. Claims I have heard from the industry that it can now divert its activities into other areas will be caught by these amendments, because any new psychoactive substance that causes the Minister of Health concern can be the subject of one of these new temporary class drug notices. To a large extent, that gives some comfort when manufacturers claim that they will simply bring in new and different substances. They can be dealt with under this mechanism.

The member raised a question about timing. My assumption is as follows: this legislation will pass through all its remaining stages in Parliament this week. It will receive the Royal assent at His Excellency’s convenience. I imagine that will be first thing next week. Immediately that happens I will issue a Gazette notice giving the range of products that is on the market at the moment—some 43 in all—7 days to be off the shelves. The timing is very quick, and we are already preparing the Gazette notice as I speak.

As new products arise and as they are detected by a combination of the police, the New Zealand Customs Service, and the Ministry of Health, or individually, provided the products meet the test I referred to earlier they will immediately be gazetted in exactly the same way.

The issue of concern to New Zealanders about the apparent proliferation of these synthetic cannabinoids and other psychoactive substances is being addressed through this mechanism. In the longer term, something along the lines of the Law Commission’s recommendations that nothing gets to even base one before it is proven to be safe is the correct course to follow. But a whole lot of issues around the definition of “safety”, and the process by which it is determined, have yet to be resolved.

Iain Lees-Galloway raised a question about personal possession. I draw the Committee’s attention to this particular aspect because it is very important, and again gives the lie to some of the claims being made by the industry that there will be a bonanza fire sale and that people will be able to stock up to their heart’s content to get around the forthcoming bans.

The definition of “personal possession” for the presumption of supply has been changed. At the moment in the Misuse of Drugs Act we talk about 56 grams of the item concerned. These synthetic cannabinoids are sprayed over the Kronic products, so 56 grams actually covers a fair range of product. We have changed that, and in this instance it will be 56 grams of complete product. It will not be just the synthetic cannabinoid; it will be the Kronic. Kronic is sold, as I understand it, in 1.5 gram packets. By my calculation, about 37 packets will be the maximum a person will be allowed before they are presumed to be supplying or potentially capable of supplying. So that is a very tight restriction. I hasten to say to the industry that there will not be a very big bonanza, at all, over the next week or so.

These measures have arisen in response to understandable public concern, and, as I said in response to a question in the House earlier today, I have been determined, right the way through, to make sure we put in place a viable interim mechanism pending the development of the long-term solution. I have had thrown at me—not by the member opposite but by various other commentators and critics—questions of why I do not do what they did in Australia and other countries and just ban these things outright. The reality has been that without the sort of mechanism we have put in place now, the industry does exactly what the member Iain Lees-Galloway is concerned about: it thinks it can reformulate the banned product as something else, which is back on the shelves the following week, and we start all over again.

We have a comprehensive suite of measures before the Committee in Supplementary Order Paper 258, and I am grateful for the support of that member’s party. I think it is very important that Parliament sends a strong signal on this issue. As a consequence, the capacity that we have now to put in place something that will be comprehensive for that 12-month period is strong.

I make one other point before I conclude. The 12-month period is not absolute. It is 12 months in respect of every product that is gazetted. Although I expect that the Government will have resolved its work on the Misuse of Drugs Act by around the middle of next year, there may well be products being gazetted in February or March that will have that 12-month cycle attached to them. Within that time they have to be assessed and tested, and some conclusion made as to their particular classification.

I appreciate the member’s support. I do not want to prolong the debate unnecessarily, but I hope I have answered his questions in the way he was seeking.

Dr PAUL HUTCHISON (National—Hunua) Link to this

Thank you, Mr Chair, for the opportunity to speak on this important amendment to the Misuse of Drugs Act. The Hon Peter Dunne certainly deserves congratulations on bringing in his Supplementary Order Paper that will effectively ban something like 43 synthetic cannabinoids that are known on the New Zealand market at present. I have no doubt that the mums and dads of New Zealand will breathe a significant sigh of relief when they hear of this legislation.

There is no question that the availability of these synthetic cannabinoids has become more and more apparent as the year has gone on, and particularly in the last few months. I have been absolutely surprised at what I would view as the irresponsibility of many retailers in the way they sell these products flagrantly in areas where there are a lot of children present, close to schools, etc. In my view, the manufacturers of these synthetic cannabinoids are, on the whole, very cunning and ruthless and will stop at nothing to make money out of this range of products, let alone stopping at nothing to entrap young New Zealanders into becoming dependent on them. So this interim measure is, indeed, an extremely important one.

I well remember Matt Bowden, whom we have seen on TV recently, appearing before the Health Committee some years ago and saying how he felt that good manufacturing practice was so important to him, yet we have seen these products come into New Zealand and be manufactured with additives of prescription medicines within them. Now, that is clearly not a case of having good manufacturing practice. I do not believe that we cannot trust this spectrum of manufacturers who are so high and mighty in terms of their views on this issue in New Zealand. In fact, I think they need to be absolutely sidelined.

The Hon Peter Dunne’s Supplementary Order Paper will allow time to implement the Law Commission’s recommendations to legislate that the manufacturers of these psychoactive drugs will have to prove that they are safe. I must add that if they are psychoactive substances that are smoked, we learnt during the submissions from the Ministry of Health that just about every product that is smoked or inhaled has a carcinogenic effect. It will be very, very hard to prove safety. So there is no doubt that this has to be done very carefully, and, as the Minister pointed out, the manufacturers will use every mechanism available to them to dream up some new way of presenting these drugs to the New Zealand public.

Several years ago there was an amendment that introduced a rapid mechanism to try to combat the fact that they would always be trying to be one step ahead of the legislators. I think that that is almost impossible to combat, and it proved impossible for that legislation. Consequently, the suggestion that the Law Commission has come up with is entirely relevant, and I am sure that the Minister will pursue those recommendations relentlessly, so that hopefully we not only reduce the input of these drugs but also do everything possible to minimise harm.

GRANT ROBERTSON (Labour—Wellington Central) Link to this

I rise, as other speakers have done, to support the direction in which the Misuse of Drugs Amendment Bill is going and, in particular, to discuss the Supplementary Order Paper put forward by the Minister in the chair, the Hon Peter Dunne. I pick up the point that both Iain Lees-Galloway and Paul Hutchison have made, because I too have been approached, as have other MPs, by members of the public deeply concerned about the easy availability of products such as Kronic and other similar cannabinoids—

Hon HEATHER ROY (ACT) Link to this

I rise in the Committee stage to speak on Part 1 of the Misuse of Drugs Amendment Bill. Primarily I wish to speak to the Minister’s Supplementary Order Paper, but first I signal my disappointment in the speakers around the Chamber—not so much disappointment in the content of their speeches, but in the way they intend to vote on, particularly, the Minister’s Supplementary Order Paper.

There has been a lot of talk about stopgap measures, and about how the gazetting will cause a delay of 7 days before products need to be removed from shelves. In effect what we are doing through this Supplementary Order Paper is banning a substance that, at the moment, is legally available. I do not think there is any disagreement about the fact that children should not have access to substances of these kinds; they certainly should not. But if we are looking to find real solutions, we first need to look to completely rewrite the Misuse of Drugs Act more quickly than is being done, but also find a solution that is workable. We all know—and I have heard each of the members who have spoken so far say this on other occasions—that prohibition does not work.

