Misuse of Drugs Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Misuse of Drugs Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:674;Page:20180] 
Misuse of Drugs Amendment Bill 
In Committee 
Part 1 Amendments to principal Act and consequential amendments to other enactments 
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. 
Hon PETER DUNNE (Associate Minister of Health) 
: 
 I am happy to respond to the points the member Iain Lees-Galloway has raised. He is absolutely right; these amendments to the Misuse of Drugs Amendment Bill are a temporary measure because the 45 recommendations from the Law Commission require a lot of work to be done on them. There is not just one recommendation in isolation; a whole comprehensive package needs to be assessed. 
The member will appreciate that the commission’s recommendations are essentially at a very high level. They are not in a form that could be picked up and simply implemented as some have argued. Quite a lot of ongoing work on the recommendations is occurring at the present time. The Government’s intention is that that work will be completed next year and I imagine that what will emerge will be a new bill—a replacement for the current Misuse of Drugs Act—that will incorporate all of those changes. That is for another day. 
In terms of the immediate problem we face with synthetic cannabinoids and other new psychoactive substances we needed to act in an important and immediate interim way. I make the point that this is not just about synthetic cannabinoids. Claims I have heard from the industry that it can now divert its activities into other areas will be caught by these amendments because any new psychoactive substance that causes the Minister of Health concern can be the subject of one of these new temporary class drug notices. To a large extent that gives some comfort when manufacturers claim that they will simply bring in new and different substances. They can be dealt with under this mechanism. 
The member raised a question about timing. My assumption is as follows: this legislation will pass through all its remaining stages in Parliament this week. It will receive the Royal assent at His Excellency’s convenience. I imagine that will be first thing next week. Immediately that happens I will issue a  
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 notice giving the range of products that is on the market at the moment—some 43 in all—7 days to be off the shelves. The timing is very quick and we are already preparing the  
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 notice as I speak. 
As new products arise and as they are detected by a combination of the police the New Zealand Customs Service and the Ministry of Health or individually provided the products meet the test I referred to earlier they will immediately be gazetted in exactly the same way. 
The issue of concern to New Zealanders about the apparent proliferation of these synthetic cannabinoids and other psychoactive substances is being addressed through this mechanism. In the longer term something along the lines of the Law Commission’s recommendations that nothing gets to even base one before it is proven to be safe is the correct course to follow. But a whole lot of issues around the definition of “safety” and the process by which it is determined have yet to be resolved. 
Iain Lees-Galloway raised a question about personal possession. I draw the Committee’s attention to this particular aspect because it is very important and again gives the lie to some of the claims being made by the industry that there will be a bonanza fire sale and that people will be able to stock up to their heart’s content to get around the forthcoming bans. 
The definition of “personal possession” for the presumption of supply has been changed. At the moment in the Misuse of Drugs Act we talk about 56 grams of the item concerned. These synthetic cannabinoids are sprayed over the Kronic products so 56 grams actually covers a fair range of product. We have changed that and in this instance it will be 56 grams of complete product. It will not be just the synthetic cannabinoid; it will be the Kronic. Kronic is sold as I understand it in 1.5 gram packets. By my calculation about 37 packets will be the maximum a person will be allowed before they are presumed to be supplying or potentially capable of supplying. So that is a very tight restriction. I hasten to say to the industry that there will not be a very big bonanza at all over the next week or so. 
These measures have arisen in response to understandable public concern and as I said in response to a question in the House earlier today I have been determined right the way through to make sure we put in place a viable interim mechanism pending the development of the long-term solution. I have had thrown at me—not by the member opposite but by various other commentators and critics—questions of why I do not do what they did in Australia and other countries and just ban these things outright. The reality has been that without the sort of mechanism we have put in place now the industry does exactly what the member Iain Lees-Galloway is concerned about: it thinks it can reformulate the banned product as something else which is back on the shelves the following week and we start all over again. 
We have a comprehensive suite of measures before the Committee in Supplementary Order Paper 258 and I am grateful for the support of that member’s party. I think it is very important that Parliament sends a strong signal on this issue. As a consequence the capacity that we have now to put in place something that will be comprehensive for that 12-month period is strong. 
