King Annette: Psychoactive Substances Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeKing Annette: Psychoactive Substances Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 09 April 2013. Volume:689;Page:9137. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon ANNETTE KING (Labour—Rongotai): I am pleased to rise and support the Psychoactive Substances Bill because it does one very significant thing: it regulates unregulated psychoactive substances—in other words party pills and legal highs. It does that by shifting the onus of responsibility to the manufacturers who will now have to demonstrate that the substance that they are putting into the market poses no more than a low risk and they must do that before the substances go on the shelves and into the pockets and the parties and clubs and pubs around New Zealand. That makes sense. Why should New Zealanders not know that a substance that they are going to take is as far as possible a low risk to them? We expect that with our pharmaceuticals. We expect that with our food. Why would we not expect that from party pills and other substances?You see I believe that many New Zealanders had no knowledge of the effect of party pills on them they had no knowledge of the content of them and in many cases they were playing Russian roulette with substances that they were taking. The substances were being sold—some of them—by people who were more interested in making a fast dollar than they were in the quality of the product that they were providing to young New Zealanders in particular.Mike Sabin: Fast millions of dollars.Hon ANNETTE KING: Yes as the member across said making millions of dollars out of these products. We expect high-quality standards for products that are sold in New Zealand. These substances should not be exempt from that. So it is a good bill as far as it goes.But I agree with my colleague Iain Lees-Galloway that there was a chance to completely overhaul the Misuse of Drugs Act 1975. It is an old Act it is out of date and there was an opportunity to do a proper overhaul of this Act. The Government did start long enough ago so that this could happen but it failed to. Work was done by the LawCommission but only one of its recommendations has been picked up. It seems to me that this is almost a repeat of the Government’s response to the Law Commission’s report on alcohol reform. That work—that tremendous work—done by the Law Commission would normally provide a bill as well but it was stopped by the previous Minister of Justice and then the new Minister of Justice picking the eyes out of the alcohol reform report from the Law Commission and in my view not taking the comprehensive approach that was needed to make major changes to alcohol legislation. I was very interested to hear on the television yesterday members of the New Zealand Police and the judiciary—a judge in New Zealand—saying that we have not gone far enough with alcohol reform. So I am concerned that we have not taken the opportunity to do a major rewrite of the Misuse of Drugs Act.It is a lost opportunity. Everybody knows that the law has not kept pace with the rapidly changing environment that we have in this area. As the member Paul Hutchison has just said the ability to produce one of these substances and then quickly change it by adding something else to it has meant that it has been very hard for the legislation we have to keep up with it. So in March last year Iain Lees-Galloway called for urgent action. We are talking over a year ago when he was calling for urgent action particularly in unregulated synthetic cannabis. So what the Government did at that time was to put in place an interim measure to ban new substances for 12 months. Now we are at this stage where we are having to race to pass legislation.You see this whole process started in July 2007 under the previous Labour Government. We invited the Law Commission to review the Misuse of Drugs Act in response to concerns that the safety of substances that people were taking was not required before sale. As is well known the Law Commission carried out a first-principles review and in that first-principles review it took into account issues such as international obligations and in February 2010 it published its issues paper. It then went through quite an extensive public consultation process. There was some targeted consultation but also public consultation and I believe there were over 3800 submissions to the work that was done by the Law Commission. In May 2011 the final report of the Law Commission was tabled in this House. That is almost 2 years ago and the urgent need to do something was known back in 2007.The Law Commission identified two key issues. One was that there was little or no control over potentially harmful psychoactive substances in the ingredients in the dose in the place of sale or in the purchase age—quite fundamental things I would have thought. There was little or no control over it—what was in it what the dosage was they were taking where it could be sold or the purchase age. The second issue that it identified was that the onus is on the Government to identify that substances are available and then to determine whether they are harmful before placing restrictions on them. In September 2011 the Government responded to the Law Commission. As we know here we are now quite a long time later.So what is the objective of the bill that we have? It is to develop a regime capable of dealing with the rapidly evolving market in psychoactive substances balancing the risk of harm to individuals in society with the demand for access to such substances—and let us face it; there is a demand for such substances. Maybe in the 1950s and 1960s it was Rochdale cider; today there is a demand for party pills and other substances. What they say—Shane Ardern: Taranaki Bitter.Hon ANNETTE KING: Taranaki Green? Well I have never heard of that I have to say. This regime is what this bill does. It provides a mechanism for effectively regulating the psychoactive substances before they reach the market. It provides public confidence about the risk profile of these substances. It places controls on theavailability of psychoactive products including purchase age and also place of sale. It places controls over the product’s contents—the dose the potency and so on. So it does have quite a number of parts to the bill in terms of what it wants to do.When you read the regulatory impact statement you see it was prepared for Cabinet and it was given four options to address the two problems that the Law Commission identified which I have just mentioned. It has agreed on the approach that is in this bill. There are several things that this bill also does. It sets up the Psychoactive Substances Regulatory Authority and the Psychoactive Substances Expert Advisory Committee. The authority itself is going to be the Director-General of Health. It also establishes the expert advisory committee and it is going to be its job its main function to evaluate the psychoactive substances and products and then to advise the authority as to whether these products should be approved for use by individuals. The members of that advisory committee are appointed by the authority after consultation with the Minister who will be responsible for the administration of the bill.There is also a licensing regime and there is part of that I would like to mention. My colleague mentioned there is no requirement for a licence at the retail end. I would also like to ask what happens if these substances are produced overseas and then imported. I ask because the bill requires the authority to issue a code of practice for the manufacture of psychoactive substances and the authority may conduct an audit of the manufacturing facility where the substance has been manufactured. If they have been manufactured in another country how is that going to happen? What resources are going to be put in place for the authority to be able to travel to another country to check out the manufacturing of these substances? The bill also provides for appeals so it enables an appeal committee to determine whether the decisions of the authority for licensing and approval are correct. There are also put in place offences when there are unapproved psychoactive substances on the market—quite a hefty fine. So it is comprehensive. It could have had more in it but we will support this bill. It is good as far as it goes.