Psychoactive Substances Amendment Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumePsychoactive Substances Amendment Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee Third Reading[Sitting date: 06 May 2014. Volume:698;Page:17509. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Psychoactive Substances Amendment BillFirst ReadingHon TONY RYALL (Minister of Health) on behalf of theAssociate Minister of Health: I moveThat the Psychoactive Substances Amendment Bill be now read a first time. At the appropriate time I intend to move that the bill be set down for second reading forthwith without being referred to a select committee. To begin I would like to thank all parties in the House for their help in bringing us to this point today. I have appreciated the great cooperation that all parties have provided in discussions around their positions and their considerations on this bill and I think that we bring an amendment bill to the House today that the great majority of the House has indicated its willingness to support.The bill does two things. It ends all interim product approvals and interim retail and wholesale licences and it prevents information derived from tests on animals being used to support a product approval application. The remainder of the primary legislation remains in place and it remains the most appropriate way of dealing with emerging psychoactive substances. The bill has a few other features to support those two main aims of removing all products from the market forthwith and restricting the use of animal testing. It provides that all products that have interim approval will be recalled and that those who have had retail or wholesale licences removed must comply with the recall. The recall order will require all licence holders including those whose licences are cancelled by this amendment to tell the Psychoactive Substances Regulatory Authority what products they have and confirm how they have been disposed of.The bill clarifies that the Crown is not liable for any damages or to pay any compensation as a result of the amendments. We know that some businesses will lose money as a direct result of these amendments. Our judgment is that the public health objectives outweigh those losses and no compensation will be paid for that. It clarifies that the authority must not approve a product until regulations are in effect and unless it is satisfied that the product poses a low risk of harm. These regulations will be in place in the next few months.When Parliament enacted the Psychoactive Substances Act last year 19 votes to one the legislation contained transitional provisions that allowed some products to stay on the market. These were products for which no serious adverse reactions had been reported. If serious adverse effects emerged later the authority had the power to revoke approval immediately. It has used that power to remove 11 products from the marketmost recently on Thursday 1 May. Serious adverse reactions have been increasingly reported to the authorities including vomiting seizures and psychotic episodes. The problem that has become apparent is that it is often not possible to attribute reactions to a particular product. People call the poison centres or the centre for adverse reactions monitoring and say they took synthetic cannabis or legal highs. If the authority does not know what products caused the adverse effect it cannot use its powers to intervene. So what we have are products that have not been tested and that are causing harm and the Government having limited ability to intervene.Last month Cabinet discussed this issue not for the first time and agreed that the Hon Peter Dunne would arrange for legislation to be drafted that would remove all products from the market immediately. It was always intended to allow only products that had passed rigorous testing and had been shown to pose only a low risk of harm. The interim period was intended to last only a few months while regulations were prepared. However we still have the products on the market that have not been through any testing and it is clearly no longer tenable for this situation to continue given that the serious adverse effects continue to be reported and that the authority is unable to respond quickly.On enactment this legislation will revoke all interim approvals for psychoactive products. All products currently on the market will become unapproved products with heavy penalties for manufacturing and supplying them. It will also become illegal to possess these products so anyone thinking of stocking up today should bear that in mind. This legislation will also cancel all interim retail and wholesale licences and begin a recall of all products that had interim approval. Let us be clear here: Parliament passes the legislation the Governor-General signs the legislation and then at 12.01 a.m. on Thursday it becomes illegal to sell supply or possess illegal highs and those products must be off the shelves. At 12.01 a.m. on Thursday it becomes illegal to sell supply or possess illegal highs. The products must be off the shelf.The other thing this legislation does is stop tests on animals being used to seek approval for psychoactive products. As the Prime Minister has said one of the reasons why we have had the delay in getting the regulations prepared is that the Government has been reluctant to sanction animal testing for these products. I am sure all members will be pleased that the bill under consideration will effectively not allow products to be tested on animals. The bill prevents the Psychoactive Substances Regulatory Authority and the Psychoactive Substances Expert Advisory Committee from having regard to information from animal trials to support the approval of psychoactive products. They cannot use any information that has come from animal testing; therefore there is no reason to do the testing. The only exception is this: the authority may consider information undertaken from an overseas trial if that information indicates that the product may not be low risk. So the authority can consider information from an overseas trial to protect the health of individuals. It cannot consider an overseas trial to support the approval of a psychoactive substance. No one will be doing animal testing to support an application here because it will not be able to be used for consideration.The rest of the primary legislation remains in place. As we all know the large number of substances and the ability of makers to rapidly change the make-up of products mean that traditional approaches do not work. In the long term the Psychoactive Substances Act remains the best way of dealing with the problem of emerging psychoactive substances. I would like to thank all those parties in the House who have participated in this process and commend this bill to the House.Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: Perhaps it would be helpful to the House’s procedure because the Minister of Health in his speech referred to the fact that at the appropriate time he would move a truncation of the process to say that the Leader of the Housemoved that urgency be accorded the introduction and passing of the Psychoactive Substances Amendment Bill so the House is then tasked with every stage and any further motions to proceed with that truncation is not necessary.IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY (Labour—Palmerston North): Labour will support this Psychoactive Substances Amendment Bill. The two principal objectives of this bill are policies that Labour wholeheartedly endorses and supports. The first is to remove the transition provisions of the principal Act that have allowed for untested drugs to remain on the shelf and available for sale to the public. That is a position that like other parties in the House Labour came to in response to the overwhelming public outcry that untested drugs remained available and that their effects were unknown and that their effects became apparent only when young people and other people using those drugs experienced the harmful side-effects of those substances. That situation really flew in the face of the principles behind the original legislation which were that psychoactive substances would need to be tested first before they could go on the market for sale and that the onus of proof that they were of low or no risk would lie with the manufacturers not with the users in the community around them.The other objective of this legislation is to ban all animal testing for psychoactive substances. This is a policy that Labour has supported since the principal legislation was debated in the House and our party along with other parties supported the amendment in the name of Mojo Mathers to remove animal testing right back when we were debating the principal legislation. That amendment was blocked by National by United Future—actually I think it was Peter Dunne independent MP at the time—and through the abstention of the New Zealand First Party. So we could have dealt with this issue of animal testing long before today but we are very very happy that it has been included in this legislation—again because the Government has finally buckled to public pressure and the overwhelming pressure that has been placed upon it by Opposition parties.It is never a positive outcome when a piece of legislation has to be amended in such a short space of time after it was originally passed. The Psychoactive Substances Act was passed in July last year. It received its first reading in April last year—a little over 12 months ago. At the time after the first reading debate there was a debate in the House around the shortened select committee period that Parliament was being given to consider the legislation. At that time in that debate I said I was concerned that we were rushing this legislation that it was complex legislation that it was novel that no other country in the world had attempted this approach to regulating psychoactive substances and that it was absolutely inappropriate for Parliament to be rushing the legislation.I warned that mistakes would be made. In fact I went back and checked out exactly what it was I said and I said: “I don’t want us to be back here in 12 months’ time realising that we have made a mistake and having to fix those mistakes up.” Here we are—Mike Sabin: You said a lot of other stuff too.IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY: —apologies if it is not the exact quote—12 months later admitting that we made a mistake.Dr Paul Hutchison: You supported the bill though—119 to 1.IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY: Paul Hutchison makes a very important point: 119 MPs supported this bill. I supported this bill. I sat on the Health Committee and considered the issues. One of the issues was whether we should have a transition period. The select committee decided that we should. That decision was made at breakneck speed because we were given just 2 months at select committee to deal with these complex issues.We are the first country in the world dealing with this type of legislation and the Government gave us one-third of the time that it would normally give a selectcommittee to consider those issues. The Government will say quite rightly that we needed to have the legislation passed—Mike Sabin: What did the Labour Government do between 1999 and 2008?IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY: —Mike Sabin just be quiet and let me say what I have to say—by August last year but because the Government failed to prioritise the Psychoactive Substances Act the legislation was brought to the House only in February last year. If we had got started in February last year that would have given us a little bit of time.But what the Government did was sit on that legislation from February until April and it gave the select committee even less time to consider the legislation.Mike Sabin: What did the member’s party do until 2008?IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY: What the member’s party did until 2008 was ask the Law Commission to do a complete review of the Misuse of Drugs Act because we understood that the Misuse of Drugs Act was no longer capable of dealing with the number and variety of drugs that were available for supply in the 21st century. That is what the Labour Government did. We asked the independent Law Commission to go away and figure out what the best way forward was. The Law Commission came back in April 2011 with a comprehensive report one chapter—just one chapter—of which is the precursor to the Psychoactive Substances Act. It took that Government 2 years to take the recommendations on psychoactive substances from the Law Commission—2 years to bring that legislation before the House—and then it said to Parliament: “I’m sorry but you’re going to have to rush this.” That is why mistakes were made—because that Government did not prioritise getting these drugs off the streets. That is why Parliament made a mistake.I am happy to say that I was one of the MPs who voted for that legislation and it was the right thing to do because had we not passed that legislation then all those drugs would still be out there—not 41 but about 300 different drugs would still be out there if we had not passed the legislation. But it was not perfect and one of the main reasons it was not perfect was that the select committee was not given time to consider it properly and the select committee did not have time because that Government did not make this a priority. That is a fact.The other reason we are back here today is that having implemented the legislation the Government then made an absolute dog’s breakfast of resourcing it giving the Ministry of Health the tools it needed and getting the regulations sorted out. One of the reasons we hear for why it has taken so long to get the regulations sorted out is that John Key was uncomfortable with animal testing. But it was National that blocked the amendments that would have stopped animal testing. So if we had gone back and got the legislation right in the first place if National had voted for MojoMather’s amendment then we would not have had to delay the regulation-making process because John Key would not have had to worry about animal testing.The other thing the Government has failed to do is use the provisions in the current legislation to get rid of unsafe drugs. It got rid of five at the beginning of the year—well done; not bad—but then after the announcement that the law was going to be changed it got rid of another six. That just smacks of an under-resourced Ministry of Health incapable of properly implementing the original legislation.This has been a shambles from the National Government from the very beginning—its failure to respond to the Law Commission’s report its slow response as to when one was finally coming the rushed select committee process that caused mistakes in the legislation and then the shambolic implementation of the legislation once it was finally passed. Make no mistake New Zealand the reason why we have got untested unsafe drugs still on our streets is that National has made a hash of this from day one. And thereason for that is that it never prioritised this issue. It was never important to National. It has always been a rush job. Here is another rush job and it is simply a reflection of the fact that making sure our young people are safe from drugs that have a high risk of causing harm was never a priority for this Government. That is why we are in the mess we are in today and that is why we are having to clean it up.Dr PAUL HUTCHISON (National—Hunua): Mr Iain Lees-Galloway tends to be a little shrill about a very complex matter of regulating drugs effectively which the Labour Government certainly failed to do in 9 long years. No matter how much Mr Iain Lees-Galloway rants and raves this is a complex area and countries around the world are wrestling with the best and most effective ways of minimising harm from psychoactive substances.I must say that when the Health Committee heard submissions on the Psychoactive Substances Bill last year New Zealanders up and down the country came to the select committee saying how they were deeply concerned for the children of New Zealand and the adolescents who were using psychoactive substances because of the serious adverse effects—none more so than the Mayor of Timaru who came up to Wellington and said that it was the No. 1 problem in her community of Timaru and that the parents and the whole community were begging her to do something about it. After all the aim of the original legislation was to minimise harm from psychoactive substances and protect the public health. It was regarded as highly innovative legislation and a huge amount of thought had been put into it but as I said before this is a very complex issue that no Government that I know of anywhere in the world has managed to get on top of.I agree and accept that politically there is a very strong call for banning psychoactive substances. The reality is that under the circumstances where there is a danger that they will be driven underground—and it is a very real danger—there is a concern that we must have the infrastructure and services available to look after those people who have withdrawal problems. And it is important to resource the police.There are several ironies relating to this legislation the Psychoactive Substances Amendment Bill. As JohnRoughan pointed out in theNew Zealand Herald it is somewhat extraordinary that one would ban cannabis and yet cannabinoids synthetic cannabis which is often many times more potent than the natural weed was legal. So it is entirely appropriate that we are indeed addressing this issue.One of the major tenets of this bill was that manufacturers are required to demonstrate minimal risk to humans who use so-called party pills or legal highs and this legislation is about risk management. However to demonstrate minimal risk in 2014 does require the possibility of some animal testing. We had huge debate in this House regarding that. The Psychoactive Substances Expert Advisory Committee was absolutely clear that unfortunately despite the rhetoric of the Greens and the anti-vivisectionists in 2014 there are not substantive tests available that can demonstrate minimal risk. Professor Robson from the expert advisory committee ProfessorGluckman and the Ministry of Health all acknowledge that to be the case and that it may be several years before we have alternatives that are effective to demonstrate minimal harm. However in the meantime we are doing the appropriate thing in taking psychoactive substances off the shelves.I do want to mention that there are some wider safety scientific and economic issues at stake around the passing of this bill because there is no doubt in my mind that if New Zealand is to say that science is at the centre of Government and we are going to continue to have high standards around the medicines and drugs we use it is fundamental to insist that these medications undergo rigorous testing according to best-practice scientific methods which today as I have said does indeed require—to the best of our knowledge—animal testing. We hope that this can be replaced and thelegislation was very clear that it should be minimised if indeed it was needed. We hope that technology will advance rapidly and allow it not to be necessary.But the erosion of these principles in the pharmaceutical and biological engineering field can lead to the erosion of standards and opportunities in the health sector in the agricultural sector in the biosecurity sector and in the innovative sector. I remember well the debates around the Environmental Risk Management Authority and the hazardous substances and new organisms legislation some years ago where the Greens wanted to exercise the precautionary principle to the zenith degree with the result that New Zealand’s capability and capacity in the area of biotechnology have been reduced. This does mean a reduced capability in the agricultural and biosecurity area. It is also ironic that the Greens talk about this precautionary principle for offshore drilling and indeed as I say in the biological engineering area but when it comes to party pills they are not so worried about the standards that are used. These pills or substances are used on adolescents’ developing brains when they are at their most sensitive.There is no doubt that this amendment bill is a practical response to the fact that ordinary New Zealanders up and down the country do not want psychoactive substances to be available legally. I feel very strongly that the House is supporting this bill and it is an irony that the Greens are abstaining.Hon ANNETTE KING (Labour—Rongotai): Labour will support the Psychoactive Substances Amendment Bill through all stages and we have also today supported the urgency motion for the passage of this bill. You cannot say that you want action in a hurry and then not support urgency for this bill but I think there needs to be a little bit of background about this bill before we get into the details of it. Last month a number of us—in fact I believe probably all the colleagues in the House—received a letter from the Hon Peter Dunne. It started off with “Dear Colleague”. The date of the letter was 15 April last month. He said he wanted to update us on the progress and the achievements of the Psychoactive Substances Act 2013. He went on to say that a blanket ban on yet-to-be-developed psychoactive substances would be very difficult to implement and to enforce particularly as it will relate to products or substances that do not yet exist etc. etc. He then went on to blame local government because the implementation had not occurred as fast as he would have liked and he went on to say he knows there are pockets of frustration but remember the Act is only 9 months old. That was on 15 April.There was no intention by the Minister in charge of this legislation Peter Dunne who put the legislation through the House to make any changes based on information and I have to say a very very detailed fact sheet—a fact sheet that tells us what has happened since the Act came into effect on 18 July what the Psychoactive Substances Regulatory Authority is doing and the transition to regulations. In fact under this part it said that the authority is operating a temporary system of controls called the interim regime etc. etc.What has happened here is that members on the back bench were putting pressure on Cabinet to make some changes—because maybe the backbenchers were listening to their constituents. That is something that was happening right across this Parliament. We were being told that we had got it wrong and that we needed to make changes. That went on for months and months. The pressure built. The pressure on the backbenchers built. Their constituents were telling them what the problems were and the reports were coming out in the media on a daily basis. So from 15 April—Louisa Wall: And Todd McClay.Hon ANNETTE KING: And Todd McClay?Louisa Wall: In Rotorua.Hon ANNETTE KING: Oh Todd McClay—a Minister—was probably one of the Ministers who did know what was happening. But the pressure was going on in a very very strong way to the backbenchers. So then there needed to be an action and this is where I find it rather difficult. When you read the letter there is nothing about getting this changed at all. Then you hear from the Minister of Health that we have been discussing this issue last month—and we did it more than once. We did it several times. Minister was it after 15 April when we received the letter? The question that in Committee we can ask is whether Peter Dunne was in the loop. Why was he telling us: “No need for change. Everything’s going well. We’re pretty pleased with what is happening.”