Lees-Galloway Iain: Psychoactive Substances Bill — Second ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeLees-Galloway Iain: Psychoactive Substances Bill — Second Reading[Sitting date: 27 June 2013. Volume:691;Page:11392. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY (Labour—Palmerston North):It is a pleasure to rise and speak in the second reading of the Psychoactive Substances Bill. Can I welcome the new Minister Todd McClay to the debate on this issue and can I suggest to him that the process and the thinking behind this piece of legislation were far superior than for some of the legislation that he promoted in the House as a private member. I hope he learns from this experience because this is the way to go Minister. I really also—Hon Trevor Mallard: That’s not a high test.IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY: It is not a high test no. I also ought to recognise the Hon Peter Dunne who is the architect of this legislation who steered it through its first stages in the House and who steered it from its genesis as a set of recommendations out of the Law Commission report to becoming legislation. It is good to see Peter Dunne in the House this evening.Can I say thank you very much to colleagues on the Health Committee. I have to say barring a couple of process issues—and I do need to reflect on those—the constructive approach that all members of the select committee took to this legislation was encouraging. It is the sort of thing that I wish the New Zealand public could actually get to see more often. I want to acknowledge particularly Paul Hutchison and Scott Simpson from the National Party side who really worked hard to improve this bill. I think it has come back to the House in much better shape than it was in when it went to the select committee.I did say there were a couple of process issues and I do need to just briefly reflect on those. The first is the fact that we had such a short time frame at the select committee to deal with this bill. It has been said by the Government that that was in order to have the legislation enacted as quickly as possible and to have it enacted before the expiry of the temporary ban notices that were placed on some of the psychoactive products. It is true that that is necessary. However we did not need to curtail the select committee process; we simply needed to get this legislation to the House much sooner than we did. In fact because the Law Commission reported its recommendations over 2 years ago there has been plenty of time for the Government to make this a priority.This is no reflection in any way whatsoever on Peter Dunne. I know he has always viewed this as a priority. The Government—the National Party in particular—simply did not prioritise this and caused some difficulties for the select committee in dealing with all the issues because of the shortened time frame. One of those issues was animal testing. I do not want to dwell on that issue too much in this speech but suffice to say that it was a mistake for the National Party members on the committee to vote against hearing the submissions referring to animal testing. We needed to hear all sides of the debate. We were not able to consider that issue properly because those submissions were blocked. That was not a matter of scope; that was a question that the committee had to make a decision on and we did not hear those submissions because NationalParty members voted against the committee doing so. It is as simple as that and that is all I really want to say about that.We have made this bill a better bill. The first thing we have done is that we have amended the purpose and we have added the words “to protect the health of and minimise harm to individuals who use psychoactive substances.” That absolutely has to be at the heart of this legislation. It has to be driving this legislation that its purpose is to reduce the harm to people who use psychoactive substances and indeed to the people around them and their communities. That is a positive change. It is incredibly positive. I think probably the most important change for the families the parents and the communities who have taken an interest in this issue is that we have brought into the primary legislation the banning of the sale of psychoactive products from dairies. It will be absolutely clear from day one when this legislation is passed that it will not be possible to buy any psychoactive product from the local dairy. It is not appropriate for these substances to sit alongside milk bread lollies and all the other things that we buy from our local stores. That is a massively positive change and in fact I think for many people it is the only change that is important.There will be a transition period. There will be a transition period in which the substances to which a temporary ban notice has not been applied will be able to stay on the shelves so long as the manufacturers of those products apply for them to become an approved substance. To reiterate that does not mean that there will be a transition period in which they can continue to be sold from dairies. Again from day one they will be out of dairies and that is important to note.When the bill was originally drafted there were a number of licences available—licences to manufacture a psychoactive product and licences to import a psychoactive product. We have added in the select committee some more licences the most important of those being a licence to retail the product. The people who sell these products need to be of good character they need to know what it is that they are doing they need to know about the products and they need to be able to provide information to the people who are purchasing products from them. I am very pleased that the select committee saw fit to introduce that retailers’ licence.We considered at length the issue of point-of-sale advertising and the packaging of psychoactive substances. We have not gone quite as far as plain packaging and that is in recognition of the fact that not all these substances are the same. They are different chemical compounds and they are different substances that have different effects on people. But we have heavily regulated exactly what those packages can look like. They must not be designed in a way that appeals to young people and they must carry information about both the ingredients in those products and the places that people can seek help should they find that the product has had an adverse effect on them.There are great restrictions on point-of-sale advertising and indeed the only advertising that will be possible will be inside the stores that are licensed to sell these products. My vision is that these will essentially be stand-alone stores into which people will enter really only for the reason of purchasing these and associated products. That I think is appropriate. They should be R18 stores in my view. Only people who are 18 or over should be purchasing those products and only people 18 and over should be going into those stores to purchase those products.We considered the issue of whether or not we should apply an excise tax to these substances. It is something that we do for alcohol and it is something that we do for tobacco. I think it would be a positive move to apply an excise tax one day. We heard advice from the ministry—and indeed the Drug Foundation supported this view—that what we need to do is see how the market develops and what the pricing points are and revisit this issue in the future when we have a better idea of exactly what level of taxshould be applied. I support that approach and I hope that we will get an opportunity to review that in the near future.Another issue that the select committee took a considerable amount of time to consider was the issue of possession and whether or not it should be an offence to possess an unapproved substance and whether or not it should be an offence for a person aged under 18 to possess either an approved or an unapproved substance. This was an issue that challenged the select committee. Again we gave it great consideration and there was constructive consideration from members of all parties. In the end the select committee came to the view that for people aged under 18 making it an offence was useful because it created the series of events in which police could ensure that early intervention occurred and young people could be referred to health providers—that level of early intervention would happen. The police assured us that their first step would not be to issue an offence notice against the young person.It is important to remember that these are not criminal offences; these are infringement offences. They rate alongside a speeding fine or a parking fine and they do not result in a criminal record for young people. However for the possession of an unapproved substance by people aged 18 years or over initially the select committee came to the view that this was not an appropriate thing to do simply because it would be so difficult for police to enforce. It is very difficult for police to know on the spot whether someone is in possession of an approved or unapproved substance. In fact the testing to determine that takes a matter of months. That does not support the notion that this should be an on-the-spot fine. The Health Committee initially came to the view that because it did not really advance the purpose of the bill which is to reduce the harm relating to these psychoactive substances it was really better to simply remove the offence of possession of an unapproved substance.However the Minister came back and the Government insisted that we retain that possession offence. I would like us to revisit that and I have offered a Supplementary Order Paper that we can consider during the Committee of the whole House to revisit that issue and possibly remove the offence of being in possession of an unapproved substance. With these final words I simply want to say that Labour supports this bill and we hope that it is progressed with haste.