Chadwick Steve: Misuse of Drugs Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Chadwick Steve: Misuse of Drugs Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:674;Page:20200] 
Hon STEVE CHADWICK (Labour) 
: 
 I really am not very pleased to take a call on the Misuse of Drugs Amendment Bill. We have been waiting for Supplementary Order Paper 258 from Minister Dunne since we last spoke on this in the House. I like the Greens’ Kevin Hague am pretty appalled to see a Supplementary Order Paper of this substance come before the Committee and not go out to the public of New Zealand for consultation. We hoped for better from the Minister responsible for drug use issues in New Zealand. This is too complex and it has implications. The industry is already saying that it can see some loopholes in it and that it will fill those loopholes very quickly. We are up against a very intelligent domestic industry here—and international industry—which will look at what is proposed will move and will find a way through this. 
I think the classification of these substances as a temporary class drug is a bit of a delay mechanism until the Minister can really get his head around an effective approach to banning these substances. I can see one temporary class drug being classified and sitting on a shelf for a year. The industry will quickly morph to change the product’s ingredients to another substance and we will have another temporary class drug that is banned for another year. Officials will be chasing their tails to actually classify these temporary class drugs. They will be put on the shelf then they will pull them out 1 year later to see how they will deal with them. 
The whole process I think is a shambles. It is a shambles because the Minister who usually rails about having a common-sense approach to everything had the perfect mechanism before him. It was not the Misuse of Drugs Amendment Bill; it was the Law Commission’s report. I do not blame the officials in the Chamber here today. They are under instruction from Cabinet of which Mr Dunne is a member to fulfil the directions of Cabinet. I think this Government under John Key’s leadership has shown a pathetic crusade on drugs in this country. It is almost a light bulb issue actually. It will be laughed at by the industry and it will be laughed at ultimately by the manufacturers suppliers and importers of substances into this country. It will become a bit of a bête noire for this Government in the long term. 
I cannot for the life of me understand why when the ministry and the Minister had the Law Commission report the Minister did not breathe through his nose take the common-sense approach and get drafted a proper comprehensive approach to drug minimisation and drug harm in this country. He chose to ignore it. We now have this Misuse of Drugs Amendment Bill which I think actually penalises the public. 
We looked at the effect of ephedrine and pseudoephedrine when we were in Government and Minister Dunne knows that. He was in Cabinet when we discussed for goodness’ sake the project of pharmacists in Rotorua who said they would remove from the shelves those precursors and put them at the back of the chemist shop. That was a wonderful project. They let people know who came in to buy more than two packets that they would fax around other pharmacies to see whether that same person had been in to get substances from their chemist shops. If they had they refused to sell them to that person. That was a sensible approach; it was a sensible approach that was supported by the Medical Association the primary health organisations the pharmacists and the district health boards. That project would have worked if this Government had backed it up with a comprehensive new law in respect of the misuse of drugs. However we got this legislation and then we got this long-awaited Supplementary Order Paper from the Minister which I think will not work because simply it still does not put the right onus of proof on the manufacturers of these drugs. 
I see that one of the members opposite has had to leave; she may be lucky enough to go and get her supply of medication without having to go to a pharmacist and without having to go to a doctor for a prescription. 
I absolutely agree with my colleagues who say that this will add another cost of living burden. National members may laugh at that. They fail to see that we are developing a society that is grossly inequality driven. For people to have to go to a doctor to get a prescription to then take to a pharmacist is a ridiculous cost to have—both a cost burden on general practitioners and a cost burden on pharmacists. I think that is crazy. I do not think it is a practical approach at all. 
This approach is from National which railed against Labour’s cannabis inquiry. National said that it would do something comprehensive when it got into Government—absolutely comprehensive—and with Minister Dunne it would also be sensible. Well this legislation is not sensible and it is not comprehensive. It is a half-hearted attempt to look good about drugs. 
We in this Committee all agree that we have to do something about the industry suppliers who are very very clever—very very clever. It is interesting to see today that they have already said there are loopholes in this Minister’s Supplementary Order Paper. The legislation gives them some wriggle room and they will find the loopholes. How silly it is to be reactive in drug law and drug legislation! We will suffer for this until we enact all of the recommendations of the Law Commission report—not just one. 
I will speak very briefly on Iain Lees-Galloway’s Supplementary Order Paper 260 which I totally support. I think that clause 4 about the restriction of drug utensils is absolutely ridiculous. If the Minister really knew how this industry worked he would know that the people who use drugs will make their own utensils. They do not have to go and buy them. They know how to make something out of nothing. These people use teaspoons bits of wire and anything they have at hand. So we absolutely support the Supplementary Order Paper of Iain Lees-Galloway. The Minister’s provision will do nothing to stop the impact of pseudoephedrine and ephedrine use in this country. 
We all loathe the drug P. Every member in this Committee loathes the drug but we were sincerely looking forward to this Government coming up with a solution that would not bring us back to the House. I swear that when there is a change of Government we will be back and we will fix this as Labour is always being asked to do—to fix up the messes of a National Government. We will do it properly and we will do it comprehensively. We would never bring a Supplementary Order Paper of such substance to the Committee without first taking it out for consultation with the wider public of New Zealand. 
I also agree with what Ruth Dyson was saying about this legislation. The Bill of Rights issue that Chris Finlayson commented on makes a bit of a nonsense again of the Government and its approach to presumption of supply. I would have thought that around the Cabinet table Ministers would listen to the Attorney-General on the Bill of Rights issues. Thank you.