I make one other point before I conclude. The 12-month period is not absolute. It is 12 months in respect of every product that is gazetted. Although I expect that the Government will have resolved its work on the Misuse of Drugs Act by around the middle of next year there may well be products being gazetted in February or March that will have that 12-month cycle attached to them. Within that time they have to be assessed and tested and some conclusion made as to their particular classification. 
I appreciate the member’s support. I do not want to prolong the debate unnecessarily but I hope I have answered his questions in the way he was seeking. 
Dr PAUL HUTCHISON (National—Hunua) 
: 
 Thank you Mr Chair for the opportunity to speak on this important amendment to the Misuse of Drugs Act. The Hon Peter Dunne certainly deserves congratulations on bringing in his Supplementary Order Paper that will effectively ban something like 43 synthetic cannabinoids that are known on the New Zealand market at present. I have no doubt that the mums and dads of New Zealand will breathe a significant sigh of relief when they hear of this legislation. 
There is no question that the availability of these synthetic cannabinoids has become more and more apparent as the year has gone on and particularly in the last few months. I have been absolutely surprised at what I would view as the irresponsibility of many retailers in the way they sell these products flagrantly in areas where there are a lot of children present close to schools etc. In my view the manufacturers of these synthetic cannabinoids are on the whole very cunning and ruthless and will stop at nothing to make money out of this range of products let alone stopping at nothing to entrap young New Zealanders into becoming dependent on them. So this interim measure is indeed an extremely important one. 
I well remember Matt Bowden whom we have seen on TV recently appearing before the Health Committee some years ago and saying how he felt that good manufacturing practice was so important to him yet we have seen these products come into New Zealand and be manufactured with additives of prescription medicines within them. Now that is clearly not a case of having good manufacturing practice. I do not believe that we cannot trust this spectrum of manufacturers who are so high and mighty in terms of their views on this issue in New Zealand. In fact I think they need to be absolutely sidelined. 
The Hon Peter Dunne’s Supplementary Order Paper will allow time to implement the Law Commission’s recommendations to legislate that the manufacturers of these psychoactive drugs will have to prove that they are safe. I must add that if they are psychoactive substances that are smoked we learnt during the submissions from the Ministry of Health that just about every product that is smoked or inhaled has a carcinogenic effect. It will be very very hard to prove safety. So there is no doubt that this has to be done very carefully and as the Minister pointed out the manufacturers will use every mechanism available to them to dream up some new way of presenting these drugs to the New Zealand public. 
Several years ago there was an amendment that introduced a rapid mechanism to try to combat the fact that they would always be trying to be one step ahead of the legislators. I think that that is almost impossible to combat and it proved impossible for that legislation. Consequently the suggestion that the Law Commission has come up with is entirely relevant and I am sure that the Minister will pursue those recommendations relentlessly so that hopefully we not only reduce the input of these drugs but also do everything possible to minimise harm. 
GRANT ROBERTSON (Labour—Wellington Central) 
: 
 I rise as other speakers have done to support the direction in which the Misuse of Drugs Amendment Bill is going and in particular to discuss the Supplementary Order Paper put forward by the Minister in the chair the Hon Peter Dunne. I pick up the point that both Iain Lees-Galloway and Paul Hutchison have made because I too have been approached as have other MPs by members of the public deeply concerned about the easy availability of products such as Kronic and other similar cannabinoids— 
Dr Paul Hutchison 
: Beautifully said. 
GRANT ROBERTSON 
: —Dr Hutchison approves of that; excellent—and other synthetic products which clearly have been sold and marketed in a way that is inappropriate and that most New Zealanders would deem to be not something they want to see in the corner dairy or in a place where their children would be going. The intervention that is now coming from the Minister is another stage in managing this process. 
