Craig LizDr LIZ CRAIG (Labour): Thank you Madam Deputy Speaker. It was an absolute privilege to sit on the Health Committee and listen to the submissions on this bill as they came in and I will address some of the comments that Mr Woodhouse has made as I go through my speech today. But just coming back to some of the submissions that we heard I think for me the greatest impact it had on me was the stories that people were telling me—telling the committee—just about their own experiences with incredible chronic conditions. This was not just people with terminal illness. This was people with things like intractable epilepsy and severe arthritis and they were just talking about the limitations of our current medications and the side effects and the impacts they were having on people's lives—so opiates and the side effects there. But for people who then had moved over and had tried cannabis for some of them there was a huge impact it had on their quality of life without those side effects. Other people also talked about the fact that they were really struggling but they didn't want to cross over and access cannabis illegally and so for them the hope was that while they weren't using it themselves it would provide a solution moving forward. But the problem I also had was listening to some of those stories but then going back to some of the research evidence which for things like chronic pain actually was quite mixed. But some of the caveats there around that research were that because in many jurisdictions medicinal cannabis wasn't readily available there weren't a lot of studies one way or other and I think we need further research in that area. But I was also impacted by what one of the clinicians came in and was talking about and he was saying that for many of his patients for some medicinal cannabis was transformational for others it actually did nothing at all and for the majority it was somewhere in between. And so I suspect that while cannabis may be beneficial for some it may not be that miracle drug for all and so I think it's about—as evidence grows we'll get that sense of where the reality sits. But the other thing a lot of submitters were talking about and this was particularly those who were accessing cannabis products on prescription was the cost. Some families were spending over $1000 a month and they were spending that because of the impact that these products had on their children on their families and on their loved ones' lives. And so the problem we've got at the moment is that there's a large number of people feeling like they could benefit from medicinal cannabis but we've got mixed evidence and we've also got a lot of problems with access. One of the other themes that came through was that a lot of people were saying that we needed to extend the scope of the exemption beyond just terminal illness and beyond just those that were deemed to have 12 months to live because there were a lot more people they felt could benefit. But there was also quite a bit of blurring of understanding of what the bill was trying to do because some I think got the sense that because we were restricting the exemption to those with terminal illness once the scheme was up and running we would be narrowing it down so that only people with terminal illness could actually access medicinal cannabis.But actually at the moment doctors can prescribe medical cannabis for a whole range of conditions. So previously in addition to terminal illness they're prescribing it for things like spasms associated with cerebral palsy multiple sclerosis some for chronic pain and some for intractable seizures. So there's a whole range of things you can prescribe it for it's just that complexity arrives when you're trying to actually access that medication.This is where I struggle to understand what the system was as many of us did and I think it would be very difficult for people wanting to access it because we've got a whole range of different qualities available at the moment. So you've got some of those pharmaceutical-grade products like Sativex—or near pharmaceutical grade—where they have been through the clinical trials as research evidence and you can prescribe them for quite narrow conditions but you also need to do that with extra Ministry of Health approval. Others are unconsented products that doctors can prescribe. But again you've got to have extra ministry approval for those and then you've got CBD products which until recently had to have ministry approval but now you can just prescribe them directly as long as they meet certain criteria like having less than 2 percent contaminants within that product. And so there's a whole range of different ways of prescribing them but also not a lot of access to quality products. And so thinking through what this bill will do the first thing is that it's going to be able to underpin that framework where we're going to be setting up a medical cannabis scheme where we can set standards that oversee the quality of the production of a domestic supply of medicinal cannabis products and also for products that are imported or produced locally those same standards would apply. And so this is the legislation that will enable us to create regulations that will oversee that. That's the key part of it which will over time transform a number of people's access to medicinal cannabis products. But that's going to take a little bit of time and I think the urgency coming through from some of those submitters we've taken into account and that's why the Minister of Health announced that in his Supplementary Order Paper he's going to be adding the requirement that those regulations in terms of those standards get put in place within a year of this bill passing into law so that we can just get on with it. The problem though is that once those standards are in place it'll take a little while to ramp up that manufacture and so this is again where this defence for possessing cannabis in the meantime will apply. And again a lot of the feedback was saying that there's a whole range of people that would benefit from medicinal cannabis and so the sense in that Supplementary Order Paper will be that the Minister will be expanding the definition. This is where Mr Woodhouse was indicating that that might go very very broad. But the wording that I think will be used is those with advanced progressive life-limiting conditions who are nearing the ends of their lives". So while it will be broader than that terminal illness with a 12-month time frame and it will expand that to a number of other people it still won't be so broad that it will basically be everybody being able to access it as a defence. So that was just in response to the feedback that we received. The other thing that the bill as we know will do is it will basically mean that CBD products are taken from the schedule of controlled drugs if they meet certain purity levels.So just summing up this bill will take it a lot further forward in terms of people's ability to access medicinal cannabis products. We're going to set clear standards so that manufacturers have certainty that if they make the investment in terms of research and development they'll be able to market some viable products and it will also mean that patients can then access higher quality products and that when medical practitioners are prescribing they have that confidence that the product they're prescribing is up to a standard. It also broadens that statutory defence to people with progressive life-limiting conditions so that makes it much broader so that people can access or use cannabis in the meantime without fear of a criminal prosecution. I therefore commend this bill to the House."