Turner Judy: Misuse of Drugs Amendment Bill (No 3) — First Reading 
Turner Judy: Misuse of Drugs Amendment Bill (No 3) — First Reading 
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JUDY TURNER (United Future) 
: 
 I rise on behalf of United Future in support of the first reading of the Misuse of Drugs Amendment Bill (No 3). The Hon Rick Barker acknowledged in August this year that “methamphetamine abuse is the single biggest illicit drug problem facing New Zealand.” We acknowledge that the impact of drugs is absolutely enormous. The police crime statistics released recently pointed to a 30 percent increase in non-cannabis offences which the police have explained is driven by an increase in the manufacture of illicit drugs and of course the policing initiatives that they have been running. I also want to endorse the comments of the previous speaker who talked about the burgeoning number of clandestine laboratories. My understanding is that to date in this financial year 190 laboratories have been closed down. That is really the tip of the iceberg. I think most of us have heard anecdotally that because of the under-resourcing of the police the local police in many areas know where laboratories are but because they are not permitted to go in on their own initiative and search the premises in view of the danger factors they have to wait until the special police unit mandated to do that work is able to come into their area and investigate the situation. Because of that resourcing issue we have an absolutely rampant and out-of-control methamphetamine problem. 
We support the two main directions of this bill: firstly the amending of the presumption of supply provisions so we can crack down on the dealers and secondly the preventing of the importing and exporting of precursor substances. At present section 6(6) of the principal Act creates a presumption whereby a person who is found in possession of 56 grams of a controlled drug is deemed to have it for the purposes of supply. If the police can prove the person had the drug then the onus is on the defendant to prove that he or she had it for another reason. The problem that has been created is that if the measurement is set at the wrong level the legislation has to be changed. If we are to address with appropriate speed the rather outrageous measurement of 56 grams we need to have the ability to do that through an Order in Council. I want to pick up on that figure because at the select committee United Future will be very interested to hear some scientific evidence about the limit for personal use. We suspect that this proposal does not go far enough. Let me give this fact which shows how ridiculous it is that at present someone is allowed to be in possession of 56 grams of methamphetamine before he or she is deemed to be supplying it. Apparently P is bought in what is generally called points. A point is 0.1 of a gram. If someone purchases 1 gram of P for approximately $1000 it then has to be broken down into points in order to use it. This change recommends that someone would be allowed 5 grams before it would be considered not to be for personal use but for supply. I think that does raise some very interesting questions as to whether even a figure of 5 grams is too high. We will be watching that issue very closely and asking some very serious questions at the select committee to determine how we arrived at 5 grams as being an acceptable level. It is of course certainly a big improvement on 56 grams. 
We understand the importance of being able to move quickly to adjust the amounts by Order in Council and we are supportive of that. However we do have some questions about how that will be managed with regard to what would happen if a proposal came forward on a given substance to relax through Order in Council the amount that would be considered acceptable before one was considered to be in possession for supply. We have all assumed that this legislation is about the opportunity to tighten down on the amounts that people are allowed to have in their possession before they can be charged with supplying. I guess we need to be careful that we do not set in place a very quick and fast-track method that does not require revisiting an issue back in Parliament if the intention is to relax that provision. We believe it is important and essential to crack down on drugs quickly. The process should not be drawn out and the amending of legislation should be able to be done in a speedy manner. 
Many of the dealers who are pushing drugs on our teenagers for instance are enticing them with the opportunity to go shopping for the tablets needed in the manufacture of P and they are being supplied with some of their own needs in terms of their addictions. The other supply is from “tinny houses” where young people buying cannabis are introduced to even more dangerous substances. 
We support the second main provision of the bill which is to prevent the importing and exporting of precursor substances. It is extremely well known that overseas drug syndicates are targeting New Zealand both with methamphetamines and the precursor substances and that it is a growing problem. In 2004 for instance 12685 grams of methamphetamine was seized by the Customs Service at the border which was 10 times more than in the year before. In 2004 over a million tablets of pseudoephedrine and ephedrine were seized by Customs—a sizable increase from the amount that had been seized the year before. Those dealers are coming into our country with the full intention of supplying P laboratories up and down this country. 
The other controversial provision that other members have referred to is the amending of the provisions for the needle and syringe exchange programme. That is another area where we will be very interested to see what comes up at the select committee. Our understanding is that what motivated the inclusion of the provision is that many of the staff working on the needle and syringe exchange programme have had huge amounts of their time tied up in appearing in court to defend people who are on charges of having needles where the onus of proof is upon them to say where they acquired those needles. It has become a bit of an administrative nightmare and the staff feel they could be using their time a lot better. However we have some concerns about what this bill proposes and we will be very interested to see whether there are any other suggestions out there. One of my colleagues said that maybe a certifying certificate of some kind could be given at the needle and syringe exchange. That is used in other jurisdictions and it may have an application here—that is some sort of certificate of proof that could be given to users of the programme. 
We would also like a little more information on the Supplementary Order Paper that the Hon Jim Anderton indicated today would be introduced as part of this legislation. We have not had a chance to see any of those provisions and we would like to see some of the detail of them and get our heads around it in order to understand whether we could support the provisions. We think the intention is great. I agree with Mrs Newman that there are lots of other issues surrounding this flood in our nation that is causing so much damage that needs to be addressed and not just through this change in the law. It is a good start and we are keen to support it but we are also keen to make sure that it is sound legislation.