Faafoi Kris: Psychoactive Substances Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeFaafoi Kris: Psychoactive Substances Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 09 April 2013. Volume:689;Page:9144. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]KRIS FAAFOI (Labour—Mana): Talofa lava. Malo e lelei. Bula vinaka. Thank you for the chance to speak to this Psychoactive Substances Bill and those specific greetings will become relevant to the House a little bit later in my contribution. Can I just join with a number of other speakers—on both sides of the House to be fair—and say that this is a significant bill. I think there are lots of times that law is debated in this House where mums and dads at home will think it is not necessarily overly relevant to them. But I think a bill like this will certainly be relevant to a lot of mums and dads out there who are very concerned about the effects of these drugs these party pills and other substances that give legal highs to people—not only just young people but mostly young people—in New Zealand and think that they need to be cracked down on. I certainly know that it is a live issue as Barbara Stewart has said for a lot of MPs.I want to note a couple of people in my constituency of Mana. The principal of the Porirua Alternative School Laz Tausaga is very concerned about the sale of party pills to his students. His students face enough challenges as it is. He was on Facebook just a couple of weeks ago talking about the bad influence that those pills are having on some of his students and about cracking down on some of the retailers in that area who think it is fit to sell those to his students. Also the principal of Bishop Viard College Teresa Cargo a couple of weeks ago did raise the issue of the sale of these party pills not just in dairies but on the street. Young people from her school were being approached to buy the likes of K2 from people who were not necessarily shop owners but were just people on the street approaching her students to try to sell these substances to them.I would like to acknowledge the Minister responsible for this bill the Hon Peter Dunne who I thought made a very good contribution to the earlier debate about troops in Afghanistan when he said that that issue touches the lives of Kiwis very dramatically. I put down those words because I knew we were going to be debating this issue and I know that this issue of party pills and legal highs certainly does touch very dramatically the lives of a lot of people in communities right around this country. The influence of technology is also very apt in this debate in terms of our youngsters. I think it was the Minister who said it was a cat-and-mouse game because the technology and the ability of manufacturers to produce different types of party pills and different types of substances make it very difficult for the legislation governing this to try to keep up. So I think this new law is absolutely a move in the right direction so that we as a Parliament and we as a nation can respond faster to the challenges that this industry has put forward because of its ability to change the make-up of its drugs.In April 2011 the Law Commission released its reportControlling and Regulating Drugs: A Review of the Misuse of Drugs Act 1975. In that report it highlighted two issues: first the harm that these psychoactive substances are doing because of their availability with little or no control over their ingredients the strength of them wherethey are being sold and the age of people to whom they are being sold; and second that the onus was on the Government to figure out just how harmful these substances were. The Law Commission made a number of recommendations and the Government has picked up on this one to crack down on psychoactive drugs. Again I want to praise the Minister for putting through this law but I do have a little sympathy for him. I imagine that he as someone who has been very ardent on this issue wanted to get this issue through a lot more quickly than the 2 years it has taken since April 2011 for this legislation to come to this House.This is not a new issue at all. My colleague Iain Lees-Galloway who spoke on this issue earlier did say I think it was back in—and I am looking to him here—March 2012 I believe—Iain Lees-Galloway: Yes I did.KRIS FAAFOI: He was asking for a bit more urgency from the Government to make some moves against these psychoactive drugs. To quote him he said: “We think it’s ridiculous that we’ve basically been experimenting on our kids by allowing the substances to come on the shelf and then trying to constantly chase our tails trying to get them off the shelf again.” I am not saying this is a bad bill; I am saying this is actually a very good bill that Mr Dunne has brought to the House but Labour believes much more is needed. We do not believe that this Government has taken the opportunity for a much more comprehensive overhaul of the Misuse of Drugs Act as the Law Commission proposed back in April 2011. This bill addresses only one of the recommendations that the Law Commission made. We do look forward to the select committee process. I understand that the issue of consideration of the bill by the Health Committee will be debated at length a bit later.Also to go back to my greetings to the Assistant Speaker I think one issue that we have thought about certainly on this side of the House is whether or not kava will be included as a substance in this bill. I did hear someone giggle but that is actually not a funny issue at all. There is a lot of cultural significance attached to the ‘ava and the kava ceremonies. For the Tongan community for the Samoan community and for the Fijian community it will be a psychoactive substance and we wonder whether they would like to make a submission on this bill to make sure that this bill does not cover their cultural rituals. It is a serious issue and I see that the Associate Minister of Health the Hon Peter Dunne is certainly nodding his head so he may be able to speak to that at length a little bit later on.There are some other issues that a number of other members have raised around advertising plain packaging and point-of-sale displays of psychoactive drugs that are covered by this bill. We certainly look forward to having some discussion around that considering that the House in the last term went through some very robust debate on the Smoke-free Environments (Controls and Enforcement) Amendment Act around the advertising of tobacco. We believe that leaving that matter under regulatory power is an interesting move given what we did in this House in the previous term. We certainly look forward to debate on that at the select committee to see whether or not we think it is appropriate to leave that decision on regulatory power to be made by someone other than this House.The bill also establishes a couple of bodies. It establishes the Psychoactive Substances Appeals Committee which will look at some of the decisions that are made by the Psychoactive Substances Regulatory Authority and the Psychoactive Substances Expert Advisory Committee which are determining whether or not some of these substances are legal. [Interruption] Mr Williamson might need a bit of a pick-up over there—someone get him a lolly. I think it is a good move to set up the authority and thebody to have a look at what will be deemed to be safely sold to have a low impact on people using these drugs.I do understand that if people are caught with non-approved substances they will be up for an infringement fee of $500. As Iain Lees-Galloway said that is a very good move and we should perhaps look at expanding that beyond just the psychoactive substances listed here. I also note that anyone who is caught selling or supplying the substances that are not approved offering to sell or supply a substance that is not approved or possessing a substance with intention to sell or supply will be up for imprisonment of 2 years and a fine of $500. That is pretty serious punishment for anyone who is caught selling or preparing to sell psychoactive substances that do not have approval.Labour does support this bill. It does a lot of good. There are some lost opportunities because of the Law Commission recommendations that the Government has not taken up. We are a bit disappointed that this issue was highlighted by the Law Commission back in April 2011 and now in April 2013 this legislation has just been introduced to the House.