O'Connor Damien: Misuse of Drugs Amendment Bill — First Reading 
O'Connor Damien: Misuse of Drugs Amendment Bill — First Reading 
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Hon DAMIEN O’CONNOR (Labour) 
: 
 I welcome the opportunity to speak on the Misuse of Drugs Amendment Bill. It is a very important bill. I guess it is one that the Labour Party supports. Who would not support a Government initiative aimed at reducing the harm from drugs? Parliament does a lot to try to minimise the harm from road crashes and to minimise occupational safety and health issues in the workplace. On all sorts of things Parliament generally in unison does its best to reduce harm. 
This Government initiative is slightly misguided I think. It will reclassify ephedrine and pseudoephedrine. It will make people go to the doctor to get a prescription for what are very effective drugs to deal with colds and flu which seem to be on the rise these days even with flu jabs dare I suggest. People will inevitably get a new strain of flu and on it goes. These drugs have been developed and they are effective. But they have been used—or abused I should say—to make methamphetamine and P in particular. It is a New Zealand problem because smart chemists here have managed to develop these drugs for destructive use quite frankly—one could hardly say “recreational use”. They are a curse and a scourge on our community. I recall that when P first emerged I was flatting with good mates Dover Samuels and John Tamihere and they were both distraught. As the story started to emerge it became apparent that these illegal drugs were a real scourge on our Maori community throughout the country. I do not think anyone would object to any effective initiative taken to try to reduce the harm. 
Of course another drug causes huge harm to society and it is quite topical at the moment. It is called alcohol. It seems as though the National Government is not quite as determined to reduce the harm from alcohol as it is to reduce the harm from P. The harm from P is far more acute but thankfully it is not used as frequently or by as many people across the country. We do want to reduce its usage and there have been some good initiatives. The incoming National Government made a song and dance about what it would do and I commend it for making this attempt but this bill goes only part-way towards dealing with the problem. If we deal with the precursors purchased from New Zealand pharmacies supermarkets or whatever then we might make some progress. 
Australia has been trying to deal with this issue for some time. The precursors have been used to make different drugs. A system has been developed involving the Australian police and pharmacies and it was being developed in New Zealand. I am not sure where it is up to at the moment but it was an initiative whereby pharmacies would monitor the sale of ephedrine and pseudoephedrine products. They would look out for people buying them in bulk and sometimes an odd pattern might emerge of an individual buying a lot. Australian pharmacies started to monitor that. With computers it is quite easy to pick up patterns and pick up individuals and in fact the police there apprehended many people as a result of that process. That initiative was being developed here; I am not sure where it is at the moment. I hope the Minister of Police who is sitting over there will get up and tell the House whether that initiative of monitoring pharmacy sales and contacting the police about suspicious sales is being done in New Zealand. 
The reclassification in this bill and making people go to a doctor to get a prescription in themselves will not stop the problem because we know that a huge amount of precursors is being smuggled into the country from other countries. I cannot say that it is just from China but I know there have been some big seizures there. The point I am trying to make is that of course Labour will support this bill because we want to reduce the harm from P and methamphetamine in this country but let us get some consistency from the National Government. The thing that astounds us time and time again is the Government’s inconsistency. 
There is a view that imposing a tougher penalty and restricting what can be done will solve the problem. Well the harsh reality of P and methamphetamine is that people become addicted very very quickly. What happens if people experiment have access to P or methamphetamine and become addicted? Well there are only three options for that person: they die very quickly from an overdose or harm themselves; they continue to use and become criminals because they need money to buy the drug; or they acknowledge that they have a problem and seek treatment. If the third option occurs where do they go? It is hard to imagine that there will be more places to go when this National Government has allowed the closure of some treatment places throughout the country. I am sure that my colleague Mr Iain Lees-Galloway will point to the fact that the St Marks Adult Drug and Alcohol Treatment Centre has closed. Is that correct? Yes it has closed. It was in Blenheim. The Care NZ clinic in Otahuhu is another example. [ 
Interruption 
] I could go on. That member’s own patch of Dunedin includes the Ashburn clinic. Has it closed? 
Michael Woodhouse 
: Fine institution. 
Hon DAMIEN O’CONNOR 
: Has it closed? 
Michael Woodhouse 
: No—alive and kicking. 
Hon DAMIEN O’CONNOR 
: With restricted funding. Oh I see—ah really. Well there we go. 
Charles Chauvel 
: Service reprioritisation. 
Hon DAMIEN O’CONNOR 
: Oh reprioritisation—low-value spend. Spending money on drug addicts is not high priority. I guess that the community might disagree. The problem is that if we do not spend money on rehabilitation those people continue to be serious offenders and go on to commit what are often serious crimes. My knowledge in this area as a former Minister of Corrections is that many of them ended up being clients of the State. We ended up paying $70000 $80000 or $90000 a year to house them in prison because they had committed crimes to feed their methamphetamine habit. 
The question I ask is whether the Government will commit more money to drug treatment centres and programmes and indeed whether it will support the existing ones. It stood by and allowed through the cuts to district health board funding a number of very valuable organisations to cut back services that we desperately need. Drug use has continued to climb. That is a sad reflection on our society. I am not saying that it necessarily will but unless this Government gets a little braver and does something about alcohol we will continue to need alcohol treatment centres. 
Michael Woodhouse 
: Spurious argument. 
Hon DAMIEN O’CONNOR 
: The member over there does not believe this. He knows full well because I know he has a conscience and because he has worked in the health sector how difficult it is to treat these people what resources are needed and what staff training is needed. When Labour members came into Government we found that although we were committed to doing something about it there were not enough registered qualified drug and alcohol counsellors so we had to ramp that up. I hope the Government has continued that but I am not sure. I do not trust its commitment to things like this. It will take the populist easy option and say that it will deal with P and methamphetamine by shutting down access to the precursors and by making people get a prescription to get pseudoephedrine. 
That may make a difference but it will not make the big impact that we need in this area. We need a comprehensive programme not cuts to benefits a squeeze on accident compensation and the mean-spirited approach that this Government has taken to people who are on the bottom rung of the ladder for whatever reason. They may have been born into poverty or they may have been abused. There are many many reasons why people need support. Unfortunately too many of them end up using drugs for whatever reason. We know that that is a fact. We have a moral responsibility to try to assist them. We have to identify the problem; yes if possible to prevent access to drugs—and this measure is a step in that direction although it is not sufficient in my view—and to allow people access to proper treatment. These addictions are all-consuming. People live for their next fix. Although Labour members support this bill we say that the Government needs to commit more funding to treatment and commit more funding to existing programmes that help people in this country who are addicted to drugs—not just use the hammer.