Swarbrick ChlöeCHLÖE SWARBRICK (Green): E Te Māngai tēnā koe. Tēnā koutou e Te Whare. I hope that I can address some of the concerns raised by the Hon Paula Bennett in my contribution to supporting this Misuse of Drugs Amendment Bill. This Act is over 40 years old and it requires quite frankly a complete overhaul which is something that I think both myself and Ms Bennett can agree with because instead of reducing drug harm what we've actually seen is a colossal increase in it.I didn't come to Parliament to advocate for drug law reform. To be honest it wasn't even really on my radar. I came in here to advocate for constitutional reform because I was passionate about that. But then the Greens helped to form the Government Julie Anne Genter became a Minister and as a backbench MP I inherited her medicinal cannabis misuse of drugs amendment member's bill. I began digging into the detail and the lives and stories of those who were affected by the Misuse of Drugs Act. I found that some people are prosecuted and other people aren't. I found that different police use different criteria to decide to use their discretion. I found that different people use different drugs for different reasons. And I found that the war on drugs is disproportionately a war on the poor. Imprisoning drug users to bring about sobriety is like bombing for peace. It does not work. In fact it actually makes things far worse; it causes irreparable generational damage. I continued my research down the rabbit hole and learned about countries like Portugal raised by Ms Bennett which 20 years ago removed criminal penalties for the use and possession of drugs in response to a spate of heroin deaths. All negative statistics associated with drugs—overdose deaths hospital admissions problematic use substance dependency even youth usage—have gone down as a result. More than 50 people died in Aotearoa New Zealand as a result of using synthetic drugs last year. They were among the poorest and most vulnerable in our society. I spoke to those who work in housing the homeless and they estimated that this death toll is just the tip of the iceberg. In the meantime politicians have bickered about going hard on drugs.I participated in the debate because I felt like I knew the research and the evidence and I knew that the Greens had an alternative rational solution for drug law reform that could save lives. And then Tyrone died. Tyrone Smith was an artist. He created a cartoon series called Happy Space with characters like Peng Peng the penguin strapped in a spacesuit and a jetpack that I have worn on my lapel for the past few months in Tyrone's memory. The coroner deemed Tyrone's cause of death as pneumonia and pharmaceutical drug toxicity. He was 49 years old. He left behind a loving partner friends and whānau. We sung Anchor Me" at his funeral. Tyrone used to joke to his siblings that all of his ducks had lined up. He didn't mean what most people do when they say that. He had three ducks that he often spoke about: a problematic birth; dyslexia meaning he found it difficult to engage in school and get his qualifications; and his dad's death when he was 11 years old.Tyrone first tried drugs—cannabis to begin with—at the age of 15. He said he liked the way it made him feel numb. He said it took away the pain. So he looked for harder drugs. Tyrone went through rehab after rehab. He was lucky and had unconditional love from his family but the broken system and the stigma our society upholds with the mantra of this war on drugs saw Tyrone slip through the net and as a result he left us too early. Tyrone's story is not an anomaly. I want to thank him and his family for allowing me to tell it. This bill is for Tyrone and for other substance-dependent people and their whānau who don't know where or who to turn to for help and cannot navigate a system that demonises and ostracises and doesn't want to touch them. Politicians have said for years and years and years that we have got to be hard on drugs. But what on earth does that mean because what we have seen is more drugs and greater harm proliferation throughout communities across this country and indeed across the world. What we have seen is people die. What we have seen is our prisons clog up. And what we have seen is good money thrown after bad and the situation getting worse. What we've seen is that this hard on drugs line is nothing but a nice piece of virtue signalling. But worse than signalling virtue worse than doing nothing this moral posturing has cost lives and communities and generations of whānau and their well-being.Yesterday I was in Northland speaking to police and the district health board officials involved Te Ara Oranga. In conversation we really tried to drill down into the reasons why decent but often downtrodden people get involved in drug dealing. It turns out basically that a lot of the time the gangs are offering our kids better prospects than we are. Put yourself in the shoes of rangatahi in a regional town that's been ravaged by the retreat of economic opportunity. Maybe there's been some trouble at home. Your future offers a fork in the road. On the one side you can grind you can get a minimum-wage job and try and scrape together enough to build a life. That is indeed the admirable path and one that many take. But the other path is offered by the guys in cool clothes who ride up and down the street on flash motorcycles. They tell you that you can make money like they do they recognise them they'll give you a place to belong and they offer what feels like winning the lottery. Gangs are offering our kids a greater and more meaningful future than we often are. Drugs aren't just a justice issue; drugs are a social issue they're an education issue they are a mental health issue they are a housing issue and they are a well-being issue. We know that police are using their discretion at the moment when they're choosing whether or not to prosecute people who they find using drugs. Indeed when they are choosing whether to prosecute those people dealing in small amounts at the bottom of the pyramid scheme designed to trap them they choose not to. We can continue to shadow-box at the bottom of that supply chain for ever but it won't make a dent in supply or demand and we know that because the evidence proves it. Our failure over the last 40 years proves it. So we can demonise and alienate people like Tyrone threatening them with a prison sentence or pushing them into so-called therapy that asks "What's wrong with you?" instead of "What happened to you?" We can watch that system fail time and again and we can watch people die. We will not address the drug crisis until we address trauma isolation inequality opportunity health and education outcomes. We can stand here in this fancy Chamber and fight with words because it is far removed from the reality of drug-ravaged communities and it is far removed from the victims of the war on drugs and their funerals through addiction that didn't receive treatment or gang violence that spreads like a virus when control is left to the black market. This bill represents a tangible change that will save lives through taking prosecution out of guesswork and creating a formal structure around it. It focuses our resources at the top of the supply chain where substances come across our borders and cruel greedy people make money off the lives of our poor and vulnerable. It will focus resources on treatment for people who use drugs and recognise that they are people. But we need to go further because as has been raised already by the deputy leader of National the Misuse of Drugs Act is broken. We can to continue with these carve-outs for things like medicinal cannabis for the synthetics crisis for festival drug testing but we all know that it is broken and it will take a lot more to address any of this. Finally I want to just correct the record because none of this—none of what I have said—is pro-drugs because if it is the outcome of our respective approaches that is the measure of the terminology with which they are dubbed then the war on drugs as a result of its outcomes is the biggest pro-drugs movement we have ever seen. The Greens and I are on the side of compassion. We are on the side of evidence-based drug harm reduction. We are on the side of well-being. I commend this bill to this House."