?Then I read the regulatory impact statement that the Ministry of Health has put out. It is dated 4 May 2014 I think. The ministry wrote that after Cabinet was looking at this issue so it did not actually give this advice to Cabinet before it made the decision. And the regulatory impact statement is very interesting. It says that we do not have all the information we need to fully assess the impacts of this proposal we do not know the number or the proportion of people we do not know the exact date the regulations will be made we do not know the impact on other regulatory actions we cannot say how much enforcement work is needed by the police and finally we do not know what proportion of people use these products or what the effect will be and there has been no formal review of this proposal planned. So in the Committee stage Minister I would like you to answer all those questions because you have been working on it for a long time before you have brought this bill to the House and we are going to have to trust your word on this.It was very clear when the original bill was brought into this House and my colleague Iain Lees-Galloway warned that if we did not take time and care over this bill we would get it wrong. He made that very strong warning in all the speeches that he made. He also said that we had the opportunity at the Health Committee to get it right and not to rush it. He asked for it not to be rushed and there was no need to rush it Minister because it was back in October 2012 that you got the first regulatory impact statement from the Ministry of Health. It took until April the next year for the bill to be introduced—6 months later—and that original regulatory impact statement said this: “Current legislation has proved ineffective in dealing with the rapid growth in new psychoactive substances such as party pills and other legal highs which can be synthesised to be one step ahead of existing controls. Cabinet has agreed to new legislation to address this by prohibiting the sale of all”—all—“psychoactive substances unless approved by a regulator.” So back in October 2012 this is what it said Cabinet had agreed to—that it would have new legislation prohibiting the sale of all psychoactive substances unless approved by a regulator.It went on to say: “The new legislation will reduce risks to the public by removing untested and potentially harmful products from being sold …” etc. That is dated October 2012. Six months later we got the bill and it was rushed through the Health Committee I believe in about 2 months. So what we are seeing here is when the chooks do come home to roost. Sometimes even if it is said by Opposition members and the Government does not wish to take much notice of them maybe they ought to be listened to because we are back here trying to fix something that maybe we could have got right in the original bill.There was then an interjection I believe by one of the backbenchers over there of “Well what did Labour do about it? Labour did nothing about it.” Well I can tell you that Labour did do something about psychoactive substances. They had been around for about 15 years and they were legal. They were—[Bell rung] Sorry Mr Assistant Speaker I thought you were telling me my time was up but I have got—The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): No 2 more minutes.Hon ANNETTE KING: —2 minutes. Legal highs were legal because the Misuse of Drugs Act bans only substances that are specifically listed in the legislation. Attempts were made under a Labour Government to ban using the Misuse of Drugs Act such things as benzylpiperazine and they were replaced very quickly by a new product. So we did ask the Law Commission to undertake a comprehensive review of the Misuse of Drugs Act. It was completed and given to this Government in 2011 I believe and then the Government took till 2013 to do something about it. It recommended that we did make changes to the Misuse of Drugs Act. The Government has chosen not to do that and put in place a very narrow bill which now needs to be changed. I am pleased that it is being changed. I am particularly pleased for Trevor Mallard who with Mojo Major went out to bat strongly against animal testing and I have to give some credit to John Banks. I do not always agree with the language that he uses but there is no doubt that he does have passion for animals as does my colleague Trevor Mallard and Mojo Major—Hon Members: Mathers!Hon ANNETTE KING: —sorry Mojo—Mojo Mathers who raised this issue on a number of occasions. So we are back here now to fix this problem. I would like to see it fixed as fast as possible but there are some questions that need to be answered by the Government around the delay and around answers to the questions that have been posed in the regulatory impact statement of May which was put out just a few days ago by the Ministry of Health.MOJO MATHERS (Green): I will be upfront. Today we had a difficult decision at caucus. This Psychoactive Substances Amendment Bill has been difficult for us because on the one hand the Green Party totally welcomes the Government’s U-turn on the animal testing of these drugs. In particular I am thrilled that the Government has finally adopted in substance the amendment that I put up on the Psychoactive Substances Bill last year which ruled out the use of information from animal testing to support an application. I note that the Government voted then against that amendment and I know that thousands of New Zealanders are celebrating now because the Government has finally done a U-turn on this decision. But on the other hand we know that the other clauses in this bill around prohibition of the sale of these drugs will create a dangerous black market in these drugs. Later today my colleague and health spokesperson Kevin Hague will speak further on our concerns around these provisions. So after careful deliberation between the two fairly different clauses in the bill we have decided to abstain from voting but we do want to affirm our total support for the Government decision to back down on animal testing of party pills and legal highs.This decision is absolutely the right one. We are thrilled that the Government has finally listened to the tens of thousands of New Zealanders who raised their voices against the testing of these products on animals. The depth of public feeling on this issue was highlighted last year when more than 60000 people signed a petition calling for animal testing of party pills to be ruled out. People in their tens of thousands have marched signed petitions emailed MPs and written letters and finally just over a year later the Government has got it: animal testing is an issue that is not going to go away. The Government decision to rule out animal testing is morally and ethically the right one. It will ensure that thousands of animals will not be subject to the extreme suffering that is involved in toxicology testing.I want to talk about the process that happened last year when the Psychoactive Substances Bill came up because at that time many animal welfare organisations and people put in considerable time and effort to write substantive submissions on that bill on the issue of animal testing. They did this in good faith on the advice of the Ministerin charge of the bill Peter Dunne and Ministry of Health officials that the best way for concerns around animal testing to be addressed was via the submissions process. Unbelievably after all this effort their submissions were ruled out of order rejected by the chair of the Health Committee as not relevant and returned to them. These people were devastated that their democratic right to be heard had been rejected.In response the Green Party held our own hearings to hear the evidence that the select committee did not get to hear. The information that was presented at these hearings was well researched and directly relevant to the substance of this bill and should never have been excluded. We wrote a report that we presented to the Health Committee that summarised these submissions and we concluded that a clause should be added to this bill ruling out the use of information from animal testing to support an application. I put up an amendment doing just that.Ruling out animal testing is the best decision in the best interests of both animals and people. The reality is that the results of animal testing are notoriously unreliable. Because of this in 2008 the United States Environmental Protection Agency the National Institutes of Health and the Food and Drug Administration started a process to replace all toxicology testing on animals with non-animal tests because these tests produce results that are more relevant to humans and therefore more reliable. They are able to do this because the technology and safety testing have come a long way in the last 20 years. Despite what a previous speaker said the alternatives to animal testing are many and include in vitro human cell line studies computer models micronucleus assays in vitro absorption tests and so on.We cannot claim to be world leaders in animal welfare when other countries are so far ahead of us. The United Kingdom has a ban on animal testing of recreational substances and this includes tobacco and alcohol on the grounds that such testing of recreational products is unethical and immoral. This ban has helped drive much of the development and research into non-animal testing of drugs. They have also confirmed directly with us that their ban will also apply to psychoactive substances when these drugs are intended for recreational use.One reason why animal testing continues to be carried out for most toxicology testing in New Zealand is that many of the non-animal tests are more expensive than animal tests. For example we heard at the hearings evidence from someone who wanted a product tested and when they took it to be tested for safety they were told it would cost $10000 to test it using animals. When she said she did not want to use animals she was then informed it would cost $30000 to test it using non-animal tests rather than those tests. So cost is the main driver of using animal tests in toxicology testing in New Zealand despite what people will tell you to the opposite. Basically our argument all along has been that decisions around safety testing should not be based on protecting the profit margins of the party pill industry.Just prior to the Psychoactive Substances Bill being debated last year someone sent me an undercover video of toxicology testing being undertaken on beagles in the United States. Although it was not the most gruesome animal testing video that I have seen it was definitely the saddest. Seeing these beautiful affectionate animals barely out of the puppy stage confined alone in bleak stainless steel cages forced to ingest drugs every day that made them feel sick and then killed for dissection was gut-wrenching and utterly heartbreaking. Make no mistake toxicology testing on animals causes a really high level of suffering. Once you have seen what has happened to animals in toxicology testing you cannot un-see it. This video confirmed for me what I have always believed—that testing for trivial purposes is utterly and completely indefensible. I know that there are thousands of decent New Zealanders out there who share that conviction. This is what has driven us to march in the streets and drives our passion. The great thingabout prohibiting animal testing of recreational drugs is that it will drive innovation and uptake of non-animal testing in New Zealand something that needs to happen and is long overdue. The animals deserve it from us.Hon JOHN BANKS (Leader—ACT): This is a surreal time in the history of this Parliament. If we were to close our eyes for a moment and think back 8 months there was a clamour in this House to enable the importers and the retailers of these mind-altering chemicals to have an opportunity to go out and exploit the vulnerable the poor the lonely and the dispossessed and to sell them these dangerous mind-altering chemicals for a profit and watch them slowly and progressively in front of their families and in their communities go mad—go mad.It was TV3’sCampbell Live programme that by instalments showed every member of this Parliament the madness of the decision that was taken 8 months ago by 120 members of this House to give this social experiment a burl. It has been a failure. The process we are going through this afternoon is a time-honoured process of dead rat swallowing. We got it wrong. I voted against it but we got it wrong. I saidtaiho but we got it wrong. I said that it was a crazy thing to do but we got it wrong. This Parliament got it wrong. It got it wrong. It got it badly wrong. Night after night on TV3 at 7 o’clock we saw the madness of what this Parliament did.The greed-driven drug importers and retailers were making a fortune and many of our young and vulnerable people were behaving like fruit-loops—like fruit-loops. So I say again in this Parliament today that we have got to get it right. We owe it to these young people who are lonely depressed out of work out of hope and looking for an opportunity to refresh their lives and give themselves some sense of worth. But taking drugs like mind-altering substances will not do it and I am stating that on the record in Parliament today.It is a bad idea to take these substances. It is a bad idea to drink far too much alcohol. It is a bad idea to smoke cigarettes. It is very expensive. In my long life I have never met anyone who has had an addiction to drugs alcohol tobacco or to any mind-altering substances—I have not met one person in my long life—who has said that it has made a difference that they feel good about it and that it has changed their life for the good. Not one person has ever said that to me. So we should proceed with this bill the Psychoactive Substances Amendment Bill today.I suppose on a lighter note I can thank Moonbeam the cat—the Prime Minister’s cat. That beautiful animal runs around his home in Parnell in the centre of my electorate and when the Prime Minister comes home from work each week he looks at that cat and says that he could not possibly allow that animal to be tortured to death in the name of and at the altar of a mind-altering drug experiment. Coming back he said that it cannot happen to beagle puppies and that it will not and that it cannot happen and should not happen to rabbits and now it will not. New Zealand is now saying no to animal testing for these mind-altering fun drugs which is exactly what I—and to be fair some of my colleagues—begged this Parliament to do 8 months ago. The numbers did not fall our way and the Mad Hatter’s tea party began.This Parliament should apologise to the young and the vulnerable the sick and the poor and those people looking for a high in life when there is so much low. We should be apologising to them today for giving them and selling them a fraud. Taking drugs to make you feel better is a fraud and we in this Parliament should be role models and saying no to these mind-altering drugs. If these substances have to be tested to make sure that they are safe and whether they are necessary—and they are not—then we should never ever sacrifice any animal at the altar of an experiment to try to prove that they are safe. The bottom line is—and everyone knows this in this House—that these substances will never be safe. These substances will never be safe.The original bill was well intentioned—I will gave that much credit to this House—in that it sought to ensure that psychoactive substances are safe but it was deeply flawed—deeply flawed. All the assumptions were deeply flawed. Every single member of Parliament who voted for it should stand up this afternoon and say that they got it wrong. I am prepared as a member of this House to say that I voted against it but we got it wrong. So we can put it right. The Prime Minister took leadership on the weekend and said that the Government is going to get it right so full marks to the Prime Minister. It is 8 months overdue but full marks to the Prime Minister.So what have we got here in the Psychoactive Substances Amendment Bill? Animals cannot be tested in this country to prove that these things are safe. You will never prove that these things are safe as long as the cows start walking home because they will never be safe. We should say in this Parliament today that these are dangerous substances and they will never be safe no matter what experiment you use and what jurisdiction it comes from. They will never be safe.As for evidence of harm—there is plenty of evidence of harm. We do not need to sacrifice beagle puppies on a gurney with their ears stapled to the ground and gas being pumped into them until they get to the LD50—half of them expire—to know that these substances are dangerous. We all know they are dangerous. The Assistant Speaker knows they are dangerous. Every member of Parliament knows they are dangerous. Our fine Minister of Health knows they are dangerous. We are taking them off the shelf. I know that there will be people out there who will say that it is their right to smoke this to suck that to inhale this and to drink something else. But it is our responsibility to say to people that it is bad for their health and to be very careful—very very careful.This bill is a vast improvement on the animal welfare front on the original flawed bill. We have not actually taken the opportunity to slam shut the door on animal testing because animal testing done offshore that is detrimental to the safety of one of these substances can be used to turn that substance down. I ask the Minister and I ask the Government whether they would say “Let’s do that and go back from today—but not for the future—so as of midnight tonight these drugs that have been tested on hapless beagle puppies and proved to be unsafe is a reason for us turning them down.” But we should have said in this bill that no evidence from any animal testing from any part of the world will ever form part of a decision to give the tick for one of these dangerous substances. That is what I wanted and maybe in 10 years’ time when I am back again we can revisit this legislation and do it again.What I want to do is finish as I began. I am going to accept my part of the responsibility for the Mad Hatters’ tea party that we have inflicted across the country on so many of the participants. It has been a bad experiment and this Parliament got it badly wrong. But today we are fixing the wrong because we can all make errors of judgment and mistakes. New Zealand says to the rest of the world today that first and foremost we do not believe that there should be any animal testing on any product under any circumstances unless it is for pharmaceutical lifesaving reasons because we believe in respect for all animals. We believe in the sanctity and the dignity of all the animals—however big or small—that we share this world with.That is the message from this Parliament—we are not going to sacrifice animals at the altar of mind-altering drugs. We are saying no to drugs today and we are telling young people that taking drugs is a very very risky business and that this Parliament’s responsibility is to try to help educate them on that front.BARBARA STEWART (NZ First): I stand on behalf of New Zealand First to take a call on the Psychoactive Substances Amendment Bill. We all know in this House that psychoactive substances are a blight on New Zealand society and at long last this legislation will take these products off the shelves. There is little doubt thatParliament—and we are accepting our role in this—made an error with the previous legislation. We should have included a safety requirement in the legislation that these substances be proven to be safe prior to being available for sale and of course we should have had an animal welfare aspect in it as well. We are pleased that amendments have been made and we are committed to ensuring that this bill passes through the House as soon as possible so that these products can be taken off the shelves and right away from young people.Legal high manufacturers and resellers should definitely not be rolling in profits while the users are becoming a burden on our health system and experiencing dangerous withdrawals and terrible effects and of course many of them are committing crimes in our neighbourhood so that they can continue to purchase these substances. It is just not good enough. None of this should ever have happened. This legislation should be right at this particular time and we are very pleased that urgency has been accorded to this particular legislation.Ironically we heard through the select committee process for the original bill how difficult it was to remove all of the products from sale and off the shelves. We will not deny that this is not easy. It never is easy but at last today we have actually done something in this Parliament. We are pleased that urgency has been accorded to this particular bill. We have had so many constituents coming to our offices almost daily to tell of their trials and tribulations with these products. We have heard from parents at their wits’ end unable to keep their families functioning. It has been so sad.New Zealand First believes that the Government now owes it to the people of our country to ensure that there are dedicated services for people whose lives have been negatively impacted by the presence of legal highs—addiction services and counselling for parents and families who want to get their lives back on track. This has been a terrible experiment. We guarantee that there is a need for these services back in the community. It is not easy for anyone and it will not be easy for