The Minister answered the questions that my colleague Iain Lees-Galloway put forward and I understand that everybody acknowledges that this is a stopgap measure and not in fact the long-term answer to the problem. With any stopgap measure there will be some issues. The Minister has outlined the process that would allow us to get products off the shelf quickly if they reappear. I guess the question we have to ask ourselves is whether there is sufficient room in what is proposed to deal with a situation where a product is put on the shelves the  
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 notice goes in once it is found and the product then goes but the new product is already pre-prepared and emerges and we go through the same process every 7 days. That is the weakness that we have. 
I am not overly criticising the Minister for that. I am just saying that the gap in this process in the absence of a full regime is that theoretically the producers of these products could now be preparing a series of slightly different products that will be drip-fed into the market every 7 days or however long it is from when the  
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 notice is put out to when it is enforced. I do not think there is an answer to that question for the Minister really but that is still the gap that we have because we have a stopgap measure such as this one before us. 
I do not know what that means for the stockpiling issue. I think that that again creates a situation whereby some people potentially will be stockpiling different products of a similar nature. Although I think this amendment is something that we obviously support because it is an issue that we have to deal with and because these are products that have had demonstrably negative effects on people the measures that the Minister is proposing today have gaps and they are gaps that will be exploited by the producers of these products. Obviously we then simply have to hope that the regime is surely only temporary and that we move as quickly as possible to the recommendations in the Law Commission’s report. 
There has been criticism from this side of the Chamber—and it is worth noting—that we do not feel that things have moved as quickly as they might have in response to that. 
Hon Tau Henare 
: That’s nothing new. 
GRANT ROBERTSON 
: That is right. Well there is so much to criticise; that is the thing. In this case we congratulate the Minister on bringing this measure forward but we believe that the response to the Law Commission’s report needs to move as quickly as possible. It is as my colleague has said time to think about a new regime when it comes to the Misuse of Drugs Act. That is obviously what is contemplated in the Law Commission’s report. 
Essentially when we look at the Law Commission’s report we see that it wants to move to a situation where we have an Act that is administered by the Ministry of Health and is in fact a health-based Act. All the things I have heard as a member of the Health Committee and more broadly would point to that being the best basis for us to develop a drug regime—to base it on health effects. It is still extraordinary to most people whom I have interacted with about this situation that there is not a testing regime in place before the products reach the market. That is the fundamental thing that people simply cannot understand. At the risk of going slightly off-topic I say that it was interesting to note the comments of one user of these synthetic cannabis products who is quoted on the Stuff website today. His name is written here; it is Phil Stephens. He has given it to the newspaper so I am sure he will not mind me making him famous in Parliament. He stated: “I’ve tried most of the different brands over the past year or so. If you know the difference between the real stuff and the synthetic version you can tell they’re not the same thing but a layman probably couldn’t.” Mr Stephens then went on to say that he thought the 12-month ban on the substances was a good idea so I say to the Minister in the chair that he has a fan in one of the users. But he then went on to say and this is the point I want to make that the 12-month ban was “probably the best thing they can do. At least that way someone is doing some research and testing into this stuff.” 
That is a user of the product noting that there has not been proper testing of these products. From my point of view the priority has to be to get in place a regime that tests products such as these before they make it on to the shelves. It seems to me to be an extraordinary situation where that process is not in place and one at which members of the public look and wonder how we could have allowed that to be. So we must move quickly to address that particular gap and create a regime that is robust and applies the principles the Law Commission has suggested which are about reducing harm—instead of the “instant criminal” approach making sure there is a graduated response overall in terms of drugs and making sure we have an Act that is based on the important role of the health system in managing it. Drugs are not just a criminal issue. They become a criminal issue but they are a health issue primarily and we must deal with them that way round. 
From our point of view the Supplementary Order Paper introduced by the Minister is something that we can support. We support the amendments on the basis that we need to do something now but I do not want our support to be interpreted as believing that this stopgap measure is the be-all and end-all. I think it has gaps which will be exploited but I also believe that we need to move as quickly as possible to take on board the other recommendations of the committee. 
I am concerned about the stockpiling issue alongside the likely drip-feeding of new products and if the Minister had anything he wanted to say about that I would be grateful. The Labour Party will support this Supplementary Order Paper and the wider bill as well but we do so knowing that there is much much more to do. 
