Woodhouse MichaelHon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE (National): When the National Party supported this bill at first reading it did so with several caveats but some optimism that the bill as introduced could be materially improved with the bipartisan support of both sides of the House and for good reason. There is evidence of benefit for medicinal cannabis products and there aren't enough of them. We have Sativex which is approved for use in New Zealand but it is unfunded and it is very expensive. As a consequence of that those people who believe that cannabis—or THC the derivative in cannabis—can help them with their chronic or terminal conditions do turn to illicit substances in the belief that it would help them.Now the evidence is equivocal. In fact the jury is probably back and there is clear evidence that illicit substances are not beneficial or efficacious. Australian research recently published of a longitudinal study of about 1700 chronic and terminally ill Australians who used loose-leaf cannabis for pain found that their use of alternative analgesics and opioids went up not down and that their levels of anxiety went up not down. So there is a definite question in my mind at least about whether or not illicit substances actually have the effect that it is claimed to have. There may be a placebo effect or there may be a nice hit when you have the so-called medicinal THC or medicinal cannabis but there is no real benefit.That was actually the reason that the National Party supported this bill: we need better THC-based alternatives for chronic pain and terminal sufferers that have dose control that have good manufacturing practice that isn't smoked—for goodness sake we're wanting to go to 2025 and be smoke-free. So we supported it but we had three main concerns. One—and this is the main one—was that good intentions don't make for good policy. This was a very poor bill. It had no detail about what the scheme would look like; it basically said to the officials Off you go—devise a scheme." and frankly that wasn't good enough.We were concerned and remain concerned with the exemption from prosecution for terminal sufferers and we now know that that's going to be extended—I'll elaborate on that in a minute—and we were concerned that this House once the framework is developed should have the ability to provide further scrutiny. We didn't want to trade away or delegate out to officials what this scheme would look like. Now that wasn't to say that officials weren't trusted. Medsafe and so on do have some experience in this although we believed that we were breaking new ground.We heard some great submissions and I want to congratulate and thank all of the submitters for the work that they did in presenting to the committee the very good suggestions for what that framework would look like and in good faith. National Party members through Louisa Wall asked the Government to consider the sensible things that we were coming up with and that the submitters were coming up with to make this bill better and at successive occasions the answers were a deafening silence or a no. I think it speaks volumes about that Minister that he doesn't have the simple good grace to acknowledge the National Party at all in this conversation even to criticise them—to pretend that the work that the National caucus have done on this matter didn't exist. Now I say "the National caucus" and Mr Bishop and I have been credited with a great deal more credit than we deserve I hasten to say because the real driving force behind the excellent improvements that this party came up with is almost entirely the work of the MP for Whangarei Dr Shane Reti. I think this framework—regardless of how it gets in there—is going to be better off for his work because I bet the ministry and Medsafe are having a look at that work and going "Yep that's a good idea. We'll have that." But he came up with several—I think in the end it was 10—bottom lines. He will elaborate on the technical side of this; I will focus on the politics because there's plenty. They were really good ideas. We went to the chair and we went to the Minister and we went to the other parties and we said "We can make this bill better. We can make it more collaborative." and the answer was no. So in the end the National Party caucus had no choice but to not recommend that this bill proceed as it had been written and it determined that the only way to get a good scheme in place was to do it itself. So Dr Reti took himself off to the United States—to California to Colorado to New York—to speak to some of the world's best experts in this area. He won't pat himself on the back but I will: it was a fantastic effort and we came back with excellent excellent suggestions for improvement that because the Minister was being cloth-eared over it had to go into a member's bill. You don't need to take my word for it: the independent analysis and observations on that bill were compelling. There were people saying from a social and commercial basis that it was damn near perfect—that was what the National Business Review said. There were many others. I'll leave Dr Reti or maybe Mr Bishop or Mr Brownlee to elaborate on that. But we now have I think really good bones of what this regime could look like and we could have parliamentary scrutiny on it. Do you know what? While I'm disappointed that the olive branch of offers of support and collaboration have not yet been taken up I am actually an optimist in this area and I think that can still happen. But I must say there is an even larger caveat now because the Minister has just indicated that by Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) he is going to extend the terminal exemption from prosecution for illicit substance use to a palliation framework and we've had a big discussion about what the definition of palliation is. Palliation is medicine that is not designed to cure but that doesn't mean that only people who are terminally ill are receiving palliation. I have chronic arthritis somebody with diabetes Parkinson's—the medicines that those patients take are palliation and if they are in pain as a consequence of that what Dr Clark has just announced is that this will be extended to those chronic conditions and I suggest that there is a significant risk that that becomes a stalking horse for the decriminalising of cannabis. Now it is likely—almost certain—that we are going to have that conversation as a country as a group of MPs in the not too distant future but our position is that they are two conversations not one and it's very important that by this bill we don't conflate the two. The goal of this legislation is to create a framework for a medicinal cannabis market with good manufacturing practice and with safety and efficacy and dose control to be in but not to let people off the hook who for obvious reasons think they are going to be better off by smoking cannabis. Now in saying that let's remind ourselves what Mr Richard Chambers—Assistant Commissioner Chambers of the New Zealand Police—said to us. Hon Nathan Guy: What did he say? Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: He said that the New Zealand Police are not out there hunting down arresting and jailing terminally ill patients because they have a spliff for their pain. It just ain't happening and I would argue that that terminal exemption is not necessary. But if it was time-bound—and we're still not sure whether the Minister's intention is to remove that terminal exemption once the regulations are in place and he's given himself a 12-month time frame to do that—then it may well be that that's not a show-stopper. But an open-ended terminal exemption for loose-leaf smoked cannabis will be because that's the next conversation we're going to have. Now with all of those caveats the National Party will support this bill at second reading but they do come with conditions. They come with conditions that the SOPs in Dr Reti's name—that far better describe the framework than anybody else could—are accepted and that that loose-leaf exemption is controlled. I won't say any further now because of the Minister's announcement what that control might look like but we have to keep our eye on the ball. This goal is to achieve an effective medicinal cannabis regime. I hope we can still do that. I hope we can get bipartisan support."