anyone until these addictive substances are out of the system of everybody who is taking them.When the Psychoactive Substances Bill was passed in Parliament we all believed that it was going to prevent the kinds of harm that our communities are experiencing. We have been too slow basically in removing these products from sale but we are pleased that the day has come when they are removed. To that end we are very glad to be here today to fix the mess that has been created while we waited for the law to take effect. I was delighted to hear the Hon Tony Ryall say that from Thursday these products will not be available for sale in any shop in New Zealand.We are absolutely rapt to hear that manufacturers have to prove that their products are safe and that no animals are going to be unduly tested to ensure that the products are safe. “Low risk” is a subjective term that we do have some qualms about and if that term is not changed perhaps the legislation will be back in Parliament again so that we can change it. We cannot afford to again expose our people in New Zealand to products that are not safe. These products need to undergo a testing regime that is similar to the pharmaceutical regime—very thorough and very detailed. We also support the new laws that prevent any information from animal testing being used for recreational drugs. This should really set a precedent for the future and alternatives to animal testing must be explored now with this legislation.In closing we are very happy in New Zealand First to finally see some progress which we hope will immediately benefit the people who are putting themselves in danger by using these untested psychoactive substances. New Zealand First has said very strongly right from the beginning that we believe that these products need to be banned. It is important for action to be swift. We are delighted that it is and hopefully by the end of the day we will know and can rest assured that from Thursday we will ensure that our communities and our people are safe right through New Zealand.MIKE SABIN (National—Northland): Let us take a little bit of a history lesson with the Psychoactive Substances Amendment Bill and go back to the late 1990s when psychoactive substances—so-called legal highs—emerged in New Zealand. They were a very new entity and it took until 2008 forbenzylpiperazine or BZP to essentially be banned through use of the Misuse of Drugs Act schedules. Those legal highs were taken off the shelf but the manufacturers of legal highs had already worked out that they could circumvent the legislation by altering the chemical compounds of these drugs and already had a strategy basically to beat that legislation. They have successfully done so for many years since then in the cat and mouse game in terms of these drugs always falling outside the current legislation the Misuse of Drugs Act.In July 2013 the Psychoactive Substances Bill was Peter Dunne’s and this Government’s effort to say: “Let’s take away the ability for them to do that and put the onus on them to prove that these products are safe.” In my view that standard of proof should be a very very high one. Ultimately what it really resulted in was a situation whereby in order for psychoactive substances to be available they had to have gone through a rigorous process including clinical testing and tests on animals so that they could be passed through as a low-risk product at the end. It is my belief that the starting point should always have been—and it certainly has been in my mind—that we did not want these drugs out there but by reversing the onus it took away the ability for the drug manufacturers to hold all the tools.So we got ourselves into a territory through this new model where essentially we are blazing new territory in world drug policy. Everyone knows that and actually many people around the world are looking at New Zealand. So it is sort of if you like pioneering stuff. It is not an easy track to take. If people had the answers to this they would have been trotted out many many years ago. So we have gone down this track. Of course with the benefit of hindsight we can accept that the products that were allowed to stay on the shelf as part of the transitional regime were dangerous. We are dealing with chemicals compounds and combinations thereof that are virtually unknown to science. It does not surprise me that we saw this sort of level of harm emerge once the bulk of the other ones were removed. This Government has moved quickly to actually say that being the case we need to get those off the shelf and recalibrate. Part of that recalibration is accepting that removing animal testing raises the bar. I have no problem with that.If that means that some will go underground as a consequence of this then so be it because I say to members in this House and I say to members of the public that there will always be some who do not obey laws regardless of what they are but in the main laws are there to guide society and to guide people who do obey laws as to what is right and what is wrong. Therefore the laws are really about providing consequences to those lawless people who will not obey them regardless of what they are. Not making laws because the lawless will not follow them anyway is not what we should do. What we should be doing is intending to guide the law-abiding citizens and ensure that the direction that we believe is safe and appropriate is the track that they go down.Although there will be some unintended consequences in terms of the degree of use underground that will always happen regardless of what the drug is and regardless of what the law is because there will always be some who do not obey the laws regardless of what they are. This is not so much of a U-turn as it is actually responding to what is pioneering legislation and difficult legislation because we are trying to get ahead of the ability for drug makers to spin their chemical mixtures well ahead of legislative responses so it is pragmatic and it does respond to the concerns of community. I commend members in the House. I am actually disgusted that the Green Party is takingthe approach that it is in this particular debate given the harms that it is causing out here. But I commend this as being a solution to an ongoing and evolving problem.CLARE CURRAN (Labour—Dunedin South): Let us call it what it is. This Government got the Psychoactive Substances Act wrong. This Government got the law wrong. The Psychoactive Substances Amendment Bill is an unprecedented U-turn—an unprecedented U-turn—by a shaky Government. Of course we support it. Of course we support it because we made the Government do it. We made it do it alongside the tens of thousands of people in every community around New Zealand the desperate families theCampbell Live show—yes John Campbell and theCampbell Live show—the radio stations and the newspapers including my own newspaper in Dunedin theOtago Daily Times. This is the result of community pressure. This Government got the law terribly wrong.When we voted for the original legislation we did so on the basis that it would rid our community of these substances. But what happened? They went out of the dairies but instantly a whole lot of new outlets—47—popped up. They got pretty much instant interim licences and many of them are now selling only legal highs. Eight of those were in Dunedin. One of those is in south Dunedin and it is situated next to SF Otago which is a community mental health facility. It has caused huge numbers of problems in the Dunedin community. [Interruption] I challenge the member across the House who lives in Dunedin to say that it has not. He laughs at the Opposition over here for raising this issue. It popped up a week after the Psychoactive Substances Act was passed and it has created a massive number of problems.What else have we seen? What have we seen since then? Attempts to try to get that facility closed have failed because the Ministry of Health said that it could not do anything about it. The Dunedin City Council said that its hands were tied. Meanwhile a Psychoactive Substances Regulatory Authority a very small group of people was formed in the corner of an open-plan office in the Ministry of Health to try to manage these issues—it is trying to manage them unsuccessfully. And what did it do? It gave licences to 47 outlets. It reduced around 300 substances to 42. It did not put in place a testing regime. Of those 42 substances that remained on the shelves in these purpose-built opened facilities with the interim licences from the Ministry of Health they had even worse substances that were given the licences to be sold.I want to show you the monthly report from the National Poisons Centre. In fact here is a colour version of the graph because it is a much better version for the people watching at home. The bar graph in red is the number of calls made to the National Poisons Centre in April of this year. It is higher than any number of calls that were made all throughout the last couple of years. From August last year when the Act was passed the numbers have consistently been high. What they show is that the substances that have been left on the shelves have been more concentrated have been more deadly and have had worse and worse effects on people in our community. We are seeing worse effects from withdrawal. We are seeing people vomiting for days unable to eat and unable to sleep. Psychiatrists are reporting that up to 40 percent of patients that they are seeing are related to legal highs.These are shocking shocking statistics. They are shocking concerns for our country. It was a shocking state of affairs to see the legislation pass through this House legislation from a Government that claimed that it was going to sort this problem out. We are now hearing that there are fears that the long-term effects of these psychoactive substances may be permanent and that there needs to be a lot more research done on this. There needs to be a lot more resources put into this. But what happened? What happened back in July last year when we raised these issues in the debate on the Psychoactive Substances Bill as it passed before the House? We raised the issues of theimportance of providing more resources to the health system and what happened? Nothing. Nothing happened.I will read to you what was said in this House by me during the second reading of the Psychoactive Substances Bill. I said: “I was invited to and attended a symposium in Dunedin at the Wakari Hospital which is run by the district health board and mental health services and it included people working in inpatient services community-based mental health services emergency psychiatric services specialist alcohol and drug services and others. … They said that synthetic cannabis was a clinical burden on health services that emergency department patients had cyclical vomiting and seizures from smoking synthetic cannabis and that many of the patients had experienced delayed seizures up to a day after smoking synthetic cannabis.” They said that there was an increased demand on the health services. We said and we had put into the commentary on the Psychoactive Substances Bill that there would be an increased demand on the health services.Where has the reponse been from this Government around dealing with that increased demand? What did it do? It created a small group of people who sat in the corner of an open-plan office in the Ministry of Health and could not deal with the situation that they had been left with as the result of the bill passing. We raised these issues back in August. The National Poisons Centre has told us that the incidence of severe effects is going up and up every single month. A report produced in a recent edition ofNew Zealand Doctor magazine written by LeoSchep who is the toxicologist at Dunedin Hospital and who is widely considered reputable and credible on these issues said that “The ease of access and legal availability of these products has … created a substantial increase in the numbers of patients attending emergency departments and medical centres … The National Poisons Centre … had more calls last year about synthetic cannabinoids than any other single drug of abuse category.” He went on to describe the effects which I have just read out but what he also raised is that there is serious concern about the risk of causing ongoingneuro-psychiatric effects. This is one of the reasons that we had to get the legislation right and we did not get it right. The Government did not get it right last year. We have to get it right this year.Where are the resources? Where are the resources that are going to be provided in our communities after this bill is passed? Hopefully it will be passed and it will receive the Royal assent late on Wednesday night or early on Thursday morning which will make every single one of these substances unauthorised—unauthorised—and they will need to be taken off the shelves. There will be 2 weeks for there to be inspections of all those licensed premises to ensure that the substances are gone. Where are the resources though in our health system that are going to be dealing with the effects? Where is the Government on this? Where is the Government saying that it is going to put increased health resources into the community? This is a no-brainer.There was a second U-turn this week—I know that my colleagues have talked about this—and that was in respect of the 46000 people over 48 hours who signed a petition to ban animal testing. That again is a no-brainer. This is a bill that we must pass. We must get it through this House this week but the Government needs to own up and say that it got the original legislation wrong.SCOTT SIMPSON (National—Coromandel): It is my intention to take just a short call on the Psychoactive Substances Amendment Bill in the name of the Minister of Health the Hon Tony Ryall. In doing so I am pleased to note that as of 8 May at 12.01 the products that are currently on the market will become unapproved products that there will be heavy penalties for selling or supplying them and that it will also become illegal to possess them. That should be an adequate warning to anyone who is considering stockpiling.I say that 20/20 hindsight is a wonderful thing; 20/20 foresight however is a far more rare and unusual thing. It amazes me that the previous speaker from the Labour Party Clare Curran could stand up and regale the House with her version of history and her version of what she thinks is the truth when she and her party voted to support this legislation as did every other member in the House with the honourable exception of the Hon John Banks the member for Epsom. When he was speaking earlier on in this debate he said we collectively got it wrong and we probably did. We did collectively get it wrong and the mistake we made was to apply a transition period to these drugs. We thought as a collective House that that was the right thing to do. It turns out that it was not. These are complicated issues. They are not just complicated issues for this Parliament for New Zealand and for New Zealanders but they are complicated issues for the entire world.Just a week or two ago inTime magazine I noticed there was a very good and comprehensive article about how the Americans are trying to grapple with this exact same issue. The article said “The most complicated drug problem in the world right now isn’tmeth or cocaine or heroin. It is synthetic drugs”. I want to make just a single point before sitting down and commending this bill to the House. It has got to do with the Greens’ position on this bill. Many of us put in a lot of time and effort to convince a lot of voters and put forward compelling cases as to why we should come to this Parliament to represent our constituencies and the people who put us in this Parliament. To come to Parliament and then as a caucus make a united decision to abstain on a hard piece of legislation is the ultimate parliamentary cop-out. The Greens to come to this House and sanctimoniously lecture members of the House about their positions on a whole range of issues yet when they come to a hard decision simply not to take it and not to make it is as I say the absolute ultimate cop-out. I am sure that Green supporters all around the country are watching that lack of decision on their part.There is an old proverb that says that when you reach a fork in the road take it—when you reach a fork in the road take it. My invitation to the Greens is that they should reconsider their cop-out position and that they should reconsider their decision to abstain from this legislation. They should actually come out make a decision and show that maybe one day in the future they could potentially be a fit and able coalition partner for a future Government many many years away from today. But right now they have shown and proved completely and conclusively that they are not fit to make any kind of hard decision and that they do not do so on the hard issues of the day. I commend this bill to the House.LOUISA WALL (Labour—Manurewa): Kia ora Mr Assistant Speaker. Thank you very much for giving me an opportunity to participate in the first reading of the Psychoactive Substances Amendment Bill. I do so as a member of the Health Committee which considered the original piece of legislation. I want to acknowledge the 119 of us in this House who voted in support of that legislation. I was one of those people. But I do want to highlight a couple of learning opportunities for us as a Parliament. The first learning opportunity was the manner in which that bill was rushed through the House. The reality is we had a truncated process to meet a deadline that the Government knew about. It forced us as a Parliament to rush through a piece of legislation we are now here having to correct. The reason we are here to correct it is that the people of New Zealand collectively have come out they have marched and they have shown that democracy in this country works. I also need to pay tribute to John Campbell and theCampbell Live programme for allowing the content of our community to be seen and for allowing the large number of people in communities around our country who have huge problems with these substances to have the forum have the platform to then influence this Government.As a member of the select committee I thought it was very interesting that the transition provisions—you are right—were put into the original legislation because we did not want blanket prohibition. That was the reality. We recognised that there were products in the country that needed to be regulated. We did not want prohibition so what we did was say that if the products had been sold within the last 3 months that was the qualification for them to be sold. But the major flaw in the bill that we as a collective group of parliamentarians enacted on 18 July last year was that we were to develop regulations around the approval process for psychoactive products. What the public of New Zealand needs to know is that the Ministry of Health was empowered with that responsibility. It was the responsibility of the then Associate Minister of Health Todd McClay to implement that piece of legislation.What I have just found out through one of his own press releases is that on 21 March this year the Ministry of Health concluded its submission process. So in fact the Ministry of Health at this point in time has not developed the approval process which is actually the biggest flaw in the Act that we are now aiming to address. That is absolutely the fault of the Government. The Government is trying to say it is the fault of Parliament. Actually it is not; it is the fault of the Government.What I want to do is acknowledge our local councils because we did empower our local councils to develop local approved products policy. What I know is that in my community of Manurewa my local board organised a meeting on 14 August last year so that my community could participate in a process to develop our local approved products policy. Local councils like Napier City Council and Hamilton City Council were on to it. Our councils our elected local board officials were on to it. This Parliament was not on to it. We are all here tonight rushing this bill through because of the implementation of the primary piece of legislation which that Government absolutely has to take responsibility for because unless you have developed a regime—The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): I am sorry to interrupt the honourable member. The time has come for me to leave the Chair for the dinner break.Sitting suspended from 6 p.m. to 7.30 p.m.LOUISA WALL: I thought it was appropriate after the dinner break to talk about why this Parliament voted for the Psychoactive Substances Act. It became a problem for us as a country because on 1 August 2013 there were temporary class drug notices that were going to expire. That would have enabled 30 substances in 50 products that we had deemed unsafe to go back on to the market. So it was with some urgency that we rushed the legislation through. For those people listening Associate Minister of Health Dunne introduced the bill on 26 February 2013. The first reading was on 9 April the second reading was on 27 June the Committee stage was on 9 July and we passed the legislation on 17 July. So my primary point before the dinner break was that on 18 July when the Psychoactive Substances Act became an Act of the New Zealand Parliament no regulations had been created. The importance of those regulations was in fact in the development of a psychoactive products approval process. In fact one of the reasons we are here today is that the Government to this day has not implemented a regime that would see us engage in a process that could deem products to be safe and fit for human consumption.One of the wins I believe we had on the Health Committee was ensuring that the purpose of the Psychoactive Substances Act—and I am going to read it—was “to regulate the availability of psychoactive substances in New Zealand to protect the health of and minimise harm to individuals who use psychoactive substances.” So as a House as representatives of communities right across the country we did recognise that we hadto do something. So I want to acknowledge the Ministers who have been involved in this piece of legislation. Initially it was the Hon Peter Dunne then it was the Hon Todd McClay and now we see the Hon Tony Ryall leading the passage of this Psychoactive Substances Amendment Bill through the House.But one of the major issues of contention I guess has been around section 66 of the Psychoactive Substances Act. As a member of the select committee we were really clear that we wanted to empower local communities to