Ryall Tony: Psychoactive Substances Amendment Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeRyall Tony: Psychoactive Substances Amendment Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee Third Reading[Sitting date: 06 May 2014. Volume:698;Page:17547. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon 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.