My Supplementary Order Paper looks at this issue in a different way. It acknowledges the fact that adults in this country—those who are over 18 years of age—actually can make decisions for themselves. But it also puts in place pretty hefty measures to protect our young people. My Supplementary Order Paper proposes that “An age-restricted drug can only be sold to people over the age of 18.” Secondly, it puts in place the following penalties for breaching such an age restriction: retailers or distributers that breach the age restriction would face after their first offence a fine of $10,000; following a second offence they would face a fine of $25,000; and following a third and subsequent offences they would face a fine of $50,000. This is not chicken feed, and it sends a very strong signal to sellers and suppliers of Kronic-like substances—or any psychoactive substance, for that matter—that this is unacceptable behaviour.

There would also be compulsory closure of premises of retailers or distributors for 7 days following a third and subsequent offences. It acknowledges the fact that those who are deemed adults in this country—they can vote, they can get married, and they can be sent to war—are, in fact, the owners of their own lives and their own bodies.

There is a sense of déjà vu with this whole debate. I myself sat on the Health Committee when on a number of occasions we have looked at Misuse of Drugs Amendment bills—there have been a variety of them. I think particularly of the benzylpiperazine (BZP) debate. There was no regulation at first with BZP; it was freely available. We then decided that it should in fact have an R18 classification—it should be available only to those people who are 18 years of age and over. Then a bit further down the track we banned the substance completely. When it was banned there was, of course, as others have highlighted in the Committee, a raft or a wave of other, similar substances that did not have the BZP active ingredient in them, that quickly came to the fore. I see Mr Iain Lees-Galloway shaking his head. I am disappointed that he will not support my Supplementary Order Paper, because I have also heard him speak about how prohibition does not work.

The real point here is that when we ban or prohibit substances, it does not mean that people stop using them. What it means is that their use goes underground, and a black market builds—usually a thriving black market, which then heavily inflates prices—and becomes prevalent in our society. It actually removes the ability for proper enforcement of the laws we already have. Those very people whom we seek to protect—the under-18-year-olds; the children in our society—also have the ability, if they can find the money, which they very often can, to buy these substances on the black market themselves. Quite how National or Labour—they are the speakers we have heard from so far, but I suspect the other parties in this Chamber believe this too—believe this helps our young people and the dearth that drugs are in our society, I do not know. It is much better to have these things above board. How this helps them is beyond me.

I agree with the points that have been made by all speakers about a complete rewrite of the Misuse of Drugs Act. That is well overdue, and should be attended to very quickly. I do not agree with all of the provisions in the Law Commission’s report; I think the basic principles of adults being adults, and being responsible for their own actions and the consequences that come with those actions, should be much more prevalent, but protection of our young people is crucial. I think all psychoactive substances should be covered by new legislation. The same rules and regulations should apply to all. I put in this category—as we also have on our Order Paper in this Chamber—the alcohol reform debate. Alcohol and drugs—in my view, and in the ACT Party’s view—should be looked at in the same way.

Grant Robertson also raised the very pertinent issue of this being a health issue versus a crime issue. I agree entirely with the comments he made. I myself have talked a lot about the medicalisation versus the criminalisation of drug issues. Following a United Nations instigation over the past 40 years, we have dealt with this as a crime issue, when in fact in our society it is primarily a health one. I hope that when it comes to the rewrite of the Misuse of Drugs Act that is taken into consideration, and decision making and policy making are centred on that.

Mr Robertson also mentioned research and testing, and of course he is absolutely right. Although we have provisions in the Minister’s Supplementary Order Paper before us on the Table now, when we have gazetting that allows 7 days, it will become a 7-day race, make no bones about that—a 7-day race to get things on the Table before they are gazetted, and another 7 days to get them off the Table. Research and testing will never happen as it should. Therefore, the products that people will continue to buy, whether they are legally on shelves or bought on the black market, will never occur. So the problems our clinicians face at accident and emergency departments far too often, particularly on Friday and Saturday nights, will continue when they are trying to deal with drugs and they have, in many cases, no idea what the drug is or which active substances it contains.

Despite the fact that my Supplementary Order Paper has come to the Table very late in the day, I ask every party to carefully consider the provisions in it before they vote. They make sense; they allow for over 18-year-olds—adults who are responsible for themselves—to not be criminalised for buying these substances. It is much better to have them in the open, rather than underground in the black market scenario, yet it would still provide for the safety and security of our young people. The law would be enforceable and would be enforced in a pretty hefty way, with a $10,000 fine for the first offence, $25,000 for the second offence, and $50,000 for the third and subsequent offence. Retailers or distributors that breach the age restriction would face compulsory closure of their premises for 7 days following the third and subsequent offences.

The ACT Party will oppose the Minister’s Supplementary Order Paper, but I implore parties to think very carefully about the realities of the situations that exist. People know that the black market and driving this sort of activity underground are completely counter-productive in society. I implore them to think carefully about putting in place sensible measures that are enforceable and that get the incentives in the right place. Thank you.

Hon DAMIEN O’CONNOR (Labour) Link to this

Once again we find ourselves in the Chamber trying to deal with a very, very difficult issue—an issue that most of us probably feel somewhat compromised on. We continually contradict ourselves, I suggest, when it comes to the issue of drugs—well, if we are talking about mind-altering substances, I guess. How could any party oppose the Associate Minister of Health’s initiative? It is a very good one; it is a move to try to reduce the harm from a new substance on the market that has been identified.

Our young people in this country are somewhat confused, as well. If we make an assumption that it is mainly young people we are trying to protect from themselves and that they are the main buyers of these new products, in particular, then we have to ask whether we are giving them consistent messages through Parliament. We have numerous laws that state that young people cannot do this or should not do that, but then we tell them to be innovative and creative and to get on with their lives. No matter what we do in this Committee, in terms of banning substances, tomorrow people will be working on and creating new substances, because they are innovative and smart, and they want something new.

It is important that whatever legislation we pass here is flexible enough, and I think the Associate Minister’s attempt here is reasonable. At the Minister of Health’s discretion he can intervene and declare a new substance as something that can be investigated, and a temporary ban can be put on it. I think it is a good attempt, but if we are going to be consistent, then the only way that we will beat this over time is through decent education, so that people, be they young or old, know what they are consuming by smoking, sucking, drinking, or whatever. They need to know what the substance is, and there needs to be some resilience so that around them there is positive peer pressure to resist the consumer campaigns, or whatever, that will develop around new products that will come on to the market month upon month following the passage of this legislation.

I have heard that the Government is currently waiting to consider the Law Commission’s report and that there are a number of recommendations in the report—a reasonable number, 45 or something—

Dr JACKIE BLUE (National) Link to this

I am pleased to speak in the Committee stage of the Misuse of Drugs Amendment Bill and I certainly want to congratulate the Associate Minister of Health, the Hon Peter Dunne, on bringing in the Supplementary Order Papers on Part 1 that make provision for the temporary class drug orders, which are for these untested psychoactive drugs that have caused so much harm in our society—and the drug Kronic is the one that most people relate to. The legislation will effectively bring in a 12-month ban of these substances while they are assessed and tested.

I am pleased the Minister has moved swiftly; there has been growing concern mounting in the media and in our community about these untested products. They are not benign—that is for sure. We have certainly had a lot of reports of health problems: youth presenting to accident and emergency departments with difficulties with their health. Also, drugs such as Kronic have been found in the wreckages of cars in road accidents. So there definitely has been concern. It has been growing, it has been mounting, and I am pleased that the Minister has moved swiftly.