develop local approved products policy. What we saw was a very mobilised energised community and local government sector which undertook that task earnestly. So we saw Napier City Council come out in early January 2014 with a comprehensive local approved products policy but the problem that we had was that the regime that should have regulated whether or not products were safe for consumption by New Zealanders was not implemented and to this day it is not implemented.I do want to highlight as a member of the select committee that we were not able to hear submissions about whether or not psychoactive substances should be tested on animals. I would like to acknowledge Mojo Mathers for the leadership that she showed in actually holding her own hearings and getting a lot of New Zealanders to make submissions outside of the select committee process. In fact my colleague the Hon Trevor Mallard has been engaged in a process just recently that has led to 48000 New Zealanders being very clear that they do not want to test these products on animals.I just want to clarify for the record the position of the Hon John Banks. On 27 June in the second reading debate on the Psychoactive Substances Bill he said: “If you cannot prove your [new-found] drug of choice is safe without putting animals in abject misery you cannot sell the drug.” So the emphasis for the Hon John Banks was in fact about protecting animals. I understand that and I commend him for that position. But when we look at his vote against that bill it was not because he did not want these products to be sold; he just did not want animals used in the testing regime to determine whether or not those substances were safe.I think we were all very clear as a Parliament that prohibition from a central government perspective was not the solution. We unfortunately have been flooded in terms of the market for these products. But what I would like to highlight in my final few minutes are two issues that I think are going to be really important going forward and that the Minister will have to oversee. One is around enforcement of the products. So at 1 minute past midnight on Thursday when this legislation has Royal assent and becomes the law of the country we have to make sure that police are empowered with the resources to ensure that a black market does not develop. In fact that was one of the compelling reasons why we as a select committee approved this bill because we were worried about the products that were in the country.The second issue is the health and well-being of addicts. Because these products have been allowed to be sold in our communities we need to ensure—and Minister this is I guess directly under your responsibility—that people who have addictions people who have mental health issues and people who need support through no fault of their own can access support whether it be counselling or other forms of support to help them through this process. Obviously none of us want people to transition from these drugs to other illegal drugs. They need support so that will be one of the critical follow-ups. My colleague Iain Lees-Galloway who holds this shadow portfolio—Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! The member’s time has expired.Bill read a first time.Second ReadingHon TONY RYALL (Minister of Health) on behalf of theAssociate Minister of Health: I moveThat the Psychoactive Substances Amendment Bill be now read a second time. I would like to thank members for their contributions in the first reading debate.I think it would be worth just reminding ourselves of the key provisions of this bill. Interim approvals for products are revoked. There is a recall order for all these products with interim approval. Interim licences to sell psychoactive products by retail or wholesale are revoked. Retailers and wholesalers whose licences have been revoked must comply with the recall order as though their licences were still in effect—this is the issue of the 2 weeks that we were discussing by way of interjection across the House earlier on. Licences for the products are going to be cancelled forthwith.At 12.01 a.m. on Thursday the products are illegal. We are allowing a 2-week period for the seller’s licence to exist because that gives us the ability to have greater enforcement powers during that 2-week period. So we can access the site; we can ask for information.Another point is that the Crown has no liability for losses or damages arising from the enactment of the legislation and of course there is to be no animal testing of psychoactive substances. As members know there is this exception where information from an overseas trial can be used if it will help protect public health.The impact of the amendments will be that there will be no products permitted to be sold from the legislation’s commencement until regulations are made which is expected to be within the next few months. New products will have to be developed and trialled and go through the processes.I would like to thank those members for their contributions and I commend the further progress of the bill to the House.IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY (Labour—Palmerston North): Labour continues to support this legislation the Psychoactive Substances Amendment Bill because it does remove untested drugs from the shelf and it also precludes animal testing from being used to prove that psychoactive substances are either low-risk or no risk. Those are two policies that we wholeheartedly endorse.There has been a lot of debate this evening about who voted for the original legislation the Psychoactive Substances Act and why people voted for it. This bill should not be misinterpreted as overturning the original legislation. This bill amends the original legislation. It takes the transitional provisions out of the Psychoactive Substances Act and it precludes the use of animal testing which was already somewhat restricted in the principal Act due to a compromise position that was able to be reached at the Health Committee. This bill should not be interpreted by the public as somehow overturning the overwhelming vote in favour of the original legislation the Psychoactive Substances Act.I just want to respond to John Banks because he seems quite tickled with himself that he was the one MP who voted against the original legislation. He then went on to say that somehow or another voting against the legislation meant that he was saving youngsters from using these drugs saving them from the perils and dangers of these drugs. Well let us be really clear here. If Parliament had followed John Banks’ lead on this legislation all the drugs that were out there before this Act was put in place and all the ones to which temporary ban notices had been applied would still be out there—something between 200 and 300 different products. We had so little idea about what was out there. We do not even know how many drugs were on the market and we haveno idea how many stores they were being sold from. It could have been 3000 or it could have been 4000.On the day that the Act was passed we went down to 47 drugs on the market and we went down to around 160 licensed retailers. That was the impact of that Act. So imperfect as it was and as much as we are back here as we predicted 12 months after the first reading trying to fix it up it was a vast improvement on what we had before. For John Banks to get up and crow about how his vote against the original legislation was somehow protecting the youth of New Zealand I think is bunkum and it needs to be called for what it is. John Banks seems—Louisa Wall: He loves animals.IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY: Look John Banks loves animals and he prioritised the protection of animals over the protection of kids but in fact there was more than one way to deal with this issue. Although National blocked the amendments that would have dealt with animal testing at the time those of us in the Opposition who actually cared about protecting our youngsters from high-risk drugs said we would pass the legislation regardless and we would find other ways. Trevor Mallard offered a Supplementary Order Paper to the Animal Welfare Amendment Bill and that is one mechanism by which we have been pursuing this. Today we are finally going to get there with the mechanism in this bill.The principles behind the Act are still sound. It is just the implementation in a lot of ways that has been poor. We have talked about how it has taken a long time to get the regulations in place and therefore the untested drugs have stayed on the market for much much longer than I think Parliament really anticipated. When we passed the Act we were being told by the Government and by the advisers that this was going to take the high-risk drugs off the market. We were told that the transition phase would be short and that it would be dealt with before now and that—getting the regulations sorted out—has been one of the biggest failures which of course we discovered in part because of the Prime Minister’s discomfort with animal testing could have been dealt with if National had voted for Mojo Mathers’ amendment in the first place.The other question that is now in front of us goes to implementation and resourcing as well. We have heard about how there are half a dozen people in the Ministry of Health trying to deal with all the licence applications trying to deal with writing the regulations and trying to deal with the complaints about different substances. Half a dozen people simply have not been enough to implement this legislation properly.But there is the other question: how well-resourced is our addiction treatment sector to deal with the potential for a large number of people coming off these drugs? I am going to be honest. We do not know what the impact is going to be. Some people might be able to come off these drugs and have no need for addiction treatment services. There may be a flood of people accessing addiction treatment services. There is no way the Government is going to be able to step those up to respond to that crisis because we simply do not have the trained people out there and addiction services do not have the resources and will not be given the resources to respond should there be a flood of demand on those services.The other thing that has been missing in all of this is information—information for families information for users. I was talking to someone in my electorate the other day who works for youth justice who was telling me that the young people whom she deals with were telling her which products were the bad ones and what the effects of them were. She said: “We’ve gathered all this information.” I said: “What did you do with that information?” and she said: “Oh we didn’t really know what to do with it. We haven’t passed it on to anybody.” She did not know—this is someone working for a Government agency—that what she should be doing is passing that information on tothe Psychoactive Substances Regulatory Authority so that it could be making decisions about which products needed to be recalled. That is how poor the information has been from the Government on how to make this Act work properly.It is important as we go through this next phase that the Government ensures through the district health boards that families have information on how to support people coming off these drugs and how to support people who are addicted to these drugs. That information simply has not been available and that has been a lot of the cause of the community outrage. People have not known what to do. The Government has not run any programmes. There have been no social marketing programmes to tell people how to report the harmful effects of psychoactive drugs. There has been no programme to teach people what low-risk use of these substances is.It was not enough to pass the legislation. It had to be implemented properly. Our Ministry of Health had to be resourced properly. Our district health boards had to be resourced properly. Our addiction service treatment centres had to be resourced properly. Our public health services needed to be resourced properly. None of that has happened. That is another reason why this Act has had a really unfortunate start and that is why we are back here trying to tidy it up again.We support the amendments in this bill. We think they will tidy up some aspects of the Act but the Government needs to do a lot more. It is not just about passing legislation. It is actually at the feet of the Government to make sure the resources are available to make this legislation work properly.Dr PAUL HUTCHISON (National—Hunua): Thank you for the opportunity to take a short call on this second reading of the Psychoactive Substances Amendment Bill. There has been a fair amount of self-righteousness coming from the Opposition parties as to how they could have easily themselves solved this question. But in actual fact it is a complex situation that this Parliament and successive Parliaments have been trying to grapple with for over 22 years. In fact the Misuse of Drugs Act back in 2005 was not successful in addressing the problem. Those were the good old days when benzylpiperazine which was sheep dip was cheap and available. It was legal and people were getting highs from it. But since then these substances have mushroomed substantially throughout New Zealand so that by 2008 a whole array of them was being manufactured. The manufacturers are indeed individuals who are extremely ruthless and care not one jot for the young people of New Zealand.Attempts were made by the Hon Peter Dunne when he issued temporary class notices and of course prior to that there was the Law Commission’s extensive paper when the genesis of the present bill came into being in 2013. The idea behind it was to minimise risk to protect the public health and with the thought that the manufacturers would be required to show minimal risk. As it has turned out this is not easy. The inventive minds of the manufacturers are there to do everything they can to sabotage.But I know that Hunua the electorate I am very proud to represent is a classic example of what has happened right around the country. After this Psychoactive Substances Act came in people were a little confused even though the substances were less available. I know there were marches in every town and hamlet in my electorate saying “We do not want them. They are causing significant problems throughout the country.” and that is why the Government has quite rightly responded.The enforcement is starting tonight. The police and authority enforcement officers will be visiting retail premises to ensure the affected parties are aware of their obligations. This is happening over the next 48 hours. As the Minister of Health the Hon Tony Ryall has pointed out active enforcement will occur on 8 May. Police and enforcement officers will visit all retailers to ensure that products have been removedfrom sale and are being removed to the wholesaler. It is clear. It is concise. The message to the public is absolutely clear. I support the bill.Hon ANNETTE KING (Labour—Rongotai): There is no doubt that Parliament wishes to pass the Psychoactive Substances Amendment Bill as soon as possible but that does not mean that there are not issues that we ought to raise. I do agree with those who have said that there is no good in going around beating ourselves up on who did what and when. We need to correct the original Psychoactive Substances Act. I think it was a genuine attempt to do something about the issue. We did not get it right and now we are attempting to address it but there are a couple of issues that I want to raise and hopefully when the Minister of Health is in the chair he will be able to help with some of the answers.I have read carefully the regulatory impact statement from the Ministry of Health. It is dated 2 May. In it it talks about animal testing and it says that Cabinet agreed in November to test on animals. That was a decision that was made 4 months after the legislation was passed. It says: “In November Cabinet agreed that animal testing for psychoactive substances should be limited to rodents”. Unfortunately Cabinet members were given poor advice at the time in that they were told that rabbits were rodents as well. In fact rabbits are not rodents. What is interesting though is that when you go on to read this part of the regulatory impact statement it says this: “The Psychoactive Substances Expert Advisory Committee has considered this issue and advises that animal testing using rodents and lagomorphs”—which are rabbits—“would allow the Act to function largely as intended. While it would mean that some products could not be assessed due to the application using data from non-permitted animal species potentially ruling out some low-risk products it would allow robust assessment of the risk of at least some products.”The word in here is “advises”. The ministry was advising Cabinet as recently as 2 May to continue to test on animals including rabbits. The Prime Minister announces on 5 May that the Government no longer will test on any animal. I would like to know what changed the Government’s mind between 2 May and 5 May. Why was it going to happen? Why was it agreed by Cabinet and what made it change its mind? We can guess and I guess there are a number of reasons including the work of Mojo Mathers the work of Trevor Mallard and the 43000 signatures that have appeared very quickly on a petition. I do not believe that this was a principled decision made by the Government. It was a decision made out of the thought that it would lose votes from animal lovers. I am glad that it has made the decision but I have to say there is no evidence that this was a principled decision.The second issue also comes out of the regulatory impact statement. Nothing has really been made of this at present but it very much is in the Minister of Health’s area. The regulatory impact statement tells us that it does not have good data on the number of people who use psychoactive products with interim approval. It has gone on to do an assessment of what services would be needed for people who could be addicted and it has done it by extrapolating from an area that is called the largest provider of alcohol and drug addiction treatment services and that isWaitematā District Health Board. It seems to me that that is a pretty rough way of guessing because it might be the largest provider—and some of that could come from very good work by the district health board—but does it mean it has the most addicted people?My concern is that it has been estimated that between 150 and 200 people “might be sufficiently dependent on these products to require a degree of professional withdrawal management”—and that comes straight out of the regulatory impact statement. My concern is what services will be put in place because there is no doubt there is going to be the need for services come Thursday when the substances are removed and peopledo not have access to them. I am not saying “Don’t do it.” I am saying you have to look at the consequences the ongoing consequences and what is in place to ensure that we give the best possible to people who are addicted.There is a very good email sent to the Hon Maryan Street from one of her constituents raising this issue. A client of the Pascoe Street alcohol and other drugs clinic is saying there will be a significant increase in clients presenting with withdrawal issues and related difficulties. It asks what provision the Government intends to make in order to address the likely increase in demand for addiction services while maintaining—and here is an important point—the present level of services to existing clients. Although there will be a need for these people to have services once we withdraw these illegal highs from the market you cannot do it at the expense of existing clients. They need to have their ongoing support.There have been many reports including out of the Auckland City Mission that say—and I am sure Mr Sabin will be interested in this—that this could be a bigger problem than methamphetamine. The big worry is that at this point—and this was late in April—“At least 90 percent of clients coming throughdetox have used synthetic cannabis.” So even then those who were wanting and needingdetox had been those using synthetic cannabis. The person who is quoted in this story is saying it is the hardest thing they have ever come off. So I do think it would be useful for the House if the Minister was able to tell us what services will be available for these people come Thursday. Will we have enough staff do we need additional resources and will additional resources be made available to assist people coming off these highly addictive and soon-to-be illegal highs? I would feel some comfort if they were able to be answered because there is no doubt that for members of the House it will turn from our banning them to what services are available and the stories of people not getting the services they need in different parts of New Zealand.So it is going to need to be very carefully managed. I think the Minister ought to ask every district health board to provide as soon as possible information about what capacity and facilities they will have to be able to provide services to those who are highly addicted and are going to need to bedetoxed off these illegal highs. Hopefully the Minister will be able to answer those in the Committee stage.KEVIN HAGUE (Green): I want to start by picking up on a comment from Dr Paul Hutchison about the actions that police are apparently taking tonight going around to stores and advising them what the outcome of this debate will be. I have to say that I am slightly offended by the assumption about my rhetoric in advocating against the interim prohibition.I sat on the Health Committee that considered the psychoactive substances legislation and was very pleased with the outcome from the select committee process. I have to say that this bill we are considering tonight the Psychoactive Substances Amendment Bill leaves me with very mixed feelings. On the one hand one of the issues that was raised in the select committee was the matter of animal testing and members will be very familiar with the Green Party minority view in the select committee report which sets out the arguments against using evidence from animal testing. It sets out what the alternatives to that are. We went on in the Committee stage to advance a Supplementary Order Paper in Mojo Mathers’ name. Unfortunately it did not gather the necessary majority support at that time. I am very pleased that apparently I think all members of the House are now convinced by the arguments for the change that Mojo Mathers proposed at that time.On