Hague Kevin: Misuse of Drugs Amendment Bill — Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeHague Kevin: Misuse of Drugs Amendment Bill — Third Reading[Sitting date: 04 August 2011. Volume:674;Page:20355. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]KEVIN HAGUE (Green): Tēnā koe e hoa. I begin by saying that the Green Party in many senses agrees with our Labour colleagues—and I paraphrase somewhat here—in saying that the Misuse of Drugs Amendment Bill contains provisions that are a daft counter-productive waste of time and effort. But unlike our Labour colleagues because of that we will be voting against the bill rather than for it. If the bill had instead been a bill that enacted provisions of the Law Commission’s report on the misuse of drugs or even the recommendations from the Law Commission in respect of the matters that this bill covers we would certainly be voting for it. We would much rather that this House debated a bill of that sort rather than the nonsense that is before us today.There is no question that many drugs cause harm and some kind of response by Government is required because of that. None the less it is also true that many New Zealanders make use of drugs especially alcohol which is probably far and away the most-used drug in New Zealand. It is important that the Government’s response to drugs and drug-related harm reflects an appropriate balance between the benefits that clearly the individuals who use those drugs perceive that they derive from them and the actual evidence-based harms that result from those drugs.The Green Party’s policy in fact is that a drug-free lifestyle is the best lifestyle to have. But we recognise that for many people that is not the kind of lifestyle they will lead. So we say that a Government’s response to drugs must be one that is consistent—it deals with drugs in a consistent way based on their harms—and derives its assessment of those harms from good-quality scientific evidence. It is also important that the response should be as both Iain Lees-Galloway and Grant Robertson have said in this debate tonight a response that is focused on reducing the health-related harm rather than a punitive response to offending. The Law Commission’s reportControlling and Regulating Drugs: A Review of the Misuse of Drugs Act 1975 provides us with an excellent springboard an excellent starting point for precisely that kind of response for the first time in New Zealand.In many ways the bill before us represents the antithesis of that kind of response. It represents the very worst aspects of the way that Governments of all stripes have responded to drug-related issues. It is ham-fisted; it is slow to respond to problems that have existed for some time. Take the issue of synthetic cannabinoids. The Minister is rushing his Supplementary Order Paper into the bill so fast that the public has had no say at all on the new provisions yet these products have been on retail shelves for 5 years. So there is no need for that urgency. It is ham-fisted but that is easily avoided.The three provisions to which the Green Party has expressed objection relate to utensils pseudoephedrine and synthetic cannabinoids. In fact people who would be committing offences under these particular provisions of the bill will simply make smalladjustments to their behaviour and be able to carry on with no real change. So an awful lot of time energy and effort will have gone into achieving nothing.This response creates harms to others and Grant Robertson has just expressed some of those. He is a person whom Minister Dunne encourages when he gets a cold to visit his general practitioner sit in the waiting room and give his cold to other people thereby increasing the amount of illness in New Zealand society. Is that the kind of response that we want? I do not think so. It reflects the disproportionate response to the actual harms related to these particular provisions.Lastly and I drew attention to this in the Committee stage it does violence to parliamentary process—and I have mentioned that in relation to synthetic cannabinoids—and also to the principles of lawmaking. I spoke in the second reading of how the provisions relating to utensils represent extremely poor drafting of New Zealand law. I will not repeat those same arguments that I made in earlier stages of the debate in relation to utensils and pseudoephedrine and the Minister’s sweeping powers relating to more or less any substance at all. The Minister talks about provisions to control the supply of synthetic cannabinoids but in fact the provisions in this bill go much much further than that. They go to any substance at all that might cause harm.In the debate in this House we have talked about psychoactive substances and again the bill is not restricted to psychoactive substances at all. When this bill is passed Minister Dunne will be able to ban for 12 months more or less any substance at all. I drew attention to the fact that he would be able to ban salt. Is that truly the kind of outcome that this House wants? Yet it is exactly the kind of outcome that results from the ad hoc and ham-fisted way that Governments have gone about drug policy-making.Lastly I want to draw the attention of the House to a comment made by the Hon Peter Dunne in the Committee stage. The Hon Heather Roy and I both spoke in the Committee stage against the provisions that he was attempting to introduce into the bill in relation to these substances. The Minister speaking from the chair made the comment that Heather Roy and I had never encountered a drug that we did not like. I draw this to the attention of the House because I found that comment to be not only extremely offensive but also reflective of exactly the kind of empty rhetoric that has characterised Governments’ failed responses to the harms related to drugs. It is the kind of empty rhetoric that has characterised the war on drugs which has clearly been waged for a very long time as Paul Hutchison reminded the House and has failed. It is not only failing; it has failed.What we need is not the kind of rhetoric that Peter Dunne espouses in the House. What we need is goodwill good faith a preparedness to listen to each other and a preparedness to set aside preconceived ideas of how we go about solving this problem. We need instead to make a commitment to work with each other and to think about constructive and novel approaches that will actually reflect the reality of drugs in New Zealand. That is exactly what the Law Commission’s report provided us with the opportunity to do. I cannot believe in the time that was available to draft this bill that we could not instead have translated the Law Commission’s recommendations in relation to utensils pseudoephedrine and synthetic cannabinoids into law. Then we would have had a bill that we would all be voting for and that would have achieved some good. Thank you.