This law is expected to be in place by 5 August, which means that all 43 current products that are in this category will be off the shelves within the week. It means that they will be tested, looked at, and assessed over the following year. It is an interim measure. It is not meant to be a long-term solution, but we had to have an interim measure that was viable and workable, and this certainly is all of that. I am pleased that the Minister has made a comment that there will a more durable law in place sometime next year, but this will certainly be a stopgap measure and I applaud him for that.

It is important that we do get the eventual enduring law—one that will endure into the future—and it is important that we get it right, hence the 12-month pause to assess the situation, assess the drugs on the market, and take it from there. It would be too easy to have a knee-jerk reaction and bring in legislation that was not going to work, as has happened in other countries. I must admit I have been quite surprised—probably I should not have been too surprised—by the defiant attitude of the sellers and manufacturers of these substances. In the newspapers they are saying that they will just bring in new substances that will replace the ones that are banned. But I am also equally pleased that the Minister has been equally defiant, saying that if that happens, those substances will be gazetted just as quickly and put under temporary drug order bans.

This bill complements a suite of actions the Government has introduced to combat the effects of P—methamphetamine. This is just one part of the whole suite of actions. There is no doubt that P, methamphetamine, has had a devastating effect on our community and on individuals. It has wrecked lives, basically. Specifically, ephedrine and pseudoephedrine will now become class B drugs, which means they will be available on prescription and people can no longer buy them across the counter, as has been the case. We know that there are other alternatives to treat flu and colds. I am speaking of phenylephrine, which will be able to be bought across the counter. Of course, pseudoephedrine can still be a prescription medicine.

The Supplementary Order Papers the Minister has brought in send a very strong message to our community that we do not want our young people to be harmed by these untested psychoactive drugs and that they have no place whatsoever in our society. We want to reduce harm from these untested psychoactive drugs and I applaud the Supplementary Order Papers that the Minister has brought in, in a very timely way. Thank you.

KEVIN HAGUE (Green) Link to this

I will begin with some comment about clauses 4 and 6 of the Misuse of Drugs Amendment Bill. I reiterate the Green Party’s opposition to those clauses, which relate to utensils. We will be supporting Iain Lees-Galloway’s Supplementary Order Paper 260 to remove clause 4 from the bill. In respect of clause 6, which relates to pseudoephedrine, the evidence really points to the fact that the measure that is proposed in the bill will have little effect on its desired outcome, but there will be considerable cost and inconvenience to many.

The debate in this Committee stage has focused largely on the Minister’s Supplementary Order Paper, and I want to make some comments about that. The Green Party will be opposing the Supplementary Order Paper, but I will begin my comments about the Supplementary Order Paper by saying that we believe that it is ridiculous that psychoactive compounds, without any kind of safety testing, can reach retail shelves without any kind of control except for the provision that already exists in law for smokeable compounds to be restricted to people over the age of 18. That is absurd. I would think that probably everybody in the Chamber would agree with that. Therefore, something does need to be done about this problem in our law.

I also accept the point that Jackie Blue has just made that some of the synthetic cannabinoids, in particular, clearly do have harmful effects. There is an acceptance that there is some real harm. However, I make the point that these compounds have in fact been on our retail shelves not just over the past few weeks but for years. So the urgency that the Minister is being praised for in this situation seems to be misplaced.

There seems to me to be an opportunity to take a more considered approach, which is what the Green Party favours. I accept the point that I think Iain Lees-Galloway probably made most strongly in this debate that the public has reached the point of wanting to see something done. I suspect that that is what lies behind the urgency here. Although it is important that we are responsive to public mood, I am not sure that that is actually the most appropriate driver for this Parliament’s behaviour and decision making.

The point that I made in the second reading debate about the Minister’s Supplementary Order Paper I think still holds true. Members may recall that at that time I challenged the Minister to table his Supplementary Order Paper then, before the 2-week adjournment that this Parliament has just had. That would at least have enabled some form of truncated public process in order to enable members of the public to have a say about the Minister’s proposed approach to this issue.

The reality here is that all of those who made submissions on this bill, or perhaps chose not to make submissions, could not possibly have had the expectation that this Supplementary Order Paper would now be included in it. Here we are about to make a very serious decision on the basis of public concern without giving the public and other interested parties the opportunity to have a say about it. That is poor process, and it is one of the reasons why the Green Party will oppose the Supplementary Order Paper.

The Minister is right that it is important to get this right. He is right about that. But we think also that the formulation of this Supplementary Order Paper is wrong. This is not the right way to go about that task. The Green Party may have supported an approach that enabled these substances to be classified as restricted substances, according to the 2005 amendment to the Misuse of Drugs Act. However, this approach is wrong in several aspects, and I want to mention a couple of those. First of all, in the Associate Minister’s comments in this debate, he spoke about psychoactive substances, and we have all approached this debate on the assumption that that is what we are talking about. That is not what the Supplementary Order Paper states. The Supplementary Order Paper talks about any substance; it is not restricted to psychoactive substances, at all. For example, there is the substance sodium chloride. That is a substance. It meets the definition in the Supplementary Order Paper. I think most scientists would agree that it causes harm. This Supplementary Order Paper enables the Minister of Health to gazette a notice to actually prohibit that from sale. Is that what we want? I guess we would say that sodium chloride is not psychoactive. There is a psychoactive substance called C2H5OH, which is ethanol. Is it intended that the Supplementary Order Paper will be used for that? It certainly could be. Possibly it should be.

I think there are some very real issues about the definition of “substance”. There are some issues around how the Minister will go about the task of drawing the line and of determining the risk or possible risk to individuals or society. This Supplementary Order Paper places an awful lot of discretionary power with the Minister, with a political appointee, rather than with, say, the expert advisory committee. Is that the appropriate approach? The Supplementary Order Paper also has no sunset clause. We think those are three fundamental problems with the Supplementary Order Paper.

We do like the exemption that the Supplementary Order Paper contains for possession of small amounts. We believe that is a good start.

I want to conclude by referring to the Law Commission’s report, as others have done. I say that it is right that we take the appropriate amount of time to respond with all due haste to this. It may well not have been possible to fully respond to the report in the time available, but it surely would have been possible in the time available to enact the commission’s recommendations about this particular problem and to place the onus on manufacturers, importers, and suppliers to establish safety before a product can be made available for sale in New Zealand. That is what should have happened in this case.

NICKY WAGNER (National) Link to this

I rise to support the Misuse of Drugs Amendment Bill in its Committee stage. I want to look at Part 1 and at some of the things that we have not really talked about too much today. Obviously, this bill is designed to amend the existing legislation and to improve the effectiveness of drug control. But the main purpose of the bill, notwithstanding the Supplementary Order Paper, is to reclassify ephedrine and pseudoephedrine as a class B2 controlled drug. It also removes thalidomide as a class A controlled drug. It allows a hazardous substance to be scheduled also as a restricted substance. It extends the definition of amphetamine analogues, and it extends the controls over drug paraphernalia.

The reason we are reclassifying ephedrine and pseudoephedrine is designed to close off the local source of supply of precursor substance for the illegal manufacture of methamphetamine in the country. It is just another line of attack to support the Government’s determination to clamp down on P and to clamp down on the damage that it causes to New Zealand’s communities. At the same time as this bill being passed, the Government is also taking steps to break drug supply chains and to improve the availability of, and access to, drug treatments for addicts.

