Lees-Galloway Iain: Misuse of Drugs Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Lees-Galloway Iain: Misuse of Drugs Amendment Bill — First Reading 
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IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY (Labour—Palmerston North) 
: 
 It is a pleasure to follow the chair of the Health Committee’s surprisingly short contribution on the Misuse of Drugs Amendment Bill a bill important enough to have its first reading under urgency. Like the chair of the Health Committee I look forward to there being a vigorous and rigorous debate on it at the select committee. There are a number of things in this bill and if I get a chance to do so I will cover more than just the question of the classification of ephedrine and pseudoephedrine. But given that to this point that issue has occupied the minds of most of the speakers I will pick up where Dr Hutchison and my colleague the Hon Ruth Dyson left off with the regulatory impact statement. 
Under the heading of “Problem definition” we actually have a problem. It states that the “New Zealand Police has reported that one in three clandestine methamphetamine laboratories detected contain traces of domestically sourced PSE. This does not suggest that 30% of methamphetamine in New Zealand is manufactured using domestic PSE however Police consider that the levels diverted for illegal purposes is significant.” So we know that not even 30 percent of the problem is caused by domestically sourced pseudoephedrine but we know that the domestically sourced amount is significant. We do not know exactly what “significant” means; we do not know whether it is 5 percent 10 percent or 15 percent. We do not actually know the extent of the problem the extent of the question that we are trying to address with this bill. It is perfectly valid to seek out the sources of P and to try to crack down on them but as my colleague Ruth Dyson said earlier on this requires a whole-of-Government approach. We are cutting back on Customs Service resources yet the vast majority of the sources of methamphetamine are coming into the country illegally from offshore. That is where we should focus our attention not on the locally sourced product here in New Zealand of which we do not even know how much actually contributes to the problem. 
Further down in the regulatory impact statement we see that “While a significant amount of PSE currently available in over-the-counter medications is considered to be diverted for non-legitimate purposes the majority of PSE used to manufacture methamphetamine is illegally imported.”—a continuation of the same problem. It goes on to state: “This proposal may have the unintended consequence of increasing levels of illegally imported PSE however Customs is concurrently increasing its capability to deal with methamphetamine and precursor trafficking at the border.” Well the Customs Service may well be trying to do that but the fact of the matter is that the Minister and the Government are cutting its resources for doing that. So although this bill in itself is perfectly reasonable sensible legislation that seeks to address a problem in our communities if we actually look at what the Government is doing right across the spectrum we find that it is shooting itself in the foot. This legislation will be a drop in the bucket in comparison with the cuts that the Government is making to those who are trying to combat the source of the real problem. The fact of the matter is that in dealing with drug abuse and alcohol abuse we need to take a whole-of-Government approach. 
It is interesting that this bill comes up during the period of time when the Law Commission is considering its review of the Misuse of Drugs Act. Of course we all look forward to finding out the results of that review which may actually make this legislation completely obsolete. We could find ourselves back in here to rewrite the whole thing. The Law Commission actually got to the bottom of the problem in saying that harm minimisation requires “a broad and integrated approach” and that there are essentially three pillars to that approach. The first is supply control which is measures that control or limit the availability of drugs and that is what we are talking about here tonight. But there is also demand reduction and problem limitation. Again when we look across what the Government is doing in those areas we find that it is essentially undermining itself and it is undermining the work that it is trying to do here tonight. 
We have seen cuts to front-line services and cuts to community-based alcohol and drug services that actually deal with the issues of demand reduction and problem limitation. We know that the Care NZ clinic in Otahuhu the St Marks Adult Drug and Alcohol Treatment Centre in Blenheim and the Ashburn Clinic in Dunedin have already suffered cuts. They have laid off staff and they have reduced programmes that would actually deal with the other side of the problem. Supply limitation is just one part of it; there is a lot more to it than just that. So while the Government continues to take that approach legislation like this will not have the effect that is sought. We just have to look at some of the other Government decisions: $186 million in low-priority funding has been cut and that includes $12 million from mental health services. 
Hon Ruth Dyson 
: How much? 
IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY 
: Twelve million dollars. There is no longer a mental health target. That is not a priority for this Government. 
Increasing the amount of elective surgery and addressing emergency department waiting times although they are in themselves very worthy are like putting an ambulance at the bottom of the cliff. This Government refuses to take a long-term public health approach to keeping New Zealanders well. If we were interested in keeping New Zealanders well we would be interested in the mental health of our communities and we would be interested in assisting those people who want to come away from drug and alcohol problems to actually escape them. But there is no drug and alcohol treatment target either. This Government is focused on short-term bottom of the cliff measures; it is not interested in real long-term measures that would achieve the outcomes that the writers of this legislation claim to be seeking to work on. 
As I said this bill is not just about pseudoephedrine. Some of the other provisions in it are relatively interesting and worth bringing up. The removal of thalidomide as a class A controlled drug is a sensible move. That seems to be fairly technical but it does reveal some of the problems with regard to our legislative approach to mind-altering substances. What on earth thalidomide was ever doing in that class is a question that is worth asking. Yes it had atrocious effects on those people who were born to women who took thalidomide while they were pregnant and curbing those effects and making sure that that mistake was never made again were absolutely appropriate and very important. But thalidomide is not a mind-altering substance and never belonged in the Misuse of Drugs Act. 
The problem of having an often irrational confused approach to our classification of drugs occurs right throughout our classification of drugs and mind-altering substances. There are some fundamental problems with the way in which we classify mind-altering substances. Again the Law Commission is looking at this issue and I look forward to some serious suggestions from it as to how we can take a scientific approach to classifying mind-altering substances at how we can look seriously at the harm and the addictive nature of different drugs and at how we can look seriously at the appropriate way to regulate and control those substances. 
Another area that looks to be very technical—and I would not be surprised if no other speaker brings this up—is the amendment to the controlled drug analogue provisions of the Act by adding the words “and/or alkylthio radicals” after “alkylamino radicals”. That is designed to pick up on new drugs as they are developing. A particular class of new drugs is developing at the moment and that provision is an attempt to catch them before they are developed. But again we have a fundamental problem with the Misuse of Drugs Act in that a new substance as it comes on to the market so to speak is by definition legal. Before we even know what the effects are—the harmful effects and the effects on our community—the default position is for these substances to be legal. Then we suddenly have an outpouring of outrage and shock from the community that we have new substances on the market. Our reaction is to prohibit them and clamp down on them and that vacuum is then replaced by another substance that comes along. Something new will always replace them. 
The Law Commission has suggested a new approach to this issue whereby new substances are by default deemed to be illegal. Should someone wish to supply or manufacture those substances irrespective of whether it is for profit that person would have to apply for a permit to do that. Those substances would then be considered on their merits again taking a scientific approach to the actual harms and addictive properties associated with them. That is a very good way forward and I hope that that part of the Law Commission’s recommendations which was brought up in its issues paper is not dumped in the same way that some of its other recommendations were by the Government. The knee-jerk reaction that we had from the Government was thoroughly disappointing as there are good aspects of that review that should be followed through on. This is a good bill. It is not the best bill but we will support it.