Hague Kevin: Psychoactive Substances Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeHague Kevin: Psychoactive Substances Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 09 April 2013. Volume:689;Page:9139. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]KEVIN HAGUE (Green): Regulation is a good thing is it not particularly when people’s health and safety are concerned and it is great to be able to take a call in this debate on the first reading of this bill the Psychoactive Substances Bill which I think will be supported by members of all parties. The Green Party welcomes the bill. We in particular welcome the fact that it is really the first significant modern attempt to have a rational principles-based framework for the regulation of drugs and in particular to have a framework that regulates on the basis of health and in proportion to the harm that is posed by a particular drug. So it is proportionate it is health-based and it is the direction that our drug policy and drug laws need to move in. I would support the comments that have been made by other members in relation to the overhaul that is required for the whole of the Misuse of Drugs Act. We too believe that that is overdue and look forward to that occurring in the near future. We particularly note the draft National Drug Policy which we expect to see pretty soon. That is going to be a very interesting exercise.There are some issues that the Green Party has with the bill as drafted but we believe that these are ones that can be addressed in the select committee process. I will come to those in a moment to just signal the kinds of issues that we will be looking for in the Health Committee’s scrutiny of the bill. We look forward to engaging with the Associate Minister of Health Peter Dunne on this. I must add our particular tribute to Minister Dunne for being prepared to take this bold and appropriate move in the field of regulation of psychoactive substances. Synthetic drugs are a global problem and New Zealand has probably been dealing with that problem for longer than any other country or certainly longer than most. So it is fitting that we are leading the charge in actuallytrying to solve that problem. I note the Minister’s comments at a recent conference that he attended in Vienna about the eyes of the world being upon New Zealand and how we address this problem.As others have set out in the early 2000s the issue of not being able to stop these hazardous substances coming to market with New Zealand’s existing law was highlighted when people started buying and taking drugs containing benzylpiperazine (BZP). In a survey conducted in 2007-08 13.5 percent of adult New Zealanders had tried BZP at least once. However when the Government moved at that time to make BZP illegal it was immediately replaced by another substance highlighting the problem that others have spoken about. Previous debates in this House indeed have reflected that the ability of the industry to develop very similar products that are not captured by the specific legal sanctions we place on a particular product is apparently infinite and I believe the number of temporary bans that we have seen is 33 covering in excess of 50 substances. And as Iain Lees-Galloway has said actually one of the main effects of that approach to trying to deal with the problem has been to accelerate the process of replacing products not to solve the problem at all. In the last year alone 57 new psychoactive substances were identified by the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction compared with only 13 in 2008. So that is more than one each week.We have all seen the stories in the media and we may indeed know personally of people who have been harmed who have suffered serious health and mental health effects from using these substances. And these are not effects that the manufacturers and distributors of these products care about. We cannot therefore rely on self-regulation or a form of self-regulation to ensure the safety of New Zealanders. Regulation by this House is what is required.The use of party pills as Annette King has said is popular. It is estimated that 50000 four-pill packs are sold every month in New Zealand and that the industry has sales of $24 million each year so it is important that we move to tackle this problem. It is also important to recognise that not all of these substances actually cause harm or cause significant harm and I will come to that in a moment. As others have said this follows a Law Commission review and we believe that we want to see the other recommendations of that review also implemented.So some of the issues that we want the Health Committee to deal with—the first of those is that we believe that the principles in clause 4 of this bill must include health and harm reduction and they currently do not. Those form the very heart of the purpose of this bill and they should be reflected in it. We are looking forward to that being taken up by the select committee. The second point is around the definition of low risk. This is going to be absolutely critical. The select committee I believe is going to need to try to put some parameters around what the nature of the risk is that is being assessed. For example is it the substance itself or is it the delivery mechanism of that substance? So the smoking of a particular substance—is the health effect of that also included in the risk that is to be assessed? And “low risk”—what does “low” actually mean? If the threshold is set too high and no substances actually make it to market what will occur then is that the existing situation will just be perpetuated—actually the illegal trade in psychoactive substances will boom—and that is an outcome that we do not wish to see occur. If the threshold is set too low then we will not be controlling the harmful effects of these substances. So just leaving that to chance is inadequate.We have already addressed—and my colleague Mojo Mathers will address further—the risk to animals from animal testing of the substances. We believe that those should be prohibited by the bill. We also want to address this transition period because we believe that the length of the transition period has been set too long. We expect the lawto come into effect in August but there will not at that point be an authority for applications to go to. We believe the Psychoactive Substances Regulatory Authority must be convened much sooner than a year out otherwise we will have an unregulated period of a year in which very substantial harm could be sustained. We support the calls for the bill to also address plain packaging and point-of-sale marketing. These are significant problems. We would also like to see the select committee explore the other methods of control that we have seen in the Alcohol Reform Bill around venues around hours and around all of those other aspects—and indeed price and taxation—as mechanisms for control.So in conclusion we do believe that this bill will reduce harm and stop unsafe substances being sold and that is absolutely a laudable goal. It provides exactly the controls that communities have been calling for. There are some significant issues that must be addressed and we are looking to the select committee to do that. We are very happy to support this bill at its first reading to allow the select committee that opportunity. We note in conclusion that the international community is watching with interest what we do here. Let us give them a model that is worth emulating.