It was interesting that most of the submissions to the Health Committee considering this bill were about the drug utensils provision. Most were concerned that prohibiting drug utensils would not work because users would make their own implements—for example, they would use light bulbs for taking P and bits of plumbing hardware to make pipes for smoking. However, the majority of that select committee felt that the display of specifically redesigned drug-taking utensils in stores glamorised drug taking and attracted more users. It was interesting that this was a similar argument that was used about the display of cigarettes and tobacco products, which was banned by this House just a few weeks ago. Making it an offence to sell, supply, and import utensils will assist the anti-drug effort by ensuring the public receives a consistent message about the unacceptability of illegal drugs. I think a comment made in the Chamber tonight is that we want some consistency in this area.

There was also concern from submitters that if cold and flu preparations containing pseudoephedrine were available only by prescription, it would be unnecessarily expensive and inconvenient for patients to visit their doctor to get a prescription. However, the committee was reassured by Professor Sir Peter Gluckman that there are plenty of effective alternatives available, and I think we agreed with him that the risk of the diversion of pseudoephedrine-based products into the manufacture of methamphetamines outweighed the benefits of their over-the-counter availability. A more limited choice of cold and flu remedies was acceptable, in the interests of the public good.

I would like to move to the discussion on Supplementary Order Paper 258 and to support these amendments, which are in the name of the Hon Peter Dunne. The key to this is that it introduces temporary class drug notices. They can provide a temporary ban for unregulated psychoactive substances such as Kronic and other synthetic cannabis products, taking them off the market for 12 months. Although the risks of Kronic and other similar substances are unknown, there are real fears of potential long-term effects. It is unacceptable to the Government that a product that causes potentially lethal risks is available freely to young people.

Over the past few months there has been increasing evidence of the dangerous effects of these drugs, and, just like many members in the Chamber today, I have been approached by concerned parents, one of whom had had a near-death experience with their son, who had taken Kronic. It is very frightening for parents, but also for the community. Recently we have also seen contamination of these products with prescription medicines.

I think that these temporary class drug notices are a good interim measure and a precautionary approach that will get these products off the shelves now and for at least 12 months. But, as we have heard, the Government’s long-term aim is to implement the Law Commission’s recommendations to reverse the onus of proof and to require the industry to prove that its products are safe before they can be sold to the public. The current situation is that manufacturers can come up with a product like Kronic and, as long as it fits within the category and does not include illegal substances, it can be sold as of right. The Government believes that this needs to be changed, and it expects to introduce legislation to do this by the middle of next year. In the meantime, this Supplementary Order Paper 258 will be a well-received stopgap measure, and I thank the Minister for that.

KRIS FAAFOI (Labour—Mana) Link to this

Thank you very much, Mr Chairperson, for allowing me to have this opportunity to speak to Part 1 of the Misuse of Drugs Amendment Bill. Although the Labour caucus is supportive of both this bill and Supplementary Order Paper 258, which has been put forward by the Minister in the chair, the Hon Peter Dunne, one cannot help but think that the level of hype that has been afforded to this bill and the Supplementary Order Paper is a little above their station.

In relation to the Supplementary Order Paper that the Minister has put in front of us on the banning of synthetic cannabis, what mums and dads out there in New Zealand wanted to have was a consistent message from the Minister about what he was going to do about the likes of Kronic, but we have not had that. Although I congratulate the Minister on coming to a position, we have not had a consistent position for the last 4 months. Around 4 months ago, when the Minister was asked about the limited sale and advertisement of synthetic cannabis, what did we get from him? It was not the position that we see in the Supplementary Order Paper today; it was: “I have instructed the Ministry of Health to begin the process of putting the necessary controls in place. I expect these changes to come into effect next year.” There was not much urgency in that.

Just as mums and dads may have got a whiff of Kronic from their sons’ or daughters’ bedrooms or the garage, I think the Minister may have got a whiff of public sentiment and the public mood, and he decided that things had to move a little bit quicker than he had first anticipated. There was some movement on 3 June, when he was asked why he had not banned synthetic cannabis. The response then was that the evidence was not strong enough to go as far as doing that, and that he did not want to go down that path. But we have taken a step closer to that in the Supplementary Order Paper that is before the Committee now, and I think the mums and dads out there who are looking for a consistent message will be happy with that.

Just a month and a half ago, another question was asked about the Law Commission’s recommendations. The response from the Minister on that occasion was that the Government was “under certain statutory requirements and we have the complications of a general election occurring …”. I am glad that those complications have been sorted out since 17 June. Late yesterday afternoon, as this announcement was made, the message from the Minister, finally, was: “I felt we couldn’t wait. I wanted to make sure we had a mechanism that simply removes these items from our shelves completely.” So it took 4 months, but we got a result in the end. There has been inconsistent messaging regarding that, but we support the fact that this Supplementary Order Paper has been introduced to the Committee so that we finally have some form of action on the banning of synthetic cannabis. We support it, but how we got here leaves a few questions to be answered.

In terms of Part 1 of the bill, at the moment we believe that it will do no harm, but we think it could have gone further. Again, this is another instance where the hype might not exactly marry up with what is included in the bill. This bill looks to control ephedrine and pseudoephedrine in the Government’s war on P, but, as I said in a previous contribution on this bill, I think there is more of a fracas over P. It is not really a war on P. The Government is making huge capital out of it as it sends out its pamphlets about the war on P, but this bill itself does not take serious action. I think it is more about politics than taking serious action against P. I understand clause 4 includes—

MICHAEL WOODHOUSE (National) Link to this

I am very happy to take a call on the Misuse of Drugs Amendment Bill, a bill that was considered by the Health Committee when I was a member of it, although I am not a member now.

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

That was a pretty half-hearted speech from Michael Woodhouse, and I completely understand why. I absolutely understand why. It is because that member was a member of the Health Committee, he thinks about the issues, and he knows that the Misuse of Drugs Amendment Bill does very, very little to progress the issues that everyone in this Chamber cares passionately about. If this is the war on P, I do not think we have even got the pistol, let alone anything to truly deal with the drug problem in New Zealand. That member knows, because he sat on the select committee and listened to people saying: “You seriously want to ban the import of pipes, and you think that will do something? You seriously want to take flu tablets off the pharmacy shelves and you think that will fix anything?”. People were laughing at Associate Minister of Health Peter Dunne during the select committee process, because this really does not meet the standard that we should be debating.

I do not understand why this has gone backwards and forwards in the Hon Peter Dunne’s mind, until suddenly he had a complete change of heart—for the fourth time—and said we had to do something urgently, dramatically, and immediately, and he introduced this bill. It will not do any harm at all. It is taking up some of Parliament’s time, and that is all right; it is a valid part of democracy. But it certainly will not take the sort of action we need to deal with issues like P and Kronic. I am just disappointed. I thought the Minister had a bit more innovation within his portfolio mandate, but he does not seem to.

I read the Attorney-General’s comments with some concern. I am surprised that Minister Finlayson is not here to take a call and explain why he is now silent on the issue of concern he raised in relation to this bill. He said that by the Government taking cold and flu tablets off pharmacy shelves and making them prescription only, we are looking at a presumption of supply when purchasing those previously non-prescription medications. That presumption of supply, I think, is unfair on the overwhelming majority of New Zealanders who go into the chemist to buy their cold and flu tablets—guess why? It is because they have a bad cold or the flu and they want something immediate to deal with it. Why are those people now being required to buy something that may or may not be as effective as what they had been using, or to go to the doctor? That does not make a lot of sense.