Hon HEATHER ROY (ACT) 
: 
 I rise in the Committee stage to speak on Part 1 of the Misuse of Drugs Amendment Bill. Primarily I wish to speak to the Minister’s Supplementary Order Paper but first I signal my disappointment in the speakers around the Chamber—not so much disappointment in the content of their speeches but in the way they intend to vote on particularly the Minister’s Supplementary Order Paper. 
There has been a lot of talk about stopgap measures and about how the gazetting will cause a delay of 7 days before products need to be removed from shelves. In effect what we are doing through this Supplementary Order Paper is banning a substance that at the moment is legally available. I do not think there is any disagreement about the fact that children should not have access to substances of these kinds; they certainly should not. But if we are looking to find real solutions we first need to look to completely rewrite the Misuse of Drugs Act more quickly than is being done but also find a solution that is workable. We all know—and I have heard each of the members who have spoken so far say this on other occasions—that prohibition does not work. 
My Supplementary Order Paper looks at this issue in a different way. It acknowledges the fact that adults in this country—those who are over 18 years of age—actually can make decisions for themselves. But it also puts in place pretty hefty measures to protect our young people. My Supplementary Order Paper proposes that “An age-restricted drug can only be sold to people over the age of 18.” Secondly it puts in place the following penalties for breaching such an age restriction: retailers or distributers that breach the age restriction would face after their first offence a fine of $10000; following a second offence they would face a fine of $25000; and following a third and subsequent offences they would face a fine of $50000. This is not chicken feed and it sends a very strong signal to sellers and suppliers of Kronic-like substances—or any psychoactive substance for that matter—that this is unacceptable behaviour. 
There would also be compulsory closure of premises of retailers or distributors for 7 days following a third and subsequent offences. It acknowledges the fact that those who are deemed adults in this country—they can vote they can get married and they can be sent to war—are in fact the owners of their own lives and their own bodies. 
There is a sense of déjà vu with this whole debate. I myself sat on the Health Committee when on a number of occasions we have looked at Misuse of Drugs Amendment bills—there have been a variety of them. I think particularly of the benzylpiperazine (BZP) debate. There was no regulation at first with BZP; it was freely available. We then decided that it should in fact have an R18 classification—it should be available only to those people who are 18 years of age and over. Then a bit further down the track we banned the substance completely. When it was banned there was of course as others have highlighted in the Committee a raft or a wave of other similar substances that did not have the BZP active ingredient in them that quickly came to the fore. I see Mr Iain Lees-Galloway shaking his head. I am disappointed that he will not support my Supplementary Order Paper because I have also heard him speak about how prohibition does not work. 
The real point here is that when we ban or prohibit substances it does not mean that people stop using them. What it means is that their use goes underground and a black market builds—usually a thriving black market which then heavily inflates prices—and becomes prevalent in our society. It actually removes the ability for proper enforcement of the laws we already have. Those very people whom we seek to protect—the under-18-year-olds; the children in our society—also have the ability if they can find the money which they very often can to buy these substances on the black market themselves. Quite how National or Labour—they are the speakers we have heard from so far but I suspect the other parties in this Chamber believe this too—believe this helps our young people and the dearth that drugs are in our society I do not know. It is much better to have these things above board. How this helps them is beyond me. 
I agree with the points that have been made by all speakers about a complete rewrite of the Misuse of Drugs Act. That is well overdue and should be attended to very quickly. I do not agree with all of the provisions in the Law Commission’s report; I think the basic principles of adults being adults and being responsible for their own actions and the consequences that come with those actions should be much more prevalent but protection of our young people is crucial. I think all psychoactive substances should be covered by new legislation. The same rules and regulations should apply to all. I put in this category—as we also have on our Order Paper in this Chamber—the alcohol reform debate. Alcohol and drugs—in my view and in the ACT Party’s view—should be looked at in the same way. 
