Tanczos Nandor: Misuse of Drugs Amendment Bill (No 3) — In Committee Third Reading 
Tanczos Nandor: Misuse of Drugs Amendment Bill (No 3) — In Committee Third Reading 
[Volume:626;Page:21512] 
NANDOR TANCZOS (Green) 
: 
 I was not intending to speak on this part but I did rise to speak because Dr Paul Hutchison raised a very important issue around needle exchange. I did actually move an amendment to remove the possession of needles as an offence. Members may have missed it because it is in a miscellaneous provisions clause and again that comes back to the problem of the bill and the Act as a whole. They are quite difficult things to find one’s way around in. 
There is a concern that even by reversing the onus of proof—as the bill does—people are hindered from using clean needles. The Health Committee heard very strong evidence that police do use the existing law. Generally police do not charge people for possession of needles but they do use it to bully people and extract information. That does hinder intravenous drug users from using clean needles and that is the problem. Perhaps it is not such a big problem with current intravenous drug users because the current intravenous drug using community is well aware of the needle exchange programme how it works and its safeguards. But what is of increasing concern is new intravenous drug users. There is growing anecdotal evidence that some P users are starting to move to intravenous use. The evidence is not very clear it is not very substantial but certainly the anecdotal evidence that is coming off the streets is that as methamphetamine gets more scarce and more expensive some people are starting to move to intravenous drug use. 
Obviously that is extremely worrying in a number of ways and it should concern us all. But I certainly think we would all share the view that if people are starting to move towards intravenous drug use there should be no hindrance to their getting clean needles. Of course there is a simple cost equation as well. There are enormous cost savings to be made in health care. At present there is a 6 percent sharing rate of needles and if that was reduced or eliminated that would produce huge savings for New Zealand health care. An independent valuation found that every dollar spent on New Zealand’s needle exchange programme currently saved an estimated $3.35 in health-care costs. So there is an enormous economic as well as social moral and ethical argument for doing that. 
The committee did address this issue but it was persuaded by the police not to remove it as an offence entirely. The arguments of the police were actually quite spurious. They said that they needed it for drug control and to stop an illegal market in needles. Let us be clear: there is no black market for needles and syringes in New Zealand—that is all needles and syringes used for drug injection are obtained from an authorised supplier. Even if we did remove possession of needles as an offence it would not take away the offence of unauthorised selling. One still has to be an authorised seller so people could still be prosecuted if they were selling needles and they were not authorised to do so. So the law stays in place to allow us to police that. 
In any case let us be real about it: there are no incentives for an illegal market in needles. The concern was raised that there might be a drug dealer who was selling needles as well. First there is no incentive for people to buy needles from a dealer because they can get them free from the needle exchange simply by swapping their old ones. So there is no financial incentive; there is a disincentive to get needles from a dealer. Secondly perhaps dealers could give them away but why would they do that? Why would they incur an extra cost on themselves when there is no benefit in doing that? People would just go to the needle exchange to get one. In any case if dealers were giving away clean needles surely that would be a good thing. I would have thought so. It would be better than allowing their customers to share needles and therefore put themselves at risk of contracting HIV hepatitis or any of the other blood-borne diseases. The third possibility was that drug dealers would give away dirty needles. That just does not make sense. They would lose their customer base pretty quickly if they did that. Customers would know pretty quickly that that was going on and they would not use them. So it just does not make sense. 
The argument is just illogical and it is sad that the Health Committee was persuaded by it because I do not think it holds any water. That is pretty clear from international evaluations and we can look at the report of the Australian National Drug Law Enforcement Research Fund titled:  
The role of police in preventing and minimising illicit drug use and its harm 
 which shows clearly the benefits of needle exchanges and removing the possession of needles as an offence. As I said there are enormous savings in health costs mortality rates morbidity rates and the like.