Dr PAUL HUTCHISON (National—Hunua) Link to this

Thank you for the opportunity to speak on the Misuse of Drugs Amendment Bill. There are clearly two parts to the debate, with Supplementary Order Paper 258 in the name of the Associate Minister of Health the Hon Peter Dunne, but I will go back and address the major thrust of Part 1, which the Hon Ruth Dyson spoke about just recently.

I find it quite astounding that she discounts the domestic supply of amphetamine precursors. The Chief Science Advisor to the Prime Minister, Sir Peter Gluckman, pointed out in a very, very well-considered paper that the amphetamine market in New Zealand is worth about $1 billion, and that at least—at least—10 percent of that is due to the domestic market. The police recognise that it is probably in the area of 30 percent of the $1 billion, so it is worth somewhere between $100 million and $300 million. So when someone like the Hon Ruth Dyson discounts the importance of the domestic supply, it should be of great concern to any New Zealander.

There is no doubt that amphetamine and its precursors affect every stratum of New Zealand society. I made the point in debate on the second reading of this bill that in my electorate, in Pukekohe, there was a well-respected chemist in his 60s. He was an elder of the Presbyterian Church and a member of the Rotary club, and he did all sorts of very worthy things in our area. He was recently arrested for selling precursors to gangs over a long period of time. We do not know how he got involved, but I just illustrate that as one of the points that absolutely rebuts what Ruth Dyson is saying. The sale of precursors in New Zealand is deeply embedded in every stratum of New Zealand life. It is not just the importation of precursors from countries like China, but also involves, unfortunately, a roaring trade within New Zealand.

She also made the point of asking what about those poor New Zealanders with coughs and colds who want ready remedies. I am sympathetic to that; I do believe that the pseudoephedrine medication is perhaps slightly more effective than those containing phenylephrine. But there is no doubt that on prospective controlled trials, little difference is shown in terms of the way those medications relieve normal coughs, colds, and cases of the flu. Under this legislation pseudoephedrine medication is actually available under prescription. Yes, it will cost a little more—there is no question about that—but there is no doubt that very effective substitutes are available.

I will make some other comments relating to what Iain Lees-Galloway and Damien O’Connor were saying in relation to the synthetic cannabinoids. There is no doubt that one of the major problems about them is that the manufacturers will be continually thinking up new recipes to get around this sort of legislation. That has happened in the past, and it will happen in the future. I think we have all agreed that the Law Commission’s proposal is right and proper. However, there is absolutely no doubt in my mind that this Supplementary Order Paper is appropriate.

When Kevin Hague suggested that this was just a parliamentary knee-jerk reaction, I thought that was, again, absolutely inappropriate. We have seen right around the country corner dairies selling these synthetic cannabinoids in all sorts of different forms right in the faces of young New Zealanders. This has started to normalise these psychoactive drugs in the ethos of young New Zealanders, let alone New Zealanders right across the board.

Heather Roy claims that the Supplementary Order Paper will only drive the psychoactive drugs underground. That may be correct to a certain extent, but we now have a situation in New Zealand that certainly was not here 10 to 20 years ago. Those drugs are being sold all over the place, apparently legitimately. Mixed with a culture of alcohol and of binge drinking that we know prevails in New Zealand, they make quite a terrifying public health challenge that we just have to face.

It would be nice to be liberal if, indeed, a liberal approach worked. There is no doubt that the Law Commission’s suggestions about education, harm minimisation, and making sure that we have appropriate rehabilitation facilities are very important, but this Government wants to give absolutely clear messages about the harm of these substances to young New Zealanders. The great worry is that they may well become entrapped by the ruthless marketing that we have seen from these manufacturers.

I absolutely reject the views of the Hon Ruth Dyson, and I am very concerned about the views of Heather Roy when we have a situation of normalising many of these drugs for our young people in New Zealand.

Hon STEVE CHADWICK (Labour) Link to this

I really am not very pleased to take a call on the Misuse of Drugs Amendment Bill. We have been waiting for Supplementary Order Paper 258 from Minister Dunne since we last spoke on this in the House. I, like the Greens’ Kevin Hague, am pretty appalled to see a Supplementary Order Paper of this substance come before the Committee and not go out to the public of New Zealand for consultation. We hoped for better from the Minister responsible for drug use issues in New Zealand. This is too complex, and it has implications. The industry is already saying that it can see some loopholes in it, and that it will fill those loopholes very quickly. We are up against a very intelligent domestic industry here—and international industry—which will look at what is proposed, will move, and will find a way through this.

I think the classification of these substances as a temporary class drug, is a bit of a delay mechanism until the Minister can really get his head around an effective approach to banning these substances. I can see one temporary class drug being classified and sitting on a shelf for a year. The industry will quickly morph to change the product’s ingredients to another substance, and we will have another temporary class drug that is banned for another year. Officials will be chasing their tails to actually classify these temporary class drugs. They will be put on the shelf, then they will pull them out 1 year later to see how they will deal with them.

The whole process, I think, is a shambles. It is a shambles because the Minister, who usually rails about having a common-sense approach to everything, had the perfect mechanism before him. It was not the Misuse of Drugs Amendment Bill; it was the Law Commission’s report. I do not blame the officials in the Chamber here today. They are under instruction from Cabinet, of which Mr Dunne is a member, to fulfil the directions of Cabinet. I think this Government, under John Key’s leadership, has shown a pathetic crusade on drugs in this country. It is almost a light bulb issue, actually. It will be laughed at by the industry, and it will be laughed at, ultimately, by the manufacturers, suppliers, and importers of substances into this country. It will become a bit of a bête noire for this Government in the long term.

I cannot for the life of me understand why, when the ministry and the Minister had the Law Commission report, the Minister did not breathe through his nose, take the common-sense approach, and get drafted a proper, comprehensive approach to drug minimisation and drug harm in this country. He chose to ignore it. We now have this Misuse of Drugs Amendment Bill, which I think actually penalises the public.

We looked at the effect of ephedrine and pseudoephedrine when we were in Government, and Minister Dunne knows that. He was in Cabinet when we discussed, for goodness’ sake, the project of pharmacists in Rotorua, who said they would remove from the shelves those precursors and put them at the back of the chemist shop. That was a wonderful project. They let people know who came in to buy more than two packets that they would fax around other pharmacies to see whether that same person had been in to get substances from their chemist shops. If they had, they refused to sell them to that person. That was a sensible approach; it was a sensible approach that was supported by the Medical Association, the primary health organisations, the pharmacists, and the district health boards. That project would have worked if this Government had backed it up with a comprehensive new law in respect of the misuse of drugs. However, we got this legislation, and then we got this long-awaited Supplementary Order Paper from the Minister, which I think will not work, because, simply, it still does not put the right onus of proof on the manufacturers of these drugs.

I see that one of the members opposite has had to leave; she may be lucky enough to go and get her supply of medication without having to go to a pharmacist, and without having to go to a doctor for a prescription.

I absolutely agree with my colleagues who say that this will add another cost of living burden. National members may laugh at that. They fail to see that we are developing a society that is grossly inequality driven. For people to have to go to a doctor to get a prescription to then take to a pharmacist is a ridiculous cost to have—both a cost burden on general practitioners and a cost burden on pharmacists. I think that is crazy. I do not think it is a practical approach, at all.

This approach is from National, which railed against Labour’s cannabis inquiry. National said that it would do something comprehensive when it got into Government—absolutely comprehensive—and with Minister Dunne, it would also be sensible. Well, this legislation is not sensible, and it is not comprehensive. It is a half-hearted attempt to look good about drugs.