the other aspect of the bill however I am sure that all members of this House are aware that we oppose in fact the effective repeal of the interim regime and replacement of that interim regime with a prohibition regime until the Act takes full effect. So ourparty probably disagrees I think with all other members in the House on this point. I just want to take this opportunity in the second and third readings in this debate to advance our reasons for that and to respectfully disagree with other members.We believed that that interim regime established by the Act although very far from perfect was the best way of approaching the period between the completely unregulated regime that had previously applied and the Act taking full effect. We thought it was the best way to go about that. We think that the prohibition regime that is being substituted for that regime now is the wrong approach and is being taken for the wrong reasons.Paul Hutchison also spoke about some of the opposition to the Act in his electorate being based on wrong information or misleading information. I think that is a bit of a common theme. I have been travelling around the country quite a lot and people have been saying things to me like “We don’t understand why Parliament chose to legalise synthetic cannabis.” Well OK. There are two problems with that idea. The first is that these substances were many. They were not a single substance and the substances that are still legally on the shelf tonight are in fact still many. They are different products. They are made up from different compounds. They have different effects. Some of them are very low risk. Some of them may be higher risk. It is a mistake to assume that they are all the same thing or that they all pose the same level of risk. Yet that is the assumption that members of the public have been led to believe in.The second point of course is that Parliament did not legalise the availability of these substances. They were legally available. In fact Parliament chose to impose a very substantial regulatory regime on the interim regime and an even more substantial regulatory regime would take effect when the Act comes to be in place completely.The third thing that I have heard from members of the public who are justifiably concerned about what is occurring out there in the community is the assumption that the harm caused prior to the Act is still being caused. So for example there was a national day of action that community organisations held some little while ago. The Television New Zealand piece that preceded it was largely comprised of an interview with someone whose son tragically had suffered some very major psychological effects of consuming a psychoactive substance. That consumption had occurred some 3 years prior and that substance had not been on the shelves for some considerable period. In all of the debate that I have seen about substantial harm still being caused actually the debate has related to substances that are no longer available.Fourthly there is I think a widespread belief that problems have got worse. In fact I think as some speakers in the debates on this bill so far have probably alluded to that is not the case. The number of outlets has drastically reduced. The number of products on the shelves has substantially reduced. Sales have reduced and harm has reduced. I want to quote from the Ministry of Health. NicolaKean who is a producer forThe Nation programme asked the Ministry of Health I guess 2 weeks ago now—so just prior to the announcement of this approach—what the trend is if any for people presenting at accident and emergency for problems with psychoactive substances since the law was introduced. The ministry’s answer was: “While it is early days the Authority has received anecdotal reports demonstrating the number of severe presentations to emergency departments has reduced since the Act came in. The Authority monitors approved products received from the Centre for Adverse Reactions Monitoring (CARM) and calls from the public to the National Poisons Centre on a regular basis. These reports also show a reduction in the number of severe issues being reported. Where severe adverse reactions are reported the Authority has the power to act and has already removed products from the market where reports to CARM identified they posed more than a low risk of harm.”There you are. The Act as we passed it was working. The interim regime was reducing harm and the power existed for any products that were identified as causing harm to be removed from the shelves. And the ministry the authority was taking that step. Therefore it was a bit of a puzzle when I heard Mr Dunne on the television saying that this new regime an interim prohibition on all of these substances was being introduced but it was not possible to identify any particular substance associated with reports of adverse reactions. That is unbelievable nonsense. The regime absolutely existed to be able to identify reports of harm with a particular substance. The ministry the authority had already been using that fact to suspend products to take them off the shelves.The fact is that the community concerns were being driven by increased visibility. That is precisely what we wanted to happen. For every shop still selling these products at least 20 had been closed down. So although usage had been reduced it was being concentrated and being made more visible around the surviving outlets. Visibility access to treatment is precisely what we want. I absolutely understand those community concerns but the way that the Government should have responded to those concerns was with better quality information for communities better quality information for local bodies better access to information about treatment and better resourcing for treatment services. Communities deserved leadership and instead what we have is a knee-jerk response that although popular is based not on fact but on populism. Thank you.MIKE SABIN (National—Northland): It is no surprise that the Green Party is not actually voting against the Psychoactive Substances Amendment Bill; they are abstaining. I actually think that the New Zealand public deserves better than that. The Greens are either for it or against it. To sit somewhere in the middle on an issue that has concerned and affected so many people in this country—Hon Trevor Mallard: The member’s been on both sides of the issue.MIKE SABIN: Well OK let me pick that up Mr Mallard. I actually think that the starting point for this legislation is that no drug use is the safest drug use. No one forces people out there to take mind-altering substances of any sort all right? People should all be grown up enough to know that when we take a mind-altering substance—surprise surprise—it will alter our mind. For some people that will be substantial and for some people that will lead to addiction. The legality of a substance will never alter the chemical nature of a substance.So I think the starting point is that not only in this House should we acknowledge and accept the issues around drugs but also the populace of New Zealand and those who choose to ingest those drugs should do that too. One could argue that once people are addicted then possibly there is an excuse. They take because they cannot not take but the reality is that they have made a conscious choice to take them in the first place. So there is actually a responsibility in this that should be shared by all of us not just parliamentarians.The second point I would say is that because of the ability of the drug manufacturers—or those I like to think of as drug peddlers actually—to beat the legislation through altering chemical compounds the starting point of this new approach is actually to put the onus on to those people who are manufacturing to show that the drugs are low risk. And what does low risk actually mean? Actually low risk will mean that it is something that is not capable of causing addiction because we know that addiction is harmful. Therefore it must be something that is not capable of stimulating sufficient dopamine or neurotransmitters of that nature for people to get withdrawal symptoms when they stop using them. So therefore by definition it shouldbe something that is not capable of giving a high and therefore not capable of creating an addiction.So what we should end up with here is drug peddlers who spend countless millions of dollars and a long period of time to end up with a product that will not make people high and therefore will be low risk. So I actually think that this legislation has merit. It is a legitimate track to take. I just want to remind us all that the difficulties that this legislation and that New Zealand has been traversing is pioneering sort of stuff. There is no one way to reach the promised land I guess of eliminating the harm that drugs cause but we all have a responsibility in this and this Government is taking its responsibility seriously and is doing something about it.BARBARA STEWART (NZ First): I rise again on behalf of New Zealand First to support the passing of the Psychoactive Substances Amendment Bill which will see synthetic cannabis and other untested substances removed from sale in our country. We are absolutely delighted to hear that the police and the enforcement officers are out visiting shops at this point in time and ensuring that vendors are aware of changes as a result of this legislation.New Zealand First hopes that the call for specialised support for families and for those addicted to these substances will be listened to. The current mental health and addiction counselling services are not set up to deal with the huge problems that we anticipate will be out there. Support has to be provided for those who are caught up in this synthetic drugs crisis. Resources must be made available for young people and their parents. We know that these chemical substances are very difficult to get off. They are highly addictive.It is very important to ensure that drugs are subject to lengthy testing. We do not want to see any come back on to the market that have not gone through the whole rigorous testing regime. OnCampbell Live tonight it was interesting to hear a scientist who helped develop synthetic cannabis say that it was never meant to be consumed by humans—very interesting I thought because really who else was going to consume it? So it was interesting.We need to ensure that any changes to these products incur huge financial disincentives for the manufacturers. At the moment they are making millions while they are putting New Zealanders at risk. In New Zealand First we stand by our original position which is that these products really need to be banned and this legislation effectively does that. So we are very pleased to be supporting this bill tonight.Dr JIAN YANG (National): I rise to support the Psychoactive Substances Amendment Bill. The reason is very simple. This is a very short call but I will say a few words. As an immigrant from China I was not familiar with legal highs simply because legal highs are illegal in China. We have now heard about all sorts of problems relating to legal highs. When we came to New Zealand one key reason was to live in a good safer environment—particularly safer communities. So this amendment bill will provide a better and safer community for our young people. That is why we will support the bill. Thank you.Hon TREVOR MALLARD (Labour—Hutt South): I want to start by doing something sort of slightly unusual and that is to compliment the Minister of Health. It is not something I have done that often but I think it is important to say that the world has improved a lot since Associate Minister of Health Peter Dunne was packed off to Bali and this Minister took charge of this particular policy area. A degree of rationality has come into the debate. We have stopped having the embarrassing appearances onCampbell Live when the Associate Minister goes to places where legal highs are sold but he has no understanding of the communities that are involved.I also want to compliment the Minister of Health on the consultation on this legislation the Psychoactive Substances Amendment Bill and the fact that he worked hard to get it to go back and forth to the point where an overwhelming majority in Parliament are prepared to vote for it and no one is prepared to vote against it.The other person whom I would like to thank for his work in this area is David Farrar because what has become absolutely clear to us over the last couple of weeks is that there has been a massive change of view following the questions that have been asked in Mr Farrar’s polling of people around New Zealand as to their attitudes to these legal highs and also to the testing of them on animals which are being asked I understand both in the quantitative research and also in the focus groups that the National Party is running I think four times a week. You know I want to say that it is good in this particular case and in fact generally that the National Party is working hard to understand the limits of the tolerance of New Zealanders and to accept—and I accept and I accept with regret—the fact that as a Parliament we got the original legislation wrong. We got it a bit wrong.If Tony Ryall had been in charge of the regulatory system that went with the original legislation then the legal highs that are being sold today and will not be sold on Thursday would have been not gone by lunchtime but certainly gone by Christmas. Any competent Minister would have set up the regulatory regime. Peter Dunne worked on this legislation for years. He worked on it. He had his little moment—not moment; he had his year—of problems and he had the leaking of the report. He had a bit of time off but he came back and he had responsibility for the regulation in this area. And did he do his work? He did not. As recently as 15 April—15 April—he wrote a letter to me. He probably wrote one to everyone else as well because we do not have a special or close relationship Mr Dunne and I. He was saying what good legislation it was and to give it a chance. Well how wrong he was.Again I want to congratulate David Farrar and his protégé the Prime Minister on getting to the point of understanding what Kiwis think. What having this legislation did was allow us to focus on the people who were using these products. They were widely and generally available but in my particular case it was only when there was a store 30 metres from my electorate office and I saw the queues there before school waiting for the shop to open that I really understood the addictive nature of this stuff. That is how I got to understand the fact that in Naenae so many people—mainly but not only young; I have seen mainly but not only young—were being affected by it. Seeing the kids in the pushchairs being pushed in and out of these places by their parents and seeing the transactions that were occurring within metres of the shop between people who had an ID that said they were 18—although I must say that some of them did not look like it to me—and people who were clearly much younger than that age and the exchanges the drug deals that were going on there was shocking.I am not absolutely aware of the sort of kawa or the protocols and I do not want to breach anything that is confidential from a select committee that you Mr Assistant Speaker Tisch and I sit on but I might say without referring to that that generally we got to the point in the discussions on this where I think we got a better understanding of the dangers of it. We got from the officials a defence of the testing regime but a defence that was not convincing—a defence that promoted the position of Mr Dunne but was not convincing I think to parliamentarians.I came to this debate not as an expert in the drug regulation area and not as someone who has had any experience in the health policy area—I think the only experience I have had in that was discussion with Heather Simpson when I declined to be the Minister of Health in 2005—so I respect the knowledge of a number of colleagues who know much more about this. But what I have been for many years is an owner of petsand in particular an owner of dogs. I came to this issue as a result of the representations that were made to me by my constituents and other people from around Wellington who pointed out what could happen under this legislation.Without going into any detailed family matters I have a close relative who is actively involved in medical research and that involves on occasions animals. I do not think it is wrong. I think there are occasions when it is necessary and where people are working in research with therapeutic outcomes I think that that can in fact be vital. I hope that in the future as computer modelling moves on animal testing will not be necessary. I know that it is substantially reduced but if it is for a good purpose then I think that it is important that it occurs for now. But there can be no excuse for killing animals for the purpose of boosting the profits of dealers in recreational drugs. There is no moral argument for that. To say that it is OK for rats and not for rabbits as the Prime Minister tried to do for a week or so—now we understand that Cabinet took that decision and then reversed it—is wrong.We have come I think to a good position on this. I regret my vote for the original legislation and that I did not understand the legislation and I did not understand the requirement to have a competent Minister administering it when I voted for it but we have got to the point now where we have made some progress.Bill read a second time.In CommitteeTIM MACINDOE (Junior Whip—National): I seek leave for the Committee to consider all parts of the Psychoactive Substances Amendment Bill as one debate with the questions to be taken separately.Hon Trevor Mallard: I raise a point of order Mr Chairperson. I think the whip meant to say “all clauses” not “all parts”—all clauses.The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): Yes we do not have parts only clauses. Leave is sought for that purpose. Is there any objection? There is no objection.Clauses 1 to 8 and scheduleKRIS FAAFOI (Labour—Mana): Thank you very much for letting me have a call on this Committee stage of the Psychoactive Substances Amendment Bill. Clause 7 is the one that I think most people will be focusing on in this debate. There have been a few political volleys fired from both sides of the Chamber tonight but in terms of my constituents they do not care. They just want to make sure that what is being done here tonight is enacted as fast as it can be.I do want to take this opportunity to thank a number of people who certainly—like in Trevor Mallard’s electorate in my electorate in Mana and particularly in Porirua—brought this issue to my attention. Particular thoughts go out to a couple of mothers whose sons were particularly affected and they shall remain nameless but the effect that synthetic cannabis has had on their sons has been immense. Again I will not mention names but one who approached me was very very concerned about her son’s use of the product and then her son went on to assault the shopkeeper of the store that was predominantly selling this stuff in the electorate. So for those people out there who—Hon Trevor Mallard: After she talked to you?KRIS FAAFOI: After she talked to me. So for those people out there who are I guess judging why this has come about whether or not they think this is vote grabbing or just reacting to media coverage I can tell them right now that that is definitely not the case. I guess this is a win for those of us who have heard the concerns ofcommunities who have reflected it to our caucuses—and who cares who came first because this absolutely needed to happen.In particular I do want to take the opportunity to thank some people locally: the local police force that brought their concerns to me; the local city council which was not too happy that this House I guess it thought lumbered the responsibility—Hon Trevor Mallard: Peter Dunne asked for it.KRIS FAAFOI: —yes—of a local approved products policy on it. I want to thank some local community workers and a member of a gang who was also concerned. One morning in particular the police let me walk around the canopies in Porirua to see what was going on in the shop and they took me into the shop. Like Trevor Mallard said there was a very long line in the shop and there was regular patronage. But the thing that got me was some 15-year-olds who should have been at school but who were not whom we spoke to. They knew that this product was doing them harm. In fact I was completely baffled as to why one product that was being sold had on the packet “Not fit for human consumption”. That is just mind-boggling.As has been said by Trevor Mallard as well we do regret the fact that some 18 months to 2 years ago the original legislation went through. Although it was a good bill it did have flaws and we are here tonight to make sure that we rectify this because the drugs were having an awful effect in communities. To the person who was representing the Star Trust and who was saying that this House is merely reacting to political concern or concern in the media I say that he is someone who makes money out of other people’s misery so I am not concerned about what he thinks about what this House is doing when something had to be done.Also there are some other people I thank: Jenny Lester from the Porirua Healthy Safer City Trust is someone who brought this to my attention and the Porirua City Council which was making positive steps to bring in a local approved products policy anyway. I guess again it was not overly happy that that responsibility was given to it but it was taking proactive steps towards that. In a submission that I made to that council the council asked why this stuff was not banned altogether and I—as did other members of the Labour caucus—fed all of this feedback into the policy position that we came to a week or so ago.So this bill is a good thing. It is regretful that we have to come here and make good what we thought 18 months ago was going to be a good move. But in the end this stuff is bad news and it should not be sold freely into our communities and 15-year-olds certainly should not be smoking stuff that says “Not fit for human consumption”.Dr PAUL HUTCHISON (National—Hunua): Thank you for the opportunity to take a short call in the Committee stage of the Psychoactive Substances Amendment Bill. There is no doubt about the specific objectives of the bill which are to revoke all interim product approvals to revoke all interim retail and wholesale licences to require the recall and disposal of all products for which interim product approval has been revoked and to provide