Sabin Mike: Psychoactive Substances Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeSabin Mike: Psychoactive Substances Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 09 April 2013. Volume:689;Page:9146. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]MIKE SABIN (National—Northland): Firstly I commend the work of the honourable Minister Dunne on this Psychoactive Substances Bill. I want to just touch on a couple of the points that have been raised by members particularly from the Green Party and ACT in this case who talked about the importance of regulation and broadening what we do in this space intimating that we really look at the issue of cannabis.I find it highly ironic that we are discussing this issue in the House and a member from the Green Party was on the television programmeNative Affairs talking about cannabis as legitimate income support—legitimate income support—and that there are some real entrepreneurial skills of those growing cannabis to support their families. The House will reflect on that. How can members from that party honestly get up and make comments and expect people to take them seriously when they make comments like that about cannabis?Let us at least make this very clear: this is about synthetic drugs. This Government’s position on cannabis is very clear because we do know the harm of cannabis. We do know the harm of cannabis. There are more hospitalisations in this country as a result of the psychotic impacts of cannabis than of any other drug. So let us put that on the—[Interruption] We are talking about illicit drugs. I know that member’s position on cannabis; he might like to get up and share it with the House.Let us make it quite clear: the only safe drug use is no drug use and that is not something that has been discussed. The only safe drug use is no drug use. The world has gone through some concerning evolutions in terms of its fascination with drugs in the last 15 years. Over that time we have seen what has happened in New Zealand with the advent ofmethamphetamine. Well Logan Millar and Matt Bowden made themselves multimillionaires out of the benzylpiperazine (BZP) market selling it on the notion that if there are these safe alternatives then people will not get into P. Yet over the course of the 8 years that that drug was legally available there was a huge growth in methamphetamine and other synthetic stimulants. Benzylpiperazine was sold alongside lollies and ice creams in dairies and that really created the notion that if a youngster wants to go out and have fun then they should be popping a pill or smoking a pipe to do that. I want to challenge that and this bill the Psychoactive Substances Bill should go a long way towards challenging that because when BZP was criminalised what Logan Millar and his other backyard chemist friends did was they synthesised other analogues and created other synthetic drugs and used New Zealand youngsters as the guinea pigs while they were counting up the dollars on their money machines.This is at the core of what this legislation sets out to do. It is to say that if people are going to produce a substance and people out there choose to take that substance then the people producing it should be able to show that it is low risk. The select committee will need to work very very carefully on what that low risk is because I would submit that there would not be many medical practitioners who would suggest that smoking anything is safe. So that will have to be tangled with by the select committee.I welcome this legislation; I do not welcome the comments by some who seem to intimate that we should shift all drugs into a space where they are regulated because that is not the case. This is dealing with synthetic stimulants and the cat-and-mouse game that we have seen. I hope that for those who are producing the K2s and the synthetic drugs out there and experimenting on our young people that this sends them out of business. I hope it is part of turning the culture round in this country that if people want to go out and have fun it does not have to be by popping a pill smoking a drug or getting off their heads. I commend this bill to the House.