We in this Committee all agree that we have to do something about the industry suppliers, who are very, very clever—very, very clever. It is interesting to see today that they have already said there are loopholes in this Minister’s Supplementary Order Paper. The legislation gives them some wriggle room, and they will find the loopholes. How silly it is to be reactive in drug law and drug legislation! We will suffer for this until we enact all of the recommendations of the Law Commission report—not just one.

I will speak very briefly on Iain Lees-Galloway’s Supplementary Order Paper 260, which I totally support. I think that clause 4, about the restriction of drug utensils, is absolutely ridiculous. If the Minister really knew how this industry worked, he would know that the people who use drugs will make their own utensils. They do not have to go and buy them. They know how to make something out of nothing. These people use teaspoons, bits of wire, and anything they have at hand. So we absolutely support the Supplementary Order Paper of Iain Lees-Galloway. The Minister’s provision will do nothing to stop the impact of pseudoephedrine and ephedrine use in this country.

We all loathe the drug P. Every member in this Committee loathes the drug, but we were sincerely looking forward to this Government coming up with a solution that would not bring us back to the House. I swear that when there is a change of Government we will be back, and we will fix this, as Labour is always being asked to do—to fix up the messes of a National Government. We will do it properly, and we will do it comprehensively. We would never bring a Supplementary Order Paper of such substance to the Committee without first taking it out for consultation with the wider public of New Zealand.

I also agree with what Ruth Dyson was saying about this legislation. The Bill of Rights issue that Chris Finlayson commented on makes a bit of a nonsense, again, of the Government and its approach to presumption of supply. I would have thought that around the Cabinet table Ministers would listen to the Attorney-General on the Bill of Rights issues. Thank you.

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

A certain naivety is creeping into some of the speeches we are hearing from members opposite. On the one hand they are saying to us not to rush but to take this sensibly—to take a deliberative approach. On the other hand, they are saying that because these people are very cunning and will find every loophole imaginable, we should go out there and consult widely. There is an inconsistency of monumental proportions in that position. To suggest that because the people in the synthetic drug industry are cunning and will find loopholes wherever they can find them, we should have gone out and consulted them about how we developed this legislation is clearly absurd. I signalled at the second reading stage of this bill that an amendment would be coming. It would have been simply daft of me to go out there at that stage, trail it around the country, and get every synthetic drug manufacturer in the country to work out the way to get around it. How can Opposition members be so naive? That is the reality of the situation.

We do face a serious problem, and I concur with them on that point. But we have to have solutions that work. To some extent Mr Grant Robertson was right when he said at the beginning that this would be a cat and mouse game. I said that yesterday myself, because that is the reality. But we have to have the tools to do the job, and this amendment will give us that capacity. It was interesting to watch the reaction of industry members, because they clearly were not expecting an amendment of this type. It will curtail their activities very, very strongly indeed, which is in line with the public sentiment, and in line with what we have been seeking to do right from the outset.

Let me turn to the issue of the methamphetamine campaign. Again, the same naivety applies. We know that a substantial amount of the pseudoephedrine that comes into New Zealand to be used as a methamphetamine precursor comes in illegally across the border, through a whole range of subterfuges. We also know that a certain amount was being made available in the way that will now be made illegal by this bill: through pharmacies. It was logical to do two things. Firstly, it was logical to cut off that obvious chain of supply, and that is what this bill will do by bringing in the ban. Secondly, at the same time my colleagues the Minister of Customs and the Minister of Police have dramatically increased the resources available to their departments, and we are starting to see significant increases being made in the seizures of illegal product. The change in terms of the outlawing of pseudoephedrine in pharmacies allows us to concentrate more resource on the much more difficult area of targeting the illegal importations. That is entirely as it should be, in terms of the campaign against this particular item.

It is worth reporting to the Committee that I went to the United Nations convention on drugs meeting in Vienna in March, and New Zealand was asked to give a presentation there on our methamphetamine campaign, because it is seen as world leading. Over 200 delegates from a range of nations, including President Obama’s self-named drug tsar, and other leading officials like the president of the European Commission came to our session to learn what New Zealand is doing in that area, and to congratulate us on the initiatives we were taking. So on the one hand we are seen by the international community as having a cutting edge policy, but on the other hand we come back to this Chamber and are seen by the Opposition as being too slow, doing too little, and being too ineffectual. We cannot have it both ways. I would far rather take the view of the international experts—the people who are seeking New Zealand’s advice on how to deal with this issue—than the view of the Opposition members who are here carping today. This bill makes substantive progress in both orders.

Let me make one other point before I sit down. Steve Chadwick, the member who just resumed her seat, said we should have enacted the Law Commission report. The Law Commission’s report came out at the end of May. There are about 170 recommendations in it altogether, some of—

JACINDA ARDERN (Labour) Link to this

After all that anticipation, it is my pleasure to respond, I guess, straight after the contribution from the Minister in the chair, Associate Minister of Health Peter Dunne, although I thought he was slightly overzealous in his rebuttal of the Opposition’s argument. We acknowledge the need to take action on the issue of synthetic drugs in particular, but our concern—and I tell the Minister that it is fair for us to express that concern—is whether the Misuse of Drugs Amendment Bill is the most appropriate way to deal with this particular industry.

We have some questions that I hope the Minister will address in his next response. First, as some of the members have already raised, was the possibility of reversing the onus feasible? I would be interested to hear, via the Minister and via officials, whether waiting for products to enter the market and then gazetting them and taking them off the shelves was the most efficient and best way to minimise harm that we could have opted for. Is there any scope or international precedent for reversing the onus before a product goes to market in this area? I think that is a legitimate question. It is unfair that the Minister has labelled some of our questions as naive rather than addressing them directly, so I would be interested in his response.

I have just been reading through the Minister’s Supplementary Order Paper 258, and I think it is legitimate for the Opposition to ask whether there could have been more time for analysis of such a hefty Supplementary Order Paper. I am interested in whether the Minister could share with us, based on that Supplementary Order Paper, the kind of time frame. From the moment a new product goes to market, what kind of time frame might it take for a Minister, by notice in the Gazette, to specify a substance, preparation, mixture, or article as a temporary class drug? How long would a synthetic product be available on the market before we are able to get through that process? Have officials looked at the kind of harm that possibly would be done in the intervening period, and how much of that synthetic product could be purchased?

Finally, I wonder whether the Minister could talk us through some of the criteria—which could be deemed to be subjective; I am sure some more in-depth analysis probably has been done around the issue—of whether a product poses a risk of harm to individuals or to society. What kinds of criteria are used here? Is it broad enough to ensure that we are picking up all of the products that Parliament intends we pick up?

I say to the Minister that this is a genuine concern for us. I walk through the area in which I live, and there are a small handful of retailers who sell Kronic. I make a point every time I see it of going in and asking them why they sell it, and whether they perceive that it is beneficial to the community—which they operate in, which they live in, and in which they do their business—for them to be peddling such a product. I have to acknowledge I get a very coy response every time. One shop owner promised me: “Ma’am, I will take the product off by next week.”, before I said I would come in and do my own spot check again. But this is the extent to which we are going as individuals who have concerns about these products, in lieu of being able to react quickly. I acknowledge that the Minister is trying to do that. I question only whether there is another way that we could have responded.

