Anderton Jim: Misuse of Drugs Amendment Bill (No 3) — First Reading 
Anderton Jim: Misuse of Drugs Amendment Bill (No 3) — First Reading 
[Volume:620;Page:15686] 
Hon JIM ANDERTON (Associate Minister of Health) 
: 
 I move  
That the Misuse of Drugs Amendment Bill (No 3) be now read a first time. 
 The purpose of this bill is to ensure that the misuse of drugs legislation is better able to meet its objective which is of course to prevent the misuse of drugs. The Misuse of Drugs Act has two key parts. The first is the Misuse of Drugs Act 1975 or the principal Act which comes under my responsibility as the Associate Minister of Health. The second part the Misuse of Drugs Amendment Act 1978 comes under the responsibility of my colleague the Hon Phil Goff the Minister of Justice. The bill will make several key changes to the principal Act to make it more responsive to changes in illicit drug trends in New Zealand. Those changes are in summary: moving presumption of supply matters from the provisions of the principal Act to its schedules so that they can be altered more quickly and flexibly by Order in Council setting the presumption of supply amount for methamphetamine at 5 grams rather than the current default amount of 56 grams and expanding the membership of the Expert Advisory Committee on Drugs to include a Ministry of Justice official. 
The principal Act currently provides for a rebuttal presumption that when a person is found with a certain amount of a controlled drug he or she possesses that drug for the purpose of dealing or supplying it to others. The onus is on the person found with the drug to prove that he or she was not supplying the drug and that the drug was intended for personal use. That presumption is referred to as the presumption of supply. Section 6(6) of the principal Act currently provides a presumption of supply that is set at the amount of 56 grams for all controlled drugs except for those that have a specific presumption of supply listed separately in that section. That situation gives rise to difficulties as the principal Act must be amended every time there is the decision on advice from the expert advisory committee to set or alter a specific presumption of supply for a particular controlled drug. That process can result in unnecessarily long delays. The principal Act will be amended to move presumption of supply matters to its schedules so that they can be set or altered through Orders in Council. The amendment will allow for a more efficient process than the passing of a new Act of Parliament each time but it will still allow for scrutiny by the Health Committee and the House as a whole as well as provide for public consultation. 
The Expert Advisory Committee on Drugs recently recommended that the presumption of supply amount for methamphetamine should be set at 5 grams and thus reduced from the present 56 grams. Accordingly the new presumption of supply schedule will be set for that amount of methamphetamine. In addition the expert advisory committee is to be expanded to include the expertise of a Ministry of Justice official. 
Changes are also proposed to respond to concerns that the enforcement provisions dealing with precursor substances are inadequate. Concern has centred on ephedrine and pseudoephedrine which are key precursor substances used in the illicit manufacture of methamphetamine. Currently there is no offence relating to the import or export of precursors for the manufacture of illicit drugs. In a border situation only charges for the offence of possessing a precursor can be laid. However possession is impossible to prove in cargo and mail interceptions as no person has physical possession or control of the substance. The Labour-Progressive Government has therefore created two new offences. The first will enable customs officers to seize and detain precursor substances that are imported into or exported from New Zealand in the knowledge that they will be used to commit an offence by producing or manufacturing any controlled drug with a maximum penalty of 7 years’ imprisonment. The second offence will enable customs officers to seize and detain precursor substances imported into or exported from New Zealand without reasonable excuse with a maximum penalty of 1 year’s imprisonment. 
At present the power to detain search and seize without warrant is restricted to class A B1 and C1 controlled drugs. The Government has also agreed that the principal Act should be amended to create a new Part 3 of schedule 4 to extend the powers in section 18(2) and (3) of that Act to enter detain search and seize without warrant the precursor substances listed in the new Part 3 of schedule 4 and to list ephedrine and pseudoephedrine in the new Part 3 of schedule 4. Therefore this bill will extend the powers of search and seizure without warrant to ephedrine and pseudoephedrine thereby allowing the police to respond quickly when investigating large purchases of pharmacy-only pseudoephedrine medication to be passed on to illicit manufacturers of methamphetamine. 
The last set of changes to the principal Act relates to the offence of possessing needles and syringes. Under the Health (Needles and Syringes) Regulations of 1998 there is a legal defence to the charge of possession of a needle or syringe if the injecting drug user can show the needle or syringe was obtained legitimately through the needle and syringe exchange programme. At present the onus of proof in the defence lies with the defendant and that has caused a number of problems mainly in the health area of intravenous drug users using used needles. The bill will amend the principal Act by moving the defence to the offence of possessing a needle or syringe from the regulations—where it is now—into the principal Act and by reversing the onus of proof from the defendant to the prosecution which will have to prove that the needle or syringe was not obtained through the exchange programme. Fundamentally that is to encourage the use of clean needles rather than to have the enormous costs that go with the health problems of hepatitis C HIV/AIDS and so on. 
The second part of the Misuse of Drugs Act is the Misuse of Drugs Amendment Act 1978. The changes to the amendment Act are intended to provide New Zealand’s law enforcement agencies namely the Customs Service and the police with powers that will enable them to more effectively detect the presence of controlled drugs and take appropriate action. The main changes will be that the provisions in the second part of the Act relating to controlled deliveries will be extended to include precursor substances like ephedrine and pseudoephedrine. Customs officers and members of the police will be able to conduct personal searches without a warrant during a controlled delivery. The law enforcement agencies in New Zealand will be able to facilitate international controlled deliveries without the prospect of the liability of the importer and exporter of the illegal substances being affected by the law enforcement agency’s involvement and customs officers and members of the police will be provided with the power to personally search persons held under the internal concealment provisions of the second part of the Act. 
There is one further issue relating to this bill to which I wish to draw members’ attention. In March 2004 the Expert Advisory Committee on Drugs recommended the creation of a new schedule of the Misuse of Drugs Act. The purpose of the new schedule is to enable some regulation of legal substances that are subject to abuse but that do not warrant on available evidence regulation under the current risk classes—the A B or C drug classifications. An example of such a substance is the legal high benzylpiperazine. The regulation proposed will allow restrictions to be placed on matters such as the legal age of purchase and on retailing supplying marketing and labelling in relation to the substances in the new schedule. Such a schedule would not be confined to substances like benzylpiperazine but would also provide another strategy in the spectrum of measures to reduce the harm associated with volatile substance abuse which includes solvent abuse. All members will know of the tragic cases of solvent abuse recently before the coroners’ courts. This bill provides an opportunity to put that new schedule in place now. It is the Labour-Progressive Government’s intention to introduce a Supplementary Order Paper providing for such a new schedule in time for it to be considered by the select committee together with this bill. We are taking the opportunity to do that now because if we do not provide for that in this bill it may be 1 or 2 more years before there is another opportunity. 
It is proposed to refer this bill to the Health Committee for consideration. The Labour-Progressive Government is anxious that this important bill be passed this year if that is possible. Therefore I propose that the Health Committee endeavour to make its final report to the House on the bill by the end of November 2004 so as to enable that to happen.