Ghahraman GolrizGOLRIZ GHAHRAMAN (Green): I rise today to speak to this bill with a heavy heart in the memory of all those families all those victims affected by drug offending and by drug addiction in terms not just of psychoactive drugs but of all manner of drugs here in New Zealand and the rates are high—they are rising. It is in the memory of those victims that I say with great disappointment that this bill represents an archaic approach to drug offending an approach that has failed here—that has failed repeatedly all over the world. Promising victim communities that higher prison sentences will put an end to drug offending or addiction is sadly irresponsible.This bill seeks to amend the Psychoactive Substances Act to bring prison sentences in line with class C - type drug offending to eight years from two years. There is no doubt that these substances are dangerous. They are devastating. In fact they're far more physically harmful to users than natural cannabis which is a class C drug. There is no doubt that we need to take this seriously in our approaches to controlling these drugs. But I remember from the front lines of our criminal justice system when we did this with respect to pseudoephedrine when we made that controlled drug a class C - type drug and we upped those sentences the manufacture supply and import of pseudoephedrine has gone up exponentially every single year from that year. This approach has failed. The other grave devastating example of that in our own system is that methamphetamine at this moment this year is now as prevalent in our criminal justice system on the streets of New Zealand as cannabis.The exponential growth of methamphetamine can be linked directly to the very year that we made that drug a class A - type drug. We increased the maximum sentence to life imprisonment. I've watched in courtrooms all over New Zealand as our courts impose the only remedy they have. We watched the prevalence of methamphetamine devastate our communities and we just imposed higher and higher sentences—18 years 20 years or life is common here now for methamphetamine and it's about to overtake cannabis. There are as many P operations now on our streets as there are cannabis plants. It has failed. The war on drugs—this approach of upping prison sentences in reaction to drug addiction and drug offending—dates back to Richard Nixon's time the 1960s in the United States. We know that that approach is widely accepted now in that country to have failed. It has had devastating effects on communities.But this bill asks us to adopt that same failed approach here again. It asks us to ignore the evidence. In light of how serious the effect of this type of drug is on the user and on our communities how can we ignore the evidence? How can we be too proud to let go of a failed policy? How can we ignore that drug offending is in fact caused by social dislocation by the types of social ills—homelessness lack of mental health services lack of actual health services—that the party that now asks us to adopt this bill brought about in New Zealand? How can we ignore that inequality was at record highs over the past nine years—that that is what causes addiction? But we are asked again to ignore that evidence. I don't think we can afford to do that. Upping prison sentences is an embarrassingly impotent policy in terms of combating drugs.When did vengeance become a greater virtue than compassion? When did punishment become more an aim of the criminal justice system than stopping crime? Well it isn't for this Government. This Government wants to actually stop crime. That's why we're going to invest in the types of things that stop the causes of criminal offending. We're going to invest in people in our communities in our health system and in our housing and mental health services. That is why the Green Party will not be supporting this bill. We will not be supporting another policy that fills our prisons at the expense of investing in people.