The Minister also mentioned the fact that New Zealand is held in high regard internationally for the way in which we deal with these issues. I would still say, though, that, in comparison more broadly with the drug debate, very few countries are currently in step with what the UN Global Commission on Drug Policy has recommended. I have to say that the commission’s paper really broached some subjects that the New Zealand Law Commission has broached as well. To date, many countries have stood back from, and have been very reluctant to adopt, a full harm-minimisation approach. I would be really interested to hear the Minister’s view on some of that international discussion that has gone on at a UN level, because, from my perspective, New Zealand is quite out of step with what that commission has recommended.

In my first contribution on this bill I told the House that many years ago I sat in on a presentation given by a Hawaiian expert on the issue of methamphetamine—the drug that has become a scourge in New Zealand. It was clear, at that point, that this was a very different drug we were dealing with, primarily because of the ability for it to be manufactured domestically. So often in New Zealand we perhaps have been saved by our borders, but not in the case of methamphetamine. We are suffering as a consequence. Of course, the public looks to Parliament to respond to that scourge, and our question has to be whether we have done all that we could do.

One thing that the Labour Opposition has been asking for is some of the evidence around the various measures around tools, in particular, but also evidence on whether requesting that people get a general practitioner prescription in order to get drugs with pseudoephedrine from a pharmacist will have the full impact on this industry that Parliament would intend. It seems clear from the Health Committee report, which I read with some interest, that the Ministry of Health, in particular, was not able to quantify the knock-on effect of this policy. We were not able to financially estimate what kind of cost it would have for consumers.

I acknowledge that of course we want to do all we can around methamphetamine, but also we must take it upon ourselves to take an evidence-based approach. Surely that is the expectation of the public as well: not only that we do as much as we can, but that we base it all on evidence. I am yet to be convinced from what I have seen come out of the select committee that enough work was done on this particular area.

Let us not underestimate the impact that it will have on consumers. I appreciate the remarks that were made by Dr Paul Hutchison on the alternatives that exist. Of course, I unfortunately am able only to rely on my own anecdotal evidence of having found some of the replacements for pseudoephedrine to be mere placebos, in my mind. I do not think there is anything that quite does the job of a pseudoephedrine. My concern is that when we are trying to take a preventative approach, and at the same time trying to ensure that as many people as possible do not have to go through the cost of visiting a general practitioner for something that is usually easily manageable, we have not weighed up the burden of cost in that regard, and that is most unfortunate.

Looking at the issue of evidence but also coupling that with the new modern notion—when it comes to drug law—of harm minimisation, I would have been incredibly interested to see that Parliament probably would say that in terms of harm to society, the cost of methamphetamine, of course, is high, and the cost of alcohol is high. But let us look, in terms of the relative spend in society on police time and on police resources, at how much is spent on methamphetamine versus, say, cannabis. How many people are imprisoned in our country for minor cannabis offences versus methamphetamine offences? What resource are we spending on the drugs that do the most harm to our communities, relative to others? I just throw that up as something that we should be having more debate over. Parliament probably spends a relatively larger amount of time on the issues that cause the greatest harm—alcohol and methamphetamine—but is that reflected in the way that we are operating on a day-to-day basis via our law enforcement and via our imprisonment regimes?

I think it is a legitimate question to ask, and that ultimately is why the UN Global Commission on Drug Policy has started questioning whether our emphasis is in the right areas. If we are going to look at international evidence, I think we should start with those trends. If we are going to be world leading, that is the kind of response we need to be giving. It is bold, and the community will need reassurance that we are still doing all of this in the best interest of our communities, but at the moment we have to acknowledge that we are failing, and we are failing abysmally. That is not to say that we cannot continue to use the tools that we have and do as much as we can. But, again, it needs to be evidence-based, and on this particular area, on these two issues contained in Part 1—the issue of tools and utensils, and requiring a prescription in order to purchase pseudoephedrine—I am not convinced these are the big hitters that we need in order to crack the methamphetamine issue in New Zealand, which ultimately must be the aim of this Parliament.

JO GOODHEW (Junior Whip—National) Link to this

I move, That the question be now put.

Hon RICK BARKER (Labour) Link to this

I have two questions that I would like to put to the Minister in the chair, Associate Minister of Health the Hon Peter Dunne—if the Minister has finished his texting.

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

I wondered whether the Minister in the chair, the Associate Minister of Health Peter Dunne, would respond to the Hon Rick Barker’s questions, but maybe he needs a little time, and I am prepared to help him take that time.

I come to my own Supplementary Order Paper 260 on clause 4, but before I do that I will respond to Heather Roy and briefly set out why Labour will oppose her Supplementary Order Paper 261. Although, to be fair, she is absolutely right in saying that I have expressed the view in this Chamber that prohibition has its limitations, I think what Heather Roy is proposing will, first of all, not change the status quo very much. Secondly, it will allow for the continued commercialisation, I suppose, of these products. Even if one has concerns about the effectiveness of prohibition as a mechanism of controlling drugs, it is also true that the over-commercialisation of substances is of equal concern.

Heather Roy has proposed that these drugs can be sold only to people over the age of 18. In fact, the status quo is that most of these substances already have an R18 restriction on them. That does not come about because they are psychoactive substances; it comes about because the vast majority of them can be smoked, and therefore they fall under the purview of the Smoke-free Environments Act and have an R18 restriction on them. For the overwhelming bulk—and probably just about all the substances that we are really focusing on here—the notion of introducing an R18 restriction makes no difference to the current situation.

What it does not do, of course, is get these products out of dairies and out of sight. A concern for everyone, I suppose, in this Chamber—except for the ACT Party, perhaps—is that substances such as Kronic are heavily marketed at the point of sale. When we go into a dairy or some liquor stores these days we see a lot of that advertising. There is a tobacconist in my electorate in Palmerston North whose outside wall now seems to be completely covered in Kronic advertising, so it is still well and truly on display. We know for a fact that even though these substances are already R18, young people under the age of 18 are able to get their hands on them. There is no real effect of that proposal, and still there is the issue of the advertising and commercialisation of the substance. As a number of us have said, although we do not think that what the Minister is suggesting is ideal or that the process is ideal, it is a useful stopgap measure in the interim whilst we get this issue sorted out and come up with something more permanent and sustainable.

On the issue of pipes and other utensils, and the amendment that I have put up to have clause 4 removed, this is a matter of harm minimisation. We are supporting the measures in this bill that support the minimisation of harm. Some of them, we argue, will do very little to minimise harm, but they will do something; others we support because we think they will do more to minimise harm. But further restricting access to drug utensils will do absolutely nothing to minimise harm.

I refer to the comments made by Nicky Wagner, who compared this measure to the recent ban on point-of-sale tobacco advertising. Of course, what we did not do when we got rid of tobacco advertising was get rid of the ability to display tobacco smoking pipes, for instance. In fact, when I put up my own bill to deal with the tobacco display issue, the Attorney-General said that getting rid of tobacco smoking utensils was too great a contravention of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act to be allowed. So the consistent approach—and Nicky Wagner sought a consistent approach—is not to get rid of the ability to display these drug utensils. Nicky Wagner made the argument that it somehow glamorises drug use. But, actually, these utensils offer a mechanism by which the harm—

DAVID BENNETT (National—Hamilton East) Link to this

I move, That the question be now put.

DAVID CLENDON (Deputy Musterer—Green) Link to this

I seek leave to change the Green Party vote in respect of Mr Lees-Galloway’s amendment on Supplementary Order Paper 260 to nine votes in favour, and the Hon Chris Carter’s vote to one vote in favour.

