Robertson Grant: Misuse of Drugs Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Robertson Grant: Misuse of Drugs Amendment Bill — In Committee 
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GRANT ROBERTSON (Labour—Wellington Central) 
: 
 I rise as other speakers have done to support the direction in which the Misuse of Drugs Amendment Bill is going and in particular to discuss the Supplementary Order Paper put forward by the Minister in the chair the Hon Peter Dunne. I pick up the point that both Iain Lees-Galloway and Paul Hutchison have made because I too have been approached as have other MPs by members of the public deeply concerned about the easy availability of products such as Kronic and other similar cannabinoids— 
Dr Paul Hutchison 
: Beautifully said. 
GRANT ROBERTSON 
: —Dr Hutchison approves of that; excellent—and other synthetic products which clearly have been sold and marketed in a way that is inappropriate and that most New Zealanders would deem to be not something they want to see in the corner dairy or in a place where their children would be going. The intervention that is now coming from the Minister is another stage in managing this process. 
The Minister answered the questions that my colleague Iain Lees-Galloway put forward and I understand that everybody acknowledges that this is a stopgap measure and not in fact the long-term answer to the problem. With any stopgap measure there will be some issues. The Minister has outlined the process that would allow us to get products off the shelf quickly if they reappear. I guess the question we have to ask ourselves is whether there is sufficient room in what is proposed to deal with a situation where a product is put on the shelves the  
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 notice goes in once it is found and the product then goes but the new product is already pre-prepared and emerges and we go through the same process every 7 days. That is the weakness that we have. 
I am not overly criticising the Minister for that. I am just saying that the gap in this process in the absence of a full regime is that theoretically the producers of these products could now be preparing a series of slightly different products that will be drip-fed into the market every 7 days or however long it is from when the  
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 notice is put out to when it is enforced. I do not think there is an answer to that question for the Minister really but that is still the gap that we have because we have a stopgap measure such as this one before us. 
I do not know what that means for the stockpiling issue. I think that that again creates a situation whereby some people potentially will be stockpiling different products of a similar nature. Although I think this amendment is something that we obviously support because it is an issue that we have to deal with and because these are products that have had demonstrably negative effects on people the measures that the Minister is proposing today have gaps and they are gaps that will be exploited by the producers of these products. Obviously we then simply have to hope that the regime is surely only temporary and that we move as quickly as possible to the recommendations in the Law Commission’s report. 
There has been criticism from this side of the Chamber—and it is worth noting—that we do not feel that things have moved as quickly as they might have in response to that. 
Hon Tau Henare 
: That’s nothing new. 
GRANT ROBERTSON 
: That is right. Well there is so much to criticise; that is the thing. In this case we congratulate the Minister on bringing this measure forward but we believe that the response to the Law Commission’s report needs to move as quickly as possible. It is as my colleague has said time to think about a new regime when it comes to the Misuse of Drugs Act. That is obviously what is contemplated in the Law Commission’s report. 
Essentially when we look at the Law Commission’s report we see that it wants to move to a situation where we have an Act that is administered by the Ministry of Health and is in fact a health-based Act. All the things I have heard as a member of the Health Committee and more broadly would point to that being the best basis for us to develop a drug regime—to base it on health effects. It is still extraordinary to most people whom I have interacted with about this situation that there is not a testing regime in place before the products reach the market. That is the fundamental thing that people simply cannot understand. At the risk of going slightly off-topic I say that it was interesting to note the comments of one user of these synthetic cannabis products who is quoted on the Stuff website today. His name is written here; it is Phil Stephens. He has given it to the newspaper so I am sure he will not mind me making him famous in Parliament. He stated: “I’ve tried most of the different brands over the past year or so. If you know the difference between the real stuff and the synthetic version you can tell they’re not the same thing but a layman probably couldn’t.” Mr Stephens then went on to say that he thought the 12-month ban on the substances was a good idea so I say to the Minister in the chair that he has a fan in one of the users. But he then went on to say and this is the point I want to make that the 12-month ban was “probably the best thing they can do. At least that way someone is doing some research and testing into this stuff.” 
That is a user of the product noting that there has not been proper testing of these products. From my point of view the priority has to be to get in place a regime that tests products such as these before they make it on to the shelves. It seems to me to be an extraordinary situation where that process is not in place and one at which members of the public look and wonder how we could have allowed that to be. So we must move quickly to address that particular gap and create a regime that is robust and applies the principles the Law Commission has suggested which are about reducing harm—instead of the “instant criminal” approach making sure there is a graduated response overall in terms of drugs and making sure we have an Act that is based on the important role of the health system in managing it. Drugs are not just a criminal issue. They become a criminal issue but they are a health issue primarily and we must deal with them that way round. 
From our point of view the Supplementary Order Paper introduced by the Minister is something that we can support. We support the amendments on the basis that we need to do something now but I do not want our support to be interpreted as believing that this stopgap measure is the be-all and end-all. I think it has gaps which will be exploited but I also believe that we need to move as quickly as possible to take on board the other recommendations of the committee. 
I am concerned about the stockpiling issue alongside the likely drip-feeding of new products and if the Minister had anything he wanted to say about that I would be grateful. The Labour Party will support this Supplementary Order Paper and the wider bill as well but we do so knowing that there is much much more to do.