Grant Robertson also raised the very pertinent issue of this being a health issue versus a crime issue. I agree entirely with the comments he made. I myself have talked a lot about the medicalisation versus the criminalisation of drug issues. Following a United Nations instigation over the past 40 years we have dealt with this as a crime issue when in fact in our society it is primarily a health one. I hope that when it comes to the rewrite of the Misuse of Drugs Act that is taken into consideration and decision making and policy making are centred on that. 
Mr Robertson also mentioned research and testing and of course he is absolutely right. Although we have provisions in the Minister’s Supplementary Order Paper before us on the Table now when we have gazetting that allows 7 days it will become a 7-day race make no bones about that—a 7-day race to get things on the Table before they are gazetted and another 7 days to get them off the Table. Research and testing will never happen as it should. Therefore the products that people will continue to buy whether they are legally on shelves or bought on the black market will never occur. So the problems our clinicians face at accident and emergency departments far too often particularly on Friday and Saturday nights will continue when they are trying to deal with drugs and they have in many cases no idea what the drug is or which active substances it contains. 
Despite the fact that my Supplementary Order Paper has come to the Table very late in the day I ask every party to carefully consider the provisions in it before they vote. They make sense; they allow for over 18-year-olds—adults who are responsible for themselves—to not be criminalised for buying these substances. It is much better to have them in the open rather than underground in the black market scenario yet it would still provide for the safety and security of our young people. The law would be enforceable and would be enforced in a pretty hefty way with a $10000 fine for the first offence $25000 for the second offence and $50000 for the third and subsequent offence. Retailers or distributors that breach the age restriction would face compulsory closure of their premises for 7 days following the third and subsequent offences. 
The ACT Party will oppose the Minister’s Supplementary Order Paper but I implore parties to think very carefully about the realities of the situations that exist. People know that the black market and driving this sort of activity underground are completely counter-productive in society. I implore them to think carefully about putting in place sensible measures that are enforceable and that get the incentives in the right place. Thank you. 
Hon DAMIEN O’CONNOR (Labour) 
: 
 Once again we find ourselves in the Chamber trying to deal with a very very difficult issue—an issue that most of us probably feel somewhat compromised on. We continually contradict ourselves I suggest when it comes to the issue of drugs—well if we are talking about mind-altering substances I guess. How could any party oppose the Associate Minister of Health’s initiative? It is a very good one; it is a move to try to reduce the harm from a new substance on the market that has been identified. 
Our young people in this country are somewhat confused as well. If we make an assumption that it is mainly young people we are trying to protect from themselves and that they are the main buyers of these new products in particular then we have to ask whether we are giving them consistent messages through Parliament. We have numerous laws that state that young people cannot do this or should not do that but then we tell them to be innovative and creative and to get on with their lives. No matter what we do in this Committee in terms of banning substances tomorrow people will be working on and creating new substances because they are innovative and smart and they want something new. 
It is important that whatever legislation we pass here is flexible enough and I think the Associate Minister’s attempt here is reasonable. At the Minister of Health’s discretion he can intervene and declare a new substance as something that can be investigated and a temporary ban can be put on it. I think it is a good attempt but if we are going to be consistent then the only way that we will beat this over time is through decent education so that people be they young or old know what they are consuming by smoking sucking drinking or whatever. They need to know what the substance is and there needs to be some resilience so that around them there is positive peer pressure to resist the consumer campaigns or whatever that will develop around new products that will come on to the market month upon month following the passage of this legislation. 
I have heard that the Government is currently waiting to consider the Law Commission’s report and that there are a number of recommendations in the report—a reasonable number 45 or something— 
Hon Peter Dunne 
: Just on this area. 
Hon DAMIEN O’CONNOR 
: Yes that is right. I thank the Associate Minister. There is another Law Commission report hanging around as well—one on alcohol. If the Associate Minister and the Government were to be consistent here and if we were to have a look at the harm caused by the substances we are trying to address in this particular legislation compared with the harm we know occurs every single weekend of every single year which has been clearly documented identified and connected to alcohol then the Opposition members would welcome a return to the House of a bill on alcohol. The Government refuses to do that. Although I appreciate the Associate Minister’s efforts and the Government’s efforts to move very quickly in this area of drugs which everyone will applaud the reality is that the Government is refusing to move on an issue that is of far greater harm every single day and every weekend in every week of this year. The Associate Minister knows that. 
