Lees-Galloway Iain: Misuse of Drugs Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Lees-Galloway Iain: Misuse of Drugs Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:674;Page:20180] 
IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY (Labour—Palmerston North) 
: 
 It is a pleasure to speak on Part 1 of the Misuse of Drugs Amendment Bill. I say at the outset that Labour will be supporting Part 1 and will also be supporting the amendments in the name of Minister Peter Dunne the Minister in the chair as set out on his Supplementary Order Paper. Labour will also seek support for an amendment in my name which is set out on a separate Supplementary Order Paper. 
Firstly I will address the amendments in the Minister’s name which of course have received plenty of attention in the media over the last few weeks. This is I suppose the Government’s response to the issue of synthetic cannabis products—products that go by the name of Kronic Dream Spice and that sort of thing. The issue that has been plaguing Parliament for some time is that these products can come on to the market be perfectly legal and escape the purview of the Misuse of Drugs Act as it is currently written. They also escape the purview of all sorts of other Acts; they do not come under the same regulations as would a food and they do not come under the Medicines Act. They have been sneaking in through a loophole formed because no legislation has been able to deal with such new substances. 
What the Minister is proposing we see as only a stopgap and I think the Minister would see it in the same way as well. It is a stopgap measure in order to give Parliament more time to consider a more permanent solution to the issue of new substances coming on to the market. The Minister’s amendments will give the Government the opportunity to create a temporary class drug notice which means that we will be able to temporarily classify a new substance and by doing so ensure that it is not sold in dairies liquor stores or the places where we have seen it being sold and marketed clearly visible to young people and to anybody who goes into places where we would go to buy what we would think of as normal household items or goods. 
So we support the measure to create what is essentially a 12-month ban in order to give the Government and the Minister the opportunity to consider the harm that may be caused by these new substances. It is fair though to note that as some people have been saying in the media this morning this legislation does not allow the Government to block new substances from arriving and coming on to the market. It simply gives us an ability to respond in a much faster way so that we can get substances off the shelf quickly if we believe they are harmful to users. That is not ideal and it is fair to say I think that the process around that is not ideal. The amendments have been tacked on to a bill that was already proceeding through Parliament. These amendments have been proposed well after the select committee process so we have not had an opportunity to consider them properly through the normal parliamentary processes. 
However I do not think that such niceties will be given much truck by the public who want to see action—and have wanted to see action for some time it is fair to say. Indeed the Misuse of Drugs Amendment Bill was reported back to the House by the Health Committee in November last year and it has sat on the Order Paper for all the months since then when action really could have been taken by the Government. This issue could have been progressed. The question of Kronic has been around for some time. I think that most electorate MPs will have heard from their constituents about this issue and this is the appropriate legislation to deal with the issue rather than some others such as the Smoke-free Environments Act another area in which the issue had been considered somewhat as well. 
The legislation has been a long time coming but I accept what the Minister has been saying about the need to get it right. In the end though it is not the solution to new psychoactive substances. The public is really looking for a solution that ensures that these substances can be properly tested before they come to market rather than our having what is still the case—the need to respond once we realise they may be causing some harm. We want to be sure that the harm they cause is insignificant enough that they can come to the market safely. 
I think this legislation also gives us an opportunity given that we are buying a little time to get this matter right to consider the other 44 recommendations in the Law Commission’s review of the Misuse of Drugs Act. We have picked on one and we have focused very closely on that one but a number of suggestions and recommendations in that review could very well be taken up by Parliament. In my view what we actually need is new legislation to replace the Misuse of Drugs Act. That Act came into force in the mid-1970s and it was a response to the drug environment of the mid-1970s. It was a response to what at the time was a whole raft of relatively new substances. Some were naturally occurring; some were created synthetically. But things have moved on in the 30-odd years since then. Indeed new substances are being developed all the time but our response to drug use and drug abuse has changed. 
The concept of harm minimisation is much more to the fore these days. I believe that given the opportunity we have through the amendments the Minister has put forward in relation to Part 1 to take the time to consider ways in which we can deal with new substances we should also take the time to consider how we should really tackle drug abuse and the supply and use of drugs in New Zealand in the 21st century with a much more modern more evidence-based approach. I think of things like the way we classify different substances the role of the health system and the role of the justice system. All those matters need to be taken into consideration in creating the legislation we need to replace the Misuse of Drugs Act. Having said that I say that we do need an interim measure and this is the interim measure to tackle that. 
I would like to hear more from the Minister about how he proposes to use those temporary class notices how quickly they can be brought into action and how he intends to respond to the claim from the industry that it will be able to constantly bring in new substances. The idea that the industry might have one substance that would be on the shelves for a week before being pulled and replaced by a new substance is a concern. I would like to see that teased out a little bit more by the Minister and hear his explanation of that. 
I would also like to hear exactly how the different temporary classes will be defined and how a substance will be defined as being temporarily a class A class B or class C drug a precursor substance or a restricted substance. Those will have quite an impact on the way in which this legislation will actually work in practice. I also say that for people who have a small amount in their possession it is excellent that that amount will not be illegal. In fact I would like to hear a little bit more about how the presumption of possession to supply might assist in dealing with the stockpiling issue that we could see as people try to evade this legislation and these amendments before they come into force. So there are a few questions there for the Minister and I would be very keen to hear his thoughts on them. I look forward to coming back to this in a moment.