that the results of trials that involve the use of animals cannot be used in the assessment of a psychoactive product.As I said earlier on in the electorate that I represent Hunua there has been huge concern about how these psychoactive drugs affect families affect individuals and devastate the lives of those who are affected. But the point that I really would like to make is that there has been a fair amount of self-righteousness about this bill and how easy these issues are to solve. They are not easy to solve. They are highly complex. For anyone to think that there is a simple solution they have just got their head in the sand.I must reflect on the day of revelation—yesterday 5 May—when Trevor Mallard and John Banks said what a great day it was for the rats the mice the beagles and therabbits of New Zealand. It was almost as though they had taken on the persona of St Francis of Assisi but again—Hon Trevor Mallard: More the Pied Piper in my case.Dr PAUL HUTCHISON: —indeed—there is complexity here because on the other hand we have big issues in New Zealand. We are pouring out 1080 knocking off rats and mice and goodness knowswhats in our forests because they get our birds. We have got the duck-shooting season going on right now. We have huge rabbit infestations right throughout the country.These issues are not simple. However the Government has responded with clear and concise action. It is reassuring that today enforcement notifications have been made clear throughout the country and indeed on 8 May no more psychoactive substances will be legal in New Zealand.Dr MEGAN WOODS (Labour—Wigram): Sometimes this House has to do very important but very complicated and very difficult things. Tonight is one of those occasions. I join many of my colleagues who come with no joy to find that we are here rectifying something that we got wrong 18 months to 2 years ago when we last debated this issue of psychoactive substances. We debated and we put in place a regime that was the first in the world that was going to allow these drugs on to our market a regime that was all around the fact that they were tested and shown to be safe. As many speakers have alluded to in the speeches this afternoon and tonight this was all predicated on there being a regime for testing in place. It is with no pleasure that I say that we cautioned at the time that we were rushing the Psychoactive Substances Bill for an incredibly complicated piece of legislation. The devil was in the detail and how it was that we were going to show the safety of these drugs was always going to be an incredibly complicated and difficult path for us to traverse.It is not just a matter of walking into a laboratory throwing some substances under a laser light and saying that this is not safe or that that is not safe. The way in which we prove the safety or otherwise of many substances and compounds that we consume either as food or as medicines or in this case that were going to be consumed as recreational drugs is no small or easy path. It takes many years. It starts with people doing things in a laboratory. The traditional path is that it then moves on to animal models and then it moves on to human clinical models. Whether this is something that we are willing to permit for the use of recreational drugs is an important issue for this House to answer. I am very pleased that we are standing here tonight and are going to say no—we are not going to allow the testing of recreational drugs on animals.For me personally as a constituency MP this issue cuts to the heart of why it was that I was elected to represent my electorate of Wigram. I voted with my party as many members of this House did. In fact most members of this House voted for a piece of legislation that we thought we were doing the right thing with. We thought we were putting in place a piece of legislation that would actually reduce the harm in our communities around the use of psychoactive chemicals and drugs but this has not been the case. Like many of my colleagues I have spent too many hours listening to constituents telling me their stories about what these substances have done to their families. I recall one mother coming in and being absolutely distraught and I can understand why. Not only was her 14-year-old son no longer going to school; he was stealing from her and neighbours in order to finance his habit and she had had to call the police the night before because he had physically assaulted both her and the other children in the family.This is not something that you can stand idly by as a constituent MP and say it is OK. The regime we put in place was not working. It was not stopping the harm in our communities. I could not stand by and say to the people of Wigram: “Justtaihoeverything’s going to be OK.” because it was not. We also have some responsibility now and that is that we as parliamentarians have to ensure that the support is there for the people who are going to be having the addiction issues as these drugs are no longer available. We have to ensure as my colleague Annette King has suggested in earlier contributions that we have adequate funding for people to access addiction services and that district health boards are properly resourced to grapple with these issues and to be able to make sure that New Zealanders are getting the best service that they can as they come off these drugs. The regulatory impact statement for this piece of legislation makes it really clear that a lot of the people who are using these drugs are not going to be able to afford the trip to the general practitioner to get the referral to the addiction service. We have to make sure that that support is in place. We are here tonight to fix something that we got wrong 2 years ago and we need to make sure that we are putting it right and putting the best interests of our community at its heart.MOJO MATHERS (Green): I spoke earlier at the first reading of this bill the Psychoactive Substances Amendment Bill of my belief that the U-turn that has been taken by the Government on prohibiting the use of information from animal testing to approve applications for the use of psychoactive substances is in essence the same as the amendment that I put forward on the Psychoactive Substances Bill a year ago. I would like to take the opportunity to just thank all the parties that voted in support of that amendment which included the Labour Party—in particular Trevor Mallard’s hard work on that—John Banks Mana and the Māori Party. I also spoke about the shocking process that the bill went through whereby all the voices of the animal welfare organisations and people speaking out against the use of animal testing to approve these drugs were rejected by the chair of the Health Committee.What I would like to do is to actually go through the report that we produced as a result of the hearings that we held. We held our own alternative hearings to hear these submitters who were excluded from having the right to their democratic say. There were a number of major organisations that spoke and presented their submissions. These included Save Animals from Exploitation the SPCA Helping You Help Animals the New Zealand Anti-Vivisection Society as well as a number of individuals. The first thing that most of the submitters actually said was to acknowledge the need for strong regulation of psychoactive substances. They accepted that the situation that existed at that time was not working and they were welcoming the intent of the bill. Some of them even talked about their private lives and people whom they knew who had been turned upside down by some of these drugs. A lot of them talked about their utter dismay that democratic process had not been followed that they had made their submissions and done their research in good faith that their concerns around animal testing would be heard by the Health Committee and they had done so under the recommendation of the Minister at the time and the health officials. To then be rejected was for them a deep betrayal of democratic process.What there was also was a fairly detailed submission from the Anti-Vivisection Society. You see what had happened was that right back 6 months previously it had under the Official Information Act got hold of a report that had been produced by the Ministry of Health that outlined a proposed testing regime for these drugs. At that point in time the testing regime was to involve a number of stages. There were the preclinical toxicological trials and then the human clinical trials as well as the post-registration surveillance. It is quite important to understand that a testing regime is composed of all these three elements. It was never proposed that a clinical trial would be able to prove safety to the point that the substance goes straight to being used by the general population. There were always going to be human clinical trials involved. This is something that the public often do not realise when they say that they do not wantanimal testing so let us go straight to testing them on drug addicts and so on. Actually we need controlled studies and they were always going to be part of the process with human volunteers. They start with micro-dosing and monitoring very carefully for the clinical signs of reactions and so on. So whatever tests they use for the preclinical trials are designed to weed out the most toxic substances the most likely to have extreme dangerous reactions.The original Ministry of Health standard for safety—actually “safety” is not the right word to talk about the whole testing regime. It is about low risk because actually we cannot prove that any recreational drug is safe. Alcohol is not safe and tobacco is not safe and yet we use them and we accept the risks that come with their use. So it is always going to be about trying to screen out the most damaging of these drugs and then focusing on the low-risk drugs and educating the public about their use. The reality is that the Ministry of Health’s initial proposed testing regime included four types of testing—for acute toxicity for repeated-dose toxicity fortoxicokinetic investigation and forgenotoxicity. For all four of these there are validated alternatives to animal testing—not just one or two but three or four or more—and all of them have been validated. That means that they have been demonstrated to give as good if not better results than those of the equivalent animal trials. So I utterly reject the claim by Paul Hutchison that we are being somehow kind of unscientific or airy-fairy or what have you. That is not the case. There are established international studies on these areas.The reality is that report was commissioned by the Anti-Vivisection Society using an overseas expert because we do not have the expertise in New Zealand. That is the problem. New Zealand is small. It is a country of only a few million people. We are not experts in alternatives to animal testing. The experts are overseas. We have to rely on overseas input in this area to achieve the goal of having low-risk products that have been tested using non-animal tests. We can do it but we must look overseas for the expertise and the tests involved. Thank you.Le’aufa’amulia ASENATI LOLE-TAYLOR (NZ First): I rise on behalf of New Zealand First as we welcome this bill the Psychoactive Substances Amendment Bill to essentially ban legal highs and because we think that it is absolutely disgraceful that families and communities had to suffer for such a long time before we as parliamentarians thought it was necessary to correct the mistakes that were made in the original legislation. Indeed it was an embarrassing shameful and humiliating situation where 41 legal high products remained on the shelves. Those 41 products were actually sold in bulk through the Papatoetoe Heaven and Dreams shop. I think clause 7 in this new amendment bill will address most of the issues that have been raised by some of our local residents. I am sure that Pat Taylor and a few residents of Papatoetoe will now be very happy to know that the Government is actually doing something about this. Mr Paul Hutchison was saying that these situations are not easy to solve. I have a very strong message for you at this stage. It can be solved. The only reason it cannot be solved is that we are incapable of making it easy to be solved.On theCampbell Live show we could all see that Mr Dunne was completely out of touch. A situation that was also hurting a lot of families is that there was no clear acceptance from Mr Dunne at the time to understand the issues that have been raised as a result of legal highs. It is a national issue and it is one that is tragically affecting regional towns and low socio-economic areas the most. That is why we should have been more proactive earlier and that is the reason why instead of waiting for local councils this amendment bill should have been introduced a lot sooner.The side effects of legal highs include agitation confusion paranoia seizures violent behaviour haemoptysis and psychosis. I am sure that everyone is now an expert on the side effects of these particular drugs. I have seen frightening evidence of themajor health problems they cause and their direct influence on domestic and family violence and that is the sad part about it. It is that there have had to be deaths and there have had to be suicides before we could even respond. It is becoming the norm for New Zealand parliamentarians that we have to wait for a major incident to happen before we can actually fix the problem. Hundreds of people are reported to have experienced harm in one form or another from legal highs but this is only the tip of the iceberg. Beyond the hundreds of sad cases involving injury and death there has been a failure to eliminate a threat posed by legal highs and it has boosted an unhealthy culture of drug taking in New Zealand.We now have an image as a country that is receptive to taking drugs. Mr Dunne sat on his hands while a culture of synthetic drugs was taking place. I even spoke to Mr Todd McClay quite a number of times. I told him that something needed to be done. His response was that the bill that was passed last year was the best option that this country could take. The reality is that 147 legal high shops remained with 50 of them in the Auckland area. Although the number of legal high outlets is lower you can still be sure that the number of people taking drugs did not come down. That is the reason why there were long queues in places like Tauranga and Te Awamutu and some of the outlets throughout the country. You can find the majority of these outlets in places like DargavilleKarikari andEdgecombe. About 82 are specialist drug shops judging by their names such as Heaven and Dreams and Cosmic Corner and they are sold in tobacconists video stores sex shops tattooists and bodypiercers. With fewer outlets as proudly announced by Mr Dunne it definitely does not mean that there are fewer people taking drugs.A new generation of young people are getting the wrong message. They are getting the wrong message about synthetic drugs and it is not the message that we should be portraying or putting in place for the future generations of this country. This drug-taking culture is affecting everyone in New Zealand. During thePolyfest festival secondary school students were actually waiting outside the Heaven and Dreams drug store because they wanted to pick up some of their drugs before going to the festival. The actual owner was giving it to them from the side door of his shop. These are some of the things that we ought to be looking at and we are supposed to be protecting our young generations from.Many of these legal high shops are willing to sell to anyone. They will not be willing to admit that they are selling to the wrong age. Legal highs are an unnecessary temptation for teenagers and there was not enough accountability for these retailers. The number of people using legal highs is now vast and families communities police and hospitals must now deal with a new stream of addicted users. The serious threat to the health of New Zealand families and communities was palpable.Since the initial Psychoactive Substances Act was passed New Zealand First has been advocating on behalf of concerned local residents to do something or to reverse the position we had. Tonight I am actually very happy that we are looking at a complete ban on these items. We became aware that the decision to support the Psychoactive Substances Act was a mistake but it was based on the information that was made available to us at the time. The call for action on legal highs was nationwide. Over 30000 people have actually joined a Facebook group and those who took to the streets for a march against legal highs ought to be taken notice of and ought to be considered seriously. New Zealand First was there. It was a country-wide protest including over 20 towns from Whangarei to Invercargill. These were people who had experienced firsthand the damage legal highs were capable of inflicting on individuals and society. What I saw was a community standing up for itself because the Government was notstanding up for the community. It was a mistake in the first place and communities and families were made to suffer before the Government could actually respond.This new legislation proposes to ban all synthetic drugs until they are proven. We would prefer an outright ban because that is what much of the community has asked for. We have seen living proof that the notion of reducing harm—and I think there has been talk about low risk. The right translation or interpretation of “low risk” is that there is some risk. When there is some risk whether it is low risk or high risk that means there is still risk. Those are the things that we need to pay attention to. Attitudes like those held by those who said that there is low risk must also be eliminated. Those are the attitudes that should not be welcome in the debate on legal highs.If appropriate measures were taken and proper regulations put in place when the initial Psychoactive Substances Act was passed we would not have seen some of the attempted suicides in Manurewa we would not have seen some of the domestic violence that we have actually witnessed inŌtara and the people in Papatoetoe would have been able to go to bed at night without the fear of some badly behaved local residents who were actually desperate for their synthetic drugs. Many other countries have applied a law that invokes a straight ban by using broad terms to encompass all types of synthetic cannabis. New Zealand is the only country in the world to adopt a free-market clinical-trial regime for recreational drugs. The Government is now taking the right action and the term “low risk” should be eliminated from the debate altogether.We should not be able to look for approval of any low-risk products in the future. We should be looking for products that are completely safe and have no risk at all. Two clear requirements must be present in the law on recreational synthetic drugs: first to prove the product is safe before it can be sold and second to notify authorities if there are changes to its composition. That should be part of the Psychoactive Substances Amendment Bill. That should be what we are supporting and that is what we should be focusing on in order for the people of New Zealand to be satisfied with what we have actually introduced here tonight.It is important to specify that safety measures have been put in place and that everyone is in support of those safety measures. That is what New Zealand First would like to see happen and we are pleased to know that this week we will be able to turn round and tell those legal high shops that they can no longer operate in the way that they have been.CLARE CURRAN (Labour—Dunedin South): I would like to do something unusual here tonight and that is to actually thank John Banks for his contribution to this debate on the Psychoactive Substances Amendment Bill—not only tonight. Actually I have to admit that I was wrong in criticising him when he spoke against the original legislation in August last year and for the reasons he spoke against it. I would also like to acknowledge Mojo Mathers for her passionate consistent defence of the no animal testing regime and also Trevor Mallard for the work he has done on this. I have to say that this unlikely trio has probably sparked something new in 2014. I sense that we are actually opening up a new debate on animal testing in this country and the reasons for it. I think that is an important thing.I also unusually want to thank the Minister in the chair tonight for being here as the Minister of Health and by his presence signalling that this is a significant and important issue. I am going to ask the Minister respectfully whether he can answer a couple of questions tonight if not in the chair then in the third reading because I think that the people listening to this debate tonight throughout New Zealand have got a couple of questions still in their minds that do need answers from the Government around the implementation of this bill and around the resourcing of the care of peoplewho are badly affected by these terrible drugs. And they are not just drugs; they are actually poisons.I also unfortunately would like to take issue with what one of the Green members Kevin Hague said tonight about the impact of the Psychoactive Substances Act since it has been enacted. I suppose I cannot blame him because he relied on the regulatory impact statement which I know was prepared in some haste and actually does not reflect the full facts. I do want to put on the record again that there has been a recorded increase in the number of contacts with the National Poisons Centre. This is not just because there is an 0800 number on the drugs as they are being sold; this is because there are stronger adverse effects. Although the number of drugs that are actually for sale has lessened in the actual physical number moving down from 300-odd to 40-something some of them are extremely toxic. There are more and more toxic adverse reactions presenting at emergency departments and being reported through the National Poisons Centre. Again—and I am going to table this at the end of my speech tonight—this here is the latest report the April report from the National Poisons Centre which I do hope the Minister has had access to. I know that it was sent to the Associate Minister of Health Peter Dunne. The graph shows in red the line where those numbers of calls about adverse reactions have gone up and they are going up every month. This is a significant issue.I also want to draw attention to a couple of other things and I know that the Hon Annette King also drew attention to these and they are the estimation