The question is what the young people and the people out there are going to think. Are we a bunch of hypocrites? Should we be consistent? Should we send a consistent message to people that we will put in place laws that accurately identify those who produce a substance force them to identify what is in the substance and then let people make the call on whether they consume it? 
I am not an advocate of decriminalisation and of saying that just because people are over 18 they should be able to consume what they like. This Parliament has to make the tough calls and provide guidance in order to reduce self-harm and harm to others. Do not for a moment think we are addressing just the issue of self-harm here. Every area of drug consumption and abuse has flow-on effects that are serious and that run right through families and communities. We have an obligation in this Committee when we are addressing legislation like this—and Labour supports it because it is an attempt to address the issue—but we should not for a moment think that this eases our conscience in any way about the real issues of drug utilisation and abuse in this country. 
The same officials who have given advice on this legislation are probably giving advice on the Law Commission’s report on alcohol. We should ask them to move along quickly. I ask the Associate Minister and the Government to move along quickly and to show us what they are going to do about the acute harm caused by alcohol. 
It is difficult for the Opposition members to applaud too loudly on the moves in this legislation given the reality that we will probably have to come back to the House to address other innovations by manufacturers in the area of drugs and to try to keep ahead of them. We will be back in the House in the near future addressing we hope the serious issues. 
We can identify the deaths child abuse road accidents and other harms directly connected to alcohol. I am no wowser but if I am going to get up to speak on this legislation then I have to acknowledge that a far greater harm is currently being ignored by the Government. We would like to see some progress on that. 
Although we are working through this legislation in a sensible way—we are not banning these substances; we know that will drive them underground—we want to check and control the manufacture of all of these things. Let us honestly admit that there will be new innovations and new products. We need to think ahead and through either education or knowledge give to the young people the older people and all those people who consume these substances the tools to know what they might be doing to themselves. Only then will we start to get ahead of the serious issue of drug abuse across this country and the consequences of that. 
People have made a song and dance about child abuse which is one of the most horrific things occurring in this country. Many of those issues about child abuse unfortunately relate back to drug abuse. We have to acknowledge that and we have to get on and do something about it. 
In supporting this legislation I cannot clap too loudly because there is still a bigger issue that the Government refuses to bring back to the House which is alcohol and the Law Commission’s recommendations on that. 
Dr JACKIE BLUE (National) 
: 
 I am pleased to speak in the Committee stage of the Misuse of Drugs Amendment Bill and I certainly want to congratulate the Associate Minister of Health the Hon Peter Dunne on bringing in the Supplementary Order Papers on Part 1 that make provision for the temporary class drug orders which are for these untested psychoactive drugs that have caused so much harm in our society—and the drug Kronic is the one that most people relate to. The legislation will effectively bring in a 12-month ban of these substances while they are assessed and tested. 
I am pleased the Minister has moved swiftly; there has been growing concern mounting in the media and in our community about these untested products. They are not benign—that is for sure. We have certainly had a lot of reports of health problems: youth presenting to accident and emergency departments with difficulties with their health. Also drugs such as Kronic have been found in the wreckages of cars in road accidents. So there definitely has been concern. It has been growing it has been mounting and I am pleased that the Minister has moved swiftly. 
This law is expected to be in place by 5 August which means that all 43 current products that are in this category will be off the shelves within the week. It means that they will be tested looked at and assessed over the following year. It is an interim measure. It is not meant to be a long-term solution but we had to have an interim measure that was viable and workable and this certainly is all of that. I am pleased that the Minister has made a comment that there will a more durable law in place sometime next year but this will certainly be a stopgap measure and I applaud him for that. 
It is important that we do get the eventual enduring law—one that will endure into the future—and it is important that we get it right hence the 12-month pause to assess the situation assess the drugs on the market and take it from there. It would be too easy to have a knee-jerk reaction and bring in legislation that was not going to work as has happened in other countries. I must admit I have been quite surprised—probably I should not have been too surprised—by the