Craig LizDRUG AND SUBSTANCE CHECKING LEGISLATION BILL (NO 2)Third ReadingDebate resumed from 18 November.Dr LIZ CRAIG (Labour): Thank you Madam Speaker. Days without sleep hallucinating vomiting and extreme paranoia is not what festival-goers were expecting when they consumed MDMA over the summer." So this is the beginning of a Newshub story that was released earlier this year and it talked about the experiences of festival goers over summer. It was a summer that KnowYourStuff found that 68 percent of samples that they were testing at events weren't what the person submitting the sample thought they were.Often when we think about drug testing we think about the people that are submitting their substances to be checked but I also think we need to step back and think also about those working in the emergency services so those in the A & E departments and those in our ambulances. Often what they're confronted by is a young person who has consumed a substance and this young person themselves isn't sure what they've taken. So in that context obviously if you've had a substance checked then the person will know but often they don't. So what's incredibly useful is also to have some understanding of the underlying statistics and the information from previous tests from other people attending festivals in similar areas about what some of those unexpected substances might be because part of treating and assessing a young person is knowing what that substance was because that determines the next steps for management.So for me it's a real pleasure to speak on this third and final reading of this bill because what it will mean is that again this summer those drug checking services can operate with legal certainty. I think drug checking is about harm reduction and I think some of the changes that the Health Committee made have made this a much stronger bill. I think one of them was making sure that not only do people get their substances checked but they also will consistently now have access to quality harm reduction advice about the substance that they have had tested.So just summing up again that the select committee had 56 written submissions and we heard 11 oral submissions. Some of those submissions did make a difference in terms of some of the changes that we've made. One of them that was pointed out and where we did recommend change was making harm reduction advice mandatory because basically as I was saying it's not just about the physical testing of the substance; it's about that harm reduction advice that's going to go along with it. Because while KnowYourStuff suggests that a high proportion of young people who find that the substance they've got isn't what they thought it was do choose not to take that substance a small number do still go on and take the substance. In that context also making sure there's advice around having support around you about making sure that alcohol is not used and about other substances not used in a non-judgmental way is really really important.So basically when the bill was introduced 35DB stated that "The functions of a service provider [were] to do 1 or more of the following:" and providing information about harm reduction advice was only "1 or more of the following." What that meant was that it wasn't mandatory and so you could potentially have some people that were setting up as drug and substance checking services who would test the substance but then theoretically not provide any advice and actually it's probably the advice that's the most crucial part of this. So basically what we felt as a committee was that following testing such advice should be mandatory and we added a new section recommending a new 35DDF to that effect. But it was also noted that if despite the best efforts that the person said "No I don't want to receive that advice." then that was also respected. So it wasn't that you had to continue giving advice if it was unwelcome but certainly making sure that that advice was available.We've made another number of changes that were recommended and I think two of those were around the use of personal information and collecting that and also about the admissibility of test results in court proceedings. Because when the bill was introduced basically the idea was that you couldn't use those test results in terms of criminal proceedings because you didn't want to discourage people from using those services. However basically it didn't cover civil cases and it didn't cover the fact you used the testing services and so we've made some recommended changes to make sure that those are covered so people have that sense that they can use that without legal consequence and there'll be confidentiality. So this is a really important bill and I'm really happy to commend this bill to the House."