Sabin Mike: Psychoactive Substances Amendment Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeSabin Mike: Psychoactive Substances Amendment Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee Third Reading[Sitting date: 06 May 2014. Volume:698;Page:17554. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]MIKE SABIN (National—Northland): I am pleased to take the last call on this Psychoactive Substances Amendment Bill. I just want to acknowledge Minister Ryall for the work that he has done behind the scenes. This is a very very difficult piece of legislation because it is a very very difficult area of drug law because of the challenges that these chemicals present which the drug manufacturers and the drugpedlars have exploited for many years now—since the late 1990s in fact.I am a little shocked but we expect what we expect from the Green Party. To abstain on something like this because Green Party members have strong views for and strong views against when the New Zealand public are struggling desperately with this subject—this whole Parliament has been—shows us really how unprepared that party is for ever being on the Government benches because every day a Government deals with matters that it has to make tough calls on. We cannot please all of the people all of the time. That party seems to think that if it cannot fall on one side or the other it will just sit squarely in the middle. Actually the New Zealand public expect greater of them—Kevin Hague: Split the bill then.MIKE SABIN: —and although I have the greatest respect for Kevin Hague I do not actually believe he has done his party any service today. Green Party members have demonstrated why they should never get anywhere near these Government benches. The public deserve better from them than abstaining on something that is very very important.What this legislation does is it removes the 41 products that were on the shelves as part of the transitional regime. With the benefit of 20:20 hindsight one could suggest that these products would have been harmful. They are made up of compounds and chemicals largely unknown to science that really serve only one purpose in my view and that is to make the drugpedlars money through the misery of addiction. These substances lock very quickly into theneurotransmitting parts of the brain and very quickly cause addiction and goodness knows what other psychological disorders. So this legislation gets rid of those 41 products and says that they will also have to prove that they are of low harm. I have expressed to this Parliament that low harm means that they cannot have a possibility of causing addiction—which is harmful—so I will be watching on with interest as to how this issue is traversed.It also removes the animal testing provision. I have absolutely no problem with that. What we are dealing with here is that if we have to raise the bar and say to those people that the standard for them as a drug manufacturer needs to be higher because if it is going to be used by humans we do not believe that animals should be subject to that well that is fair enough. Actually I do not think we should lose too much sleep if the onus going on drug manufacturers is that little bit tougher. So if they need to spend more millions and it takes them longer to be able to get their product to a position where it is available to go back on the shelves then so be it. I actually hope that what this legislation does is to put out of business drugpedlars drug manufacturers and those who would create addictive substances to create misery through addiction in order to make money.I want to commend the Minister of Health for what he has done. I want to commend colleagues across the House for supporting this legislation. It is a tough piece of legislation. It is pioneering stuff. Today this Parliament has sent a very clear message about accepting the harms that are created by psychoactive substances. Could I ask the New Zealand public to please also accept that we all have a choice to make when it comes to ingesting things like these or other substances. The legal status of a drug is never going to alter the chemical nature of that drug and we should all remember that.I commend this bill. I think it has been necessary but at least we have got on and done what needs to be done. I commend it to the House.