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

Part 2 of the Misuse of Drugs Amendment Bill contains clauses 12 and 13. These clauses deal with amendments to the 2005 amendment to the Misuse of Drugs Act. Essentially, clauses 12 and 13 amend section 31 of the Misuse of Drugs Amendment Act 2005 by repealing “Paragraph (b)(v) of the definition of substance” so that hazardous substances as defined in section 2(1) of the Hazardous Substances and New Organisms Act 1996 are no longer excluded from the definition of “substance” for the purposes of the 2005 amendment Act. That essentially means that at the current time a substance cannot fall under both the Misuse of Drugs Act and the Hazardous Substances and New Organisms Act, but this change allows substances to be able to come under the purview of both Acts.

I suppose, to be honest, this was not a part of the bill that attracted an awful lot of attention from submitters to the Health Committee. In fact, only three of the submitters at the select committee referred to clause 13, and nobody referred to clause 12. One was in favour of clause 13 and two were opposed. Those who were opposed to clause 13 were concerned that this provision would give the Environmental Risk Management Authority the ability to regulate substances listed in the schedules of the Misuse of Drugs Act. Submitters were, I suppose, concerned that the Environmental Risk Management Authority lacks expertise in this area, and would apply unduly strict criteria with high barriers to entry, which would mean that no legal products would meet the requirements to be approved as being safe.

I suppose that is very much part of the debate we have been having about how to actually determine that a product is safe, and how new substances are to be determined to be safe. However, that is not actually what this change does. Clause 13 does not propose to give the Environmental Risk Management Authority the ability to regulate psychoactive substances. Rather, the clause seeks to remove the exclusion that a hazardous substance cannot also be a restricted substance under the Misuse of Drugs Act. I suppose, given that that is the case, in fact what is actually occurring is probably in line with what the submitters would have liked to see. Essentially, the provision just smoothes the path for substances to be able to come under the purview of both of these Acts.

Under the Hazardous Substances and New Organisms Act a substance is “any element, defined mixture of elements, compounds, or defined mixture of compounds, either naturally occurring or produced synthetically, or any mixtures thereof:”, and I suppose that is exactly what Kronic, Dream, Spice, and the other synthetic cannabis products are. They are products that are made up of both synthetic and naturally occurring substances. From that point of view, that is the sort of thing that some submitters were concerned about: that in trying to establish whether something like Kronic is actually safe to come to market, if it had fallen under the Hazardous Substances and New Organisms Act, then that might not have been the most appropriate way to determine the safety of such a substance. Of course, that is not what clause 13 does. The submitters can rest assured that that is not actually how the system will work. In fact, we do not know exactly how the system will work at the moment, but that is for the Minister to work on, hopefully with some speed, to come up with a solution to that question.

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

I acknowledge the member who has just resumed his seat, Iain Lees-Galloway. I am tempted to say his explanation of what has actually happened is far too charitable. He tried to imply a degree of rationality in the processes that led to this change. In fact, what we are doing is correcting a cock-up; let us put it as bluntly as that.

When the Hazardous Substances and New Organisms Act was passed a change was made that meant that, in effect, a substance designated as a hazardous substance under the hazardous substances and new organisms legislation could thenceforth not be designated as a restricted substance under the Misuse of Drugs Act. Some arguments were advanced at the time that things should be dealt with under their own particular bits of legislation. I have been back to have a look at the Health Committee’s report from 2005. It had in mind keeping things like ordinary commercial or household products that are also psychoactive, such as butane gas, from being further brought under the control of the restricted substances framework. It overlooked, of course, that the consequence of being very specific in that area effectively made the restricted substances regime unworkable. So, we had a situation in which we have had the capacity to designate substances as restricted substances for some time, but until this amendment is passed it has actually not been possible to do so, given the almost countervailing provisions of the Hazardous Substances and New Organisms Act.

Although I appreciate the very lucid explanation given by the member who spoke earlier, and his charity in trying to apply some logic to the position that had developed, I think it is fair to say this is a technical amendment to clear up a mistake that was made way back in 2005. The mistake was not actually seen at that time as significant, because the rationale was actually about a different category of products. It was only when we started to look at a range of substances like the Kronics of this world, for instance, that we realised there was actually a problem, and that needs to be corrected. That is what this amendment does. It is very straightforward, and, as I say, I do not think it need delay the Committee for any great period of time. I appreciate and acknowledge the member’s very kind summary of the situation when he could have been far more vicious.

KRIS FAAFOI (Labour—Mana) Link to this

Taloha ni, Mr Chair. I thank the Minister in the chair, the Hon Peter Dunne, very much for being so frank about the motivation behind this part. I do not want to take up a hell of a lot of time in terms of speaking to Part 2 of the Misuse of Drugs Amendment Bill, but for those who are tuning in—and I think there actually will be quite a few people interested in this bill, given the relevance of the announcement made yesterday—there are some clarifications we want to seek.

While they are being sought, we thought it might be useful just to reinforce what my colleague Iain Lees-Galloway has said, and just to lay out exactly what Part 2 pertains to. It amends the Misuse of Drugs Amendment Act 2005 in just two technical clauses. Clause 13 repeals the definition of “substance” in section 31 of the 2005 Act, which claims that a substance “(a) means any mixture, preparation, or article that is manufactured for the primary purpose of being administered, ingested, inhaled, or injected in order to induce a psychoactive response; but (b) does not include any … (v) hazardous substance (as defined in section 2(1) of the Hazardous Substances and New Organisms Act 1996):”. Referring to that Act, under section 2(1), a hazardous substance means “unless expressly provided otherwise by regulations, any substance—(a) with 1 or more of the following intrinsic properties: (i) explosiveness: (ii) flammability: (iii) a capacity to oxidise: (iv) corrosiveness: (v) toxicity (including chronic toxicity): (vi) ecotoxicity,”. I am no scientist, as I have pointed out before in the debate on the Royal Society of New Zealand, but I know that that is definitely one of the clauses in the Act.

I guess when we are talking about substances that have those properties and we want to correct “a cock-up”—a direct quote from the Minister—

STUART NASH (Labour) Link to this

I would just like to make a comment. I have mentioned this before in the Chamber, but I would like to reiterate it. I was speaking to an old member of Parliament—sorry, a member of Parliament who had been here a while ago—who is older than Mr Chair Robertson, of course, and we were talking about the Committee stage. I bemoaned the fact that during the Committee stage what was happening was that Labour members were putting a lot of questions out there. I felt that the vast majority were relevant to the Minister in the chair, and the Minister in the chair at the time was just sitting there reading, and not even taking any notice whatsoever.

But do I note that whenever Associate Minister of Health the Hon Peter Dunne—and I would like to commend him on this—is sitting in the chair, whether it is on a tax bill or this sort of health bill, if Labour members ask questions or make comments, he always stands up and addresses the questions or comments. Some of them are rather banal, I must admit, but he always addresses them, and I think that is in the true spirit of the parliamentary process. It just shows that the Minister has been around for a while. He respects the House, even if sometimes we are in major disagreement with regard to some of the policies that he advocates. I would like to thank the Minister for doing that, because I think it is in the true spirit of what the Committee stage is about—absolutely.

As everyone said, in rather unparliamentary terms—I am surprised, Mr Chair, being the stickler that you are for process, that you have not pulled up members for the use of the word “cock-up”—