McKelvie Ian; Williams PotoIAN McKELVIE (National—Rangitīkei): Thank you Madam Chair. I've been listening to this debate with interest and I guess it's not a topic that I'm all that familiar with but none the less I heard Stuart Smith earlier on say he had a bit of sympathy for this case and for this type of legislation and for the products involved in it and I certainly do too because if they work they work.I want to raise an issue under clause 7 under the licensing clause of this bill which I think is a little interesting and which I don't think would be considered. I really want to ask the Minister of Health whether it has been and whether it might be. I also want to add the point that there's always in the course of legislation in this House tension between the regulation process and the content of the legislation itself and I think that in this case it does look to me as though it's in the grey area we're dealing with. But what I wanted to talk about was how you measure a minimum-quality standard in a product that in fact is a natural product. If in fact you're going to allow loose-leaf cannabis to become part of this bill if the regulations do allow that then how do you manage the content of that product?I think it's very interesting because—I mean I don't know a lot about growing cannabis; although I do note that one of our premier plant breeders Dr Warren Parker has been appointed to the Landcorp board and maybe Landcorp's going to move into cannabis pretty quickly. They've done all those sorts of things in recent times and have adapted their ways of operating. But what I wanted to ask the Minister was how in fact they're ever going to measure the cannabinoid content of loose-leaf cannabis.If you think about it from a plant-breeding perspective it would be very easy. And I don't know what research is being done into growing cannabis and I don't know how much science has been applied to the growing of it in New Zealand but when you think about the yield of a wheat plant or a maize plant or anything like that we've probably doubled the yields of those in recent times. You can also double the sugar levels of them. You can change dramatically the content of a plant. What really intrigues me about loose-leaf cannabis is how you manage or ever set a standard in a product that's grown naturally or even a product that's grown under licensed conditions. Plants are really interesting things because you can very easily change the standard of them or change the quality of them and so if we are in fact going to end up with loose-leaf cannabis becoming part of this legislation then it is going to be very difficult in my view to set a regulation that actually measures the content of that plant. So that's one of the points I want to raise.I think the licensing of the stuff is an interesting issue I think the licensing of people to deal with this stuff is an interesting issue and I also think that the location of those plants or factories or whatever is used to produce them—Stuart Smith: Could be in the grounds of a prison?IAN McKELVIE: Ha ha! Well it'd be secure Stuart! It'd be secure! But I do think that the location and all that sort of thing is an interesting issue. Of course if you go back in history the original basis of cannabis really was the hemp plant. And the hemp plant of course if it were used legitimately would be one of the most useful plants we could ever acquire. So I think that there's an interesting debate about that as well but what does interest me is how you would ever measure the minimum content or the standard that you might supply loose-leaf cannabis at and how you would then control the way that was distributed and grown.I think that when you start to legislate for the provision of a product that we've had historically available to us whether legally or not and when that becomes a medicine it does add a whole new set of questions I think to the way we supply medicine and the way in fact our pharmaceutical products are supplied in New Zealand. I know that's been part of a significant discussion earlier in this debate but my real question is: how do you manage the content of these plants and how might we then get the legislation or regulation around that managed in a form that gives us some control of its future? So that's my contribution to the debate and I look forward to the rest of the debate in the committee.CHAIRPERSON (Poto Williams): Before I call Matt Doocey I'd just like to say to the member that that was a very useful clause 6 debate. We are actually in fact on clause 7.