that has been made of the number of people being badly affected who have developed dependency and the inadequacy of the research and work that is being done within the Ministry of Health. This is not to criticise individual people; this is basically to say that the resources are not in place to do this work. Estimating that 100 to 150 people might be dependent on these drugs throughout the country is woefully inadequate. It would be my contention that there may even be that number of people who have a dependency on the drugs in Dunedin alone—perhaps even more. I am sure that many of my colleagues around the Chamber tonight would get up and say that they know of dozens and dozens of cases of people who have a terrible dependency on these drugs and of the impact that it is having on their families and their communities.I ask the Minister to please tell the Committee what plans are in place for increasing the resources that are available through the Ministry of Health—Hon TONY RYALL (Minister of Health): Just to touch on a couple of the questions that members have raised implementation of the Psychoactive Substances Amendment Bill is going to be a priority for the Ministry of Health. A considerable amount of work and effort has gone into it. If I look at the drafting of this bill it has involved Crown Law health legal outside Queen’s Counsel and the Parliamentary Counsel Office. So we have had lawyers for Africa helping us with this bill and the ministry is very focused on the implementation. In fact I have been advised that even today the police and the Psychoactive Substances Regulatory Authority have been working together in respect of visiting a number of retail premises to ensure they are aware of their obligations. I will talk about those later.The Ministry of Health is in very close contact with addiction treatment providers across New Zealand and it is going to continue to liaise with them and to conference at least weekly in order to gauge what is happening around the country. A recent national teleconference shows that all services as the member Clare Curran has noted have noticed a particular increase in inquiries and the seeking of treatment. In respect of the recent announcement of this bill even that has encouraged some of that increase. Preparations are under way to make sure that services can meet this level of support.The ministry has material and information that is available. The Alcohol Drug Helpline has agreed to extend its services during weekdays with an extended period of time.Emergency department physicians have also met. They are not expecting any major disruptions but the emergency department leaders will maintain surveillance and support and advice will be fed through to the Ministry of Health. I have had discussions with a number of district health board chief executives who advise that their district health boards are ready and able and that they do expect to be able to have the resources to meet community demand. The Government will be keeping a very close eye on this because we all share the concerns the member has.MEKA WHAITIRI (Labour—Ikaroa-Rāwhiti):Tēnā koe Mr Chair.Tēnātātou katoa. I rise with all members of this Committee to lend my support to the Psychoactive Substances Amendment Bill. All I can say to be succinct is thank goodness. Thank goodness for the communities up and down this country who rallied and who marched to get these terrible drugs out of our communities.Hon Trevor Mallard: Meka can you say thank you to Billy Graham. I forgot to in my speech for the work he did.MEKA WHAITIRI: Yes I was going to mention him Mr Mallard. Many of the members on this side of the Chamber and other members who care passionately about their communities have been invited to got involved with or been part of a lot of the rallies that occurred up and down the country. I for one was fortunate to join in the rally down in Naenae with Billy Graham who called it down there. He is a wonderful person who is passionate about the community of Naenae. I was attending with my colleague the Hon Trevor Mallard; the Mayor of Hutt City Ray Wallace; councillors; and community workers. Clearly the meeting that was held in Naenae was a reflection of the community’s absolute disdain for these drugs—their absolute disdain for these drugs—and their desire to get rid of them. So in Naenae the message was clear and both Trevor and I as parliamentarians representing areas of the Hutt were charged with bringing this message to Parliament to say that people in Naenae wanted them banned completely.From Naenae I was fortunate enough to attend another rally. That was called by councillors of the Hastings District Council again to say that people do not want these substances regulated; they actually want them banned. So again attending that rally that message was clear to those who were there. The local paperHawke’s Bay Today watched the people who went in an outlet that was selling them and the front page of the paper showed people going in over the space of 6 minutes. It was enough for me to say that people in Hastings do not want these drugs and want them banned. So that was community meeting No. 2.Following on from the steps of that meeting I met with the Gisborne District Council and the Mayor of GisborneMengFoon who again asked what this Government is doing about these substances because they want them banned. Across the river the one outlet there has people coming in. The feedback from concerned people in Gisborne was asking what we are doing in Parliament and saying we need to take the message to this Government yet again because regulation is not meeting what they want as community leaders and community workers. They want them completely banned. Following that there were two more rallies one in Napier and again one in Hastings.My point is about the passion and the drive of our communities to say that these are bad substances that are in our communities and are infecting ourwhānau and we need to get rid of them. I again want to support not just the people who were mentioned in bringing the amendment—clearly the Government has had an about-turn from all the feedback it has received. But the original Act the Psychoactive Substances Act is oneof those where you wonder how it actually got in. I need to acknowledge that I was not in the House at the time but I definitely—Hon Trevor Mallard: Oh! Blame us.MEKA WHAITIRI: Yes. Yes that is right—I was not in the House. But look it is like collective responsibility. If you are a parliamentarian you have to defend that this was passed. But like I have said I am happy to stand here and say that we have amended that Act. The substances are going to be banned. I know that the people of places like Maraenui like Flaxmere like Kaiti like Elgin and like all the small communities that I stand here proudly to represent will be absolutely pleased that we are making this move to completely ban these substances. So that is my small contribution to what I consider is a very important bill and something for which all our communities have rallied to say enough is enough. So I support this bill. Kia ora.Su’a WILLIAM SIO (Labour—Māngere): I am going to take just a short call on the Psychoactive Substances Amendment Bill. I am not on the Health Committee which will review this particular bill. I have attempted to look quickly through it prior to it coming here. I think we should welcome the decision that the Government has taken. Although of course Labour claims some responsibility for that I think it is also kudos to the wider community out there who demanded of this House that the way forward for us was to change the legislation that we initially passed.One of the groups that was quite vocal—and rightly so—against the previous legislation was local government throughout New Zealand. I wonder whether the Minister in the chair the Minister of Health would be able to crystallise information for local government in New Zealand in particular on just how this new legislation will impact on the role of local government. As I said just quickly scanning the legislation there is no reference to it there other than reference to the Psychoactive Substances Expert Advisory Committee. The Minister should know that with the previous legislation local authorities up and down this country were quite vocal about the responsibility that the previous legislation imposed on them without giving them the appropriate protection in how to advocate strongly for the views of their particular communities. I suspect that local government would be happy that we have essentially followed the advice that it has given this Government by banning the availability of many if not all of the legal highs that were available.There is another concern I believe which was one of the reasons why I was supportive of the previous legislation and that is the concern about what happens if when we are banning these legal highs that then makes them available for the underground market. I think that although we welcome the U-turn of this Government in this legislation and although we welcome its U-turn on testing these substances on animals there are those two particular issues that I wonder whether the Minister would be able to shed some light on—first the role that local government plays in the new legislation and second the efforts that need to be made to prevent the black market.As everybody else in this Chamber has said these products are a scourge in our community. I suspect that no one here in this Chamber who is a parent would like to see their children picking one of these things up and consuming it. Not too long ago there was an email that was circulated within the emails of Government departments where somebody suggested that there was a legal product being produced that would taste like a strawberry and look like a strawberry. I think the police identified that it was a scam but these are the potential dangers that I think still lie unanswered.I remember that in 2001 the community inŌtara and theŌtara Music Arts Centre brought down a group called the Boo-Yaa T.R.I.B.E who were Samoan rap dancers. They were hard-core rappers who came down to talk to the young people here about their experiences living in Los Angeles. The issue obviously got on to drugs. What Irecall from that conversation was that they said that New Zealand had not yet experienced the full force of the kinds of bad drugs that they saw on their particular streets. The fact that we have allowed some of this stuff to be on sale for a while now is still cause for concern.So yes I welcome the legislation but I wonder whether the Minister is able to just shed some light. It is not clear to me from the legislation before the Committee what role local government plays and what the transition process is. Although I suspect that local government will welcome the banning of these substances there is a strong mood within local government throughout New Zealand at the moment that this Government tends to impose legislation on local government and then let local government pay for it. I think it has every right to do so but I think that shedding some light on what that responsibility is would be very very helpful.Finally also how do we then address the black market? If we are banning these substances and we are going to make it difficult for some of these things to be produced and sold to our young people—and I agree with the banning and I agree to our making it difficult—how do we make sure that they are not readily available in other markets? Thank you.Dr DAVID CLARK (Labour—Dunedin North): When we rush legislation there are frequently poor outcomes. That has been acknowledged by a number of members in the House. I want to make a short contribution covering one of the background informers about this situation that is lesser known and not so much in the public eye. Certainly in my area I want to draw attention to the work that Clare Curran did in Dunedin to raise awareness and an appetite for action. We together visited an outlet in South Dunedin recently close to a community mental health facility. It was pretty shocking to see the fly-by-night nature the lack of any investment. There was a real awareness that this was a dangerous business to be in just from walking into the shop itself.But I wanted to speak a little bit more about the poisons line—the National Poisons Centre in Dunedin—which has advised on the Psychoactive Substances Amendment Bill. I know that the centre supported the Government’s decision-making in the original Psychoactive Substances Act and that it has provided a huge amount of support to those wrestling with addiction in recent times. If viewers at home can pause for a minute and imagine that their child perhaps an 18-month-old has swallowed a range of unidentified pills or maybe even some leftover synthetic cannabinoids and they are then in the situation where the child is frothing at the mouth or unconscious currently we have the ability to ring an 0800 helpline: 0800 POISON. It is written on most toxic products in New Zealand. But what many people at home may not appreciate is that currently the Government has a proposal that it is consulting on that would rollHealthlineQuitline the Alcohol Drug Helpline the National Depression Initiative problem gambling support and the 0800 POISON number into one service. I want to suggest that this raises a number of serious questions that I would like the Minister of Health to address either now or in his third reading speech because this is raising concerns in our communities. Where these poisons exist a need exists for a service that is supported by professionals and that is able to respond immediately.This proposal to roll these services into one service one helpline has been parodied on TV. I am aware of a parody that literally imagines a scenario where the line is called and it says: “If you would like to speak toHealthline press 1. If you would like to speak toQuitline press 2. If you would like to speak to the Alcohol Drug Helpline press 3. If you would like to speak to the National Depression Initiative press 4. If you would like to speak to problem gambling support press 5. And if your child is frothing at the mouth and unconscious press 6 and please hold for the operator.” This is anabominable thought. It is truly unacceptable that we would get to that point where people were waiting for such a service where people were not able to immediately access the service. This service which supported the legislation that the Government consulted on—this particular service that the Government consulted in the formation of the Psychoactive Substances Act and in the legislation we are passing through the House now—and which the users of these substances have regularly used is under threat. Its funding is only $1.5 million a year from the Government and yet it maintains a database that together with the service costs around $2.8 million a year. The data is constantly being updated.This service is under threat. I would urge members of the public watching this debate who are concerned about the 0800 POISON service going—for all of the advice that is provided post-9/11 on chemical threats for all of the advice it provides every day for addicts and for those people who have swallowed unidentified items—to contact the Minister of Health to express their concern. The current process that is being engaged in is called a constructive dialogue. At the start when this proposal was launched there was going to be a competitive tender process. That has since been shifted into what is called a constructive dialogue. That smells and looks a lot like a process that is opaque. That is worrying. We do not need cronyism in this aspect of our reform. There may well be some economies of scale to be gained by rolling many of these services together but it seems highly unlikely that rolling in the 0800 POISON service makes sense.Clause 1 agreed to.Clause 2 agreed to.Clause 3 agreed to.Clause 4 agreed to.Clause 5 agreed to.Clause 6 agreed to.Clause 7 agreed to.Clause 8 agreed to.Schedule agreed to.Bill reported without amendment.Report adopted.Third ReadingHon TONY RYALL (Minister of Health) on behalf of theAssociate Minister of Health: I moveThat the Psychoactive Substances Amendment Bill be now read a third time. I would like to thank all members for their contributions to the debate and particularly thank all those party representatives who have worked so constructively with the Government over the last 48 hours in respect of the bill such that we have been able to build a broad consensus across the House on the issues in the bill.This bill when it comes into force will remove from the market all psychoactive products with interim approval. The police and the Psychoactive Substances Regulatory Authority have been working closely to prepare for the change. Starting today police and authority enforcement officers have been visiting retail premises to ensure that affected parties are aware of their obligations. Retailers are being advised that they need to secure all products and return them to the wholesaler. Wholesalers are being advised that they will be required to recall all the products from their customers. Manufacturerswill be advised that they will need to recall all products and dispose of them as directed by the authority. All parties will be advised that they can be expected to be visited by the police and the Psychoactive Substances Regulatory Authority enforcement officers and that any non-compliance may affect their ability to reapply for a licence under the full regime.The day this legislation commences there will be active enforcement. At 12.01 a.m. on Thursday 8 May the legislation will come into force and makes it clear that no one may sell supply or possess psychoactive substances. Later that day police and enforcement officers will visit all retailers to ensure that products have been removed from public view and are being returned to the wholesaler. As part of the recall notice retailers and wholesalers will be required to maintain records of what products are returned when they are returned and which manufacturers they are returned to. This will be matched against information from manufacturers about what products they received from whom and when.It is also very important for us to consider the people who may be dependent on the products that this bill removes from the market. The Ministry of Health expects that some people will experience serious symptoms from ceasing to use these psychoactive products and withdrawal from these products can last for 2 weeks or longer. I explained to the House during the Committee stage that the Ministry of Health is working very closely with the sector to monitor these things. I am advised that the addiction treatment sector believes it can manage this demand within existing resources but the Ministry of Health will continue to monitor that very closely.On what this legislation does this Parliament is quite clear. We are removing the interim licences so these products that were previously enjoying an interim licence will no longer have a licence be licensed and will not be able to be sold supplied or possessed. We are allowing that the individual retailers can maintain their licence for 2 weeks and the purpose of this is to enable the authorities to have access to the retail premises and ask questions and obtain information from the people with their retail licences.The Government is indicating that regulations will be passed in the next few months on the testing requirements needed to consider any new applications under this legislation. Parliament is being quite explicit in inserting a principle into the legislation and making it very clear in a provision that we will not accept any information that comes from animal testing in support of any application. Parliament is also being clear that this is notwithstanding new section 12(2) in clause 6 which makes it clear that we will be prepared to consider animal-testing data from overseas only when that data can be used to decline an application under this legislation. Parliament is also being quite clear that there will be no compensation.The message from this Parliament is very clear. As of 12.01 a.m. on Thursday these products are no longer legal and it will be an offence to sell supply or possess psychoactive substances. I would like to thank all members for their participation in this debate and give them an assurance that the Ministry of Health will be working very closely with the regulatory authority and the police to ensure that the message is out there: Parliament has changed the rules; those licences are removed.JAMI-LEE ROSS (Junior Whip—National): In accordance with the agreement amongst the parties in the House tonight I seek leave for the House to sit past 10 p.m. to complete the third reading of the Psychoactive Substances Amendment Bill.