Chadwick Steve: Misuse of Drugs (Medicinal Cannabis) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Chadwick Steve: Misuse of Drugs (Medicinal Cannabis) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:655;Page:4862] 
Hon STEVE CHADWICK (Labour) 
: 
 I am pleased to take a call because I think members’ days are particularly interesting days. It is great to see the number of members who have come down to the House on this issue which has made some of them sit in their seats and squirm a little bit. I thank them for coming down and listening to the debate because often the debate changes people’s perspective and their point of view on this issue. 
As our health spokeswoman Ruth Dyson said I chaired the cannabis inquiry in 2003. It was quite a different inquiry then. It was an inquiry into the public health strategies related to cannabis use and the most appropriate legal status. But we did have a recommendation back to the Government—and Labour was in Government at that time—that cannabis is among a number of substances that we should look at for medicinal use. We got a response from the Government to say that this work was under way and we were closely watching what was happening in the UK at that time with a pharmaceutical preparation. It was great to know that ultimately that has come into the country and patients can be prescribed Sativex. 
We have heard tonight about how complex that process is for patients and how expensive it is for them. I will definitely support this bill being referred to the Health Committee tonight. I think is it is a poorly written bill but I know from previous bills that have been before the Health Committee that good members on the committee who are not pharmaceutical experts but politicians in the House listen to evidence that comes before the select committee and can turn around an improper and rather clumsy bill to make it so much better. 
I want to point out two issues in schedule 4. People have expressed surprise at how some of these conditions are seen to benefit from medicinal cannabis and the therapeutic use of cannabis. I am the national patron for a terrible condition called Guilain-Barre syndrome where patients are paralysed but suffer the most extensive pain that is cruel to watch. Some of those patients are paralysed but suffer dreadful pain and are unable to go on opiate derivatives because it depresses their respiratory tract and that is of extreme danger to them. Some of those patients have mentioned that cannabis has helped them enormously to get through that terrible acute pain phase. The same applies to those with multiple sclerosis who get terrible spasms of their body and find it hard to find another pharmaceutical drug that helps them so much. It also applies to amputees who get phantom pain and after the amputation are screaming with pain in a limb that is no longer there. Pain clinics struggle to find some sort of pain relief for those people yet we have a product that those who have used cannabis say has completely taken away those acute pain symptoms that give them no quality of life. 
We are not medical experts in this House. But I did like the now sponsor of the bill Metiria Turei saying that as politicians we should show some compassion and that we should also look at alternatives. We have Sativex and that is great but we should also be doing the right thing for the public of New Zealand. I believe in the principle as David Garrett said of taking this to a select committee. I say to Mr Garrett that we find some strange bedfellows in some debates. 
I think as well that this raises issues in relation to the need to review drug law and drug policy. This country is calling out for a comprehensive review of drug policy. I am glad we will receive the Law Commission report. 
If we deny the public of New Zealand the opportunity to submit on a bill like this we close down community conversations. We close down raising public awareness of an issue that in this case I do not believe is a wedge issue as some members have said tonight to legalise marijuana. It is nothing to do with that.