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): Leave is sought for that purpose. Is there any objection? There is no objection.IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY (Labour—Palmerston North): Labour supports the Psychoactive Substances Amendment Bill because it removes the transition provisions from the Psychoactive Substances Act which in effect will remove from the market all the untested drugs that are currently available on the market and it also removes the provisions that allow for animal testing of psychoactive substances in any tests that are used to prove that a psychoactive substance is of low or no risk. It improves but does not overturn the original Psychoactive Substances Act.I want to remind anybody who thinks that passing the Psychoactive Substances Act was a mistake that before it was passed we had no regulation over psychoactive substances at all. There was an unknown number of products out there being sold from an unknown number of outlets. When the original Act was passed we took control. We now know how many products are out there for sale and more have been removed from the market since the original Act was passed. We now know how many retailers there are out there. We even know who wants to import substances so that they can carry out research on products to perhaps make them one day become approved products. We know a lot more about what is going on in the legal high industry as a result of the passing of the original Act.However it was not enough. It did not satisfy legitimate concerns about untested substances being available on the market and being used by people particularly young people without us being fully cognisant of what both the short-term and long-term effects of those products are. The decision to leave on the market the products for which there had been no previous complaints made was made for legitimate reasons by a select committee the Health Committee that was under pressure to deliver on a very very short deadline to meet the Government’s requirements. But it was it turns out the wrong decision to make.Overturning that decision has been an amazing demonstration of people power—the people who have demonstrated in towns and cities around New Zealand and the people who have lobbied their MPs. I do not think there is probably a single electorate MP or list MP in this House who has not had a very large number of people come and ask that we improve the legislation. Those people have worked tirelessly to ensure that their representatives understand what it is that they want to have done.I want to particularly acknowledge in my own community the people on the Psychoactive Substances Task Force which is a self-established group within the city and which I have been a member of. It has involved the police it has involved concerned parents and it has involved health practitioners. It was formed ostensibly to make submissions to our local council to make sure it made the best use of the provisions in the Act to apply a local approved products plan. But also as time went on it became a lobbying vehicle. As a member of it I found I was spending more of my time being lobbied by the people in the group than talking about what we were going to talk about with the council. That was fair enough—that was fair enough.I hope that everybody in that group and people around the country know tonight that the politicians have listened. We have responded and I think we have responded in a way that does what people wanted us to do which is to get rid of these untested drugs without undermining the original intent of the legislation. That is a position that it seems a number of parties arrived at independently. We could all see that this bill is the smart way forward and I do want to acknowledge the Minister of Health Tony Ryall for his work in ensuring that we did get cross-party consensus on this legislation.We want to pass this legislation tonight. I find it slightly ironic that we are rushing to fix up a mistake that was caused by rushing the original legislation but nevertheless the people want these drugs off the market and that is what Parliament wants to do. We want to do it tonight so let us get the job done and do what the people want.Dr PAUL HUTCHISON (National—Hunua): Thank you for the opportunity to speak briefly in this third reading of the Psychoactive Substances Amendment Bill. Undoubtedly for 20 years or so successive Governments have been grappling with how best to minimise harm from psychoactive substances and their use and availability in New Zealand has burgeoned over the last few decades. This is a very complex area and undoubtedly those who manufacture psychoactive substances are continually trying to invent new substances that detrimentally affect New Zealand families and young people. In fact nowhere in the world are there clear answers as to how best to deal with this problem.However as Iain Lees-Galloway has said prior to the Psychoactive Substances Act which we are amending coming in we did not have a regulatory regime and there is little doubt in my mind that the Act remains the best way we know of dealing with emerging psychoactive substances. This amendment bill revokes all interim approvals for psychoactive substances. It has emerged from an outpouring throughout New Zealand of the concerns of ordinary people about these substances and the Government has acted very decisively. Many speakers have indicated that perhaps there are simple solutions. They are wrong. Many people have indicated that the science around ensuring there is minimal risk is easy. They are wrong. It is not easy nor is the science around animal testing.There is no doubt that the National Government is constantly monitoring world literature to do everything possible to ensure that we exercise best practice in this country. I do find it absurd that the Green Party is abstaining but nevertheless the rest of Parliament is in agreement that the best thing we can do is send clear messages at this stage and then progress on and use best practice science and evidence to ensure we do everything possible to minimise harm and protect the health of New Zealanders.LOUISA WALL (Labour—Manurewa): Kia ora Mr Assistant Speaker. Thank you very much for this opportunity to speak in the third reading of the Psychoactive Substances Amendment Bill. As a member of the Health Committee which heard the primary piece of legislation I want to reiterate the sentiments shared across the House that the context that the country was facing was one where these products were out there. We needed a regime that regulated them but what we have seen is that regime fall short of creating the appropriate framework for us to determine what safe substances are. In fact what we have seen is that the substances that are currently available have been incredibly detrimental to the health and well-being of our communities right across the country. It was an honest attempt by the select committee within the context of a bill that needed to be rushed through by 1 August because the Associate Minister of Health the Hon Peter Dunne had temporary class drug notices for 30 substances and 50 products that would have expired.We had to react and create a regime that now has enabled us as a society a community to regulate these products and I guess the next test for the Minister of Health is in fact the development of the psychoactive product approval process. I know that that consultation process concluded at the end of March. It is part of a work programme that could eventually see some types of products be available for our communities. It is within that context that I want to highlight from the primary legislation the local approved products policy. As a select committee we were really clear that local communities local government should be empowered with tools to then be able to say where these products should be sold.I want to congratulate our local government representatives around the country on passing the ball back to Parliament so that we could create this framework to enable safe substances to be sold. I want to highlight that the ball is in their court about where those products can be sold so all of them should continue with their consultations andwith their development of these local approved products policies in anticipation that eventually there may be some products that will be available.I think it is worth highlighting that because we were also really clear through this process that prohibition was not the answer. I know that my colleague Kevin Hague had some particular perspectives around that given that the most damaging drug in our country is alcohol and many New Zealanders die through the consumption of alcohol coupled with tobacco. As a mature nation we had to have I guess a grown-up conversation about where these psychoactive substances fit within the context of us regulating those substances.I am not going to talk for much longer but I do want to highlight that there have been incredible activists in our community. There is a woman called Julie King who lives in Tokoroa. She is part of a group called Love Soup. I have never been there but I have seen her Facebook posts. She is an ordinary passionate woman living in our community. She loves her community and she was really concerned about what these products were doing not only to the young people but to the people within that Tokoroa community. She took it upon herself with other people within that community to make a stand.I want to acknowledge that engagement because I think that what we have seen in this process is that democracy does work that people actually do have power and that when they develop a critical mass they will get reactions from political parties and people in power. So we do have to commend the Government for doing something. At the end of the day it does not matter who did what because we are all here tonight and our votes will be recorded. There is some consensus about the passing of this bill.Finally I want to thank a local group called group called the Warriors of Change. They are young people based in Manurewa. On 11 May 2013 they organised a rally. We had a shop right in the middle of the Manurewa township and the young people decided that they did not want these products sold in their community. I want to commend them for their activism and for their motivation to show that as a community they did not want the shop where it was and they did not want these products sold. I want to credit them the local board members and local bodies right around the country for the work that they have done. As we have seen through collective action pieces of legislation like this one can be passed and they are actually going to benefit the people of our communities in New Zealand. Kia ora. Thank you.KEVIN HAGUE (Green): I want to begin by as others have done thanking the Minister of Health for consulting the Green Party on his draft bill the Psychoactive Substances Amendment Bill last night. Again I record that the Green Party will be abstaining on this bill. I know that others have been puzzled by that but the simple fact is this. This bill does two things. One of those things we strongly support and the other we strongly oppose. It leaves us with no other respectable position.I want to continue from where I left off with my second reading speech. In the second reading I spoke about some of the reasons that lay behind the widespread community concerns about the availability of these substances and how those were based on incorrect understandings of the law and of the situation around this wide range of substances and my concern about the failure of the Government to respond to that misinformation with leadership and proper information. In this speech I want to focus not so much on that issue as on the response of the Government to the current situation.This bill reimposes prohibition. The Law Commission the Ministry of Health the New Zealand Drug Foundation the vast majority of submitters on the original bill the Health Committee the Minister of Health and this Parliament were all right—prohibition does not work. It seems bizarre to me that I need to be making the argument for that case since so many members of the House in fact made that point and madethose arguments in the various debates that we held in the House on the original bill. I will not quote members tonight. But the fact is that that is the approach that the Government is now imposing in the interim.I am just going to run through some of those arguments. The thing about prohibition is that it does not suppress demand. It may reduce it very slightly but the fact is that demand still exists and the market will still respond to that demand with supply. In a couple of months’ time if theCampbell Live programme takes its camera crews out to Naenae maybe from about 10 o’clock at night through to maybe 1 o’clock or 2 o’clock in the morning and instead of going to the shop it goes to the alley behind the shop it is going to find demand being met by supply.Prohibition takes supply out of the hands of regulated controlled retailers and instead puts that supply into the hands of criminal gangs or other illicit suppliers. Unfortunately what that means is that the drug dealer on the street in the alleyway behind the shop at Naenae and the drug dealer in the tinny house are not subject to those same controls. Those people supplying the demand that will not go away as a result of this bill tonight will not be checking people for their ID or for proof of age. We should expect that supply to people under age will increase as a result of this bill. Those people will not be making a distinction between those products that are low risk and those products that are high risk.We should expect that the supply of products that are high risk will increase as a result of this bill. Those people those illicit drug dealers will in addition to having a range of psychoactive substances—those currently legal and those currently illegal—have in another pocket other drugs like methamphetamine. So the product of this bill will be that the demand which will not go away as a result of this bill will also be met by the increased supply of currently illicit drugs. We are going to be seeing a significant increase in harm.As the prohibition on cannabis has proven demand is not suppressed by prohibition. Cannabis is absolutely prohibited and yet most adult New Zealanders have smoked cannabis. It has not suppressed the demand. Further this bill which is going to be passed tonight—and I respect the fact that the Green Party speaks in a minority on this bill—undermines the very Act that it amends because what will happen as this bill is passed is that it will set the platform for illicit chains of supply for psychoactive substances and those chains of supply will still exist when the bill takes full effect. So rather than a managed transition in which we move from having a completely unregulated market through to having a regulated market we do our best in the passage of this bill to undermine the regime that we are trying to impose.Others have spoken about the need for treatment services to be put in place because one of the consequences of this bill for any people who do have some degree of dependence on any of the substances that currently exist is that they will find that they suddenly have no access to a legal supply of the substance on which they are dependent. So that is one of the problems around supply. I welcome MrRyall’s comments about the preparations he has made but I note that none of that actually increases the supply of treatment services. None of that actually deals with the withdrawal that we fully anticipate—which Dr LeoShep has spoken about—with this bill.There is another matter related to access to treatment services. With the passage of this bill those people who wish to access treatment services or who have a need to access treatment services will find those treatment services harder to access and that is for a couple of reasons. The first is that there will no longer be information at the point of sale or on the products about how to access treatment services. So that is one of the reasons. The other reason is that in order for people to be able to access treatment services once this bill is passed they will need to admit to criminal offending. That willbe a significant barrier for many as it is for those who require treatment for dependence on other currently illicit substances.Finally I want to speak about stockpiling and there has been some reference to stockpiling in this debate tonight. One of the consequences of this bill and of the Government’s approach to this bill is that there will be stockpiling—there has already been stockpiling—and the consequence of that is twofold. On one hand it actually increases the supply of these substances to fuel the illicit trade that we should fully anticipate will take effect from tomorrow night and on the other hand it also means that individuals will have much larger quantities of these substances that will become illicit. That means that they will be more subject to crime. Also that larger supply of these substances is inherently more dangerous. So I am very disappointed that rationality and evidence-based policy are the casualties of this bill tonight.I was proud of the quality of the debate of the maturity of the debate that we had around the original bill the Psychoactive Substances Bill and I think it is unfortunate that probably most members of this House understand that the bill that we are passing tonight will make the harm from these substances worse and not better. The Green Party will be abstaining on this bill.BARBARA STEWART (NZ First): On behalf of New Zealand First I would like to rise to support the third reading of the Psychoactive Substances Amendment Bill. We are pleased that prompt action has been taken by the Minister of Health Minister Ryall so we would like to commend him for that action. We are pleased too with the participation of all parties in this House and their desire to ensure that this legislation is passed as quickly as possible. There has been huge concern in our communities about psychoactive substances and there is no simple solution to the issue of taking these psychoactive substances. Whether they are legal or illegal we are pleased that the psychoactive substances that are being sold in shops throughout New Zealand will not be available on Thursday.We are pleased too to support the new testing regime regarding animals. We know that Parliament wanted to reduce the harm of these psychoactive substances yet the bottom line was that the legislation had to be right and it was difficult to get it right. On this occasion we did not get it right. We did not do enough but tonight we have put it right.We wanted to reduce the harm that these substances were having right around New Zealand. We have to thank the people who came into our offices with the very sad stories about their youngsters who had taken these particular substances and who were continuing to take these substances. We understand that the information is not available as to how many people are going to actually seek help regarding the substance-taking. We know it is far harder to get off these chemical highs than it is to get off the natural products so we are told. So I was pleased to hear the assurance from the Minister that there will be resources available for all of those who seek help in this particular instance.It is ironic that the profit margin for the product owners manufacturers and sellers of these particular synthetic drugs is large. I was interested to read that the annual retail sales in New Zealand total around $140 million so it is little wonder that the dairy owners were not happy when the legislation changed.I must acknowledge the efforts too of Julie King who organised the recent marches right throughout New Zealand. It was a credit to her. It is no little thing to do that so thank you Julie.Tonight in New Zealand First we are very happy to support this bill. These products will never be safe. We are pleased that the products are going to be withdrawn from shops in our communities. There was not anything positive to come from these synthetic drugs only misery.MIKE SABIN (National—Northland): I am pleased to take the last call on this Psychoactive Substances Amendment Bill. I just want to acknowledge Minister Ryall for the work that he has done behind the scenes. This is a very very difficult piece of legislation because it is a very very difficult area of drug law because of the challenges that these chemicals present which the drug manufacturers and the drugpedlars have exploited for many years now—since the late 1990s in fact.I am a little shocked but we expect what we expect from the Green Party. To abstain on something like this because Green Party members have strong views for and strong views against when the New Zealand public are struggling desperately with this subject—this whole Parliament has been—shows us really how unprepared that party is for ever being on the Government benches because every day a Government deals with matters that it has to make tough calls on. We cannot please all of the people all of the time. That party seems to think that if it cannot fall on one side or the other it will just sit squarely in the middle. Actually the New Zealand public expect greater of them—Kevin Hague: Split the bill then.MIKE SABIN: —and although I have the greatest respect for Kevin Hague I do not actually believe he has done his party any service today. Green Party members have demonstrated why they should never get anywhere near these Government benches. The public deserve better from them than abstaining on something that is very very important.What this legislation does is it removes the 41 products that were on the shelves as part of the transitional regime. With the benefit of 20:20 hindsight one could suggest that these products would have been harmful. They are made up of compounds and chemicals largely unknown to science that really serve only one purpose in my view and that is to make the drugpedlars money through the misery of addiction. These substances lock very quickly into theneurotransmitting parts of the brain and very quickly cause addiction and goodness knows what other psychological disorders. So this legislation gets rid of those 41 products and says that they will also have to prove that they are of low harm. I have expressed to this Parliament that low harm means that they cannot have a possibility of causing addiction—which is harmful—so I will be watching on with interest as to how this issue is traversed.It also removes the animal testing provision. I have absolutely no problem with that. What we are dealing with here is that if we have to raise the bar and say to those people that the standard for them as a drug manufacturer needs to be higher because if it is going to be used by humans we do not believe that animals should be subject to that well that is fair enough. Actually I do not think we should lose too much sleep if the onus going on drug manufacturers is that little bit tougher. So if they need to spend more millions and it takes them longer to be able to get their product to a position where it is available to go back on the shelves then so be it. I actually hope that what this legislation does is to put out of business drugpedlars drug manufacturers and those who would create addictive substances to create misery through addiction in order to make money.I want to commend the Minister of Health for what he has done. I want to commend colleagues across the House for supporting this legislation. It is a tough piece of legislation. It is pioneering stuff. Today this Parliament has sent a very clear message about accepting the harms that are created by psychoactive substances. Could I ask the New Zealand public to please also accept that we all have a choice to make when it comes to ingesting things like these or other substances. The legal status of a drug is never going to alter the chemical nature of that drug and we should all remember that.I commend this bill. I think it has been necessary but at least we have got on and done what needs to be done. I commend it to the House.A party vote was called for on the questionThat the Psychoactive Substances Amendment Bill be now read a third time.Ayes107New Zealand National 59; New Zealand Labour 34; New Zealand First 7; Māori Party 3; ACT New Zealand 1; Mana 1; United Future 1; Independent: Horan.Abstentions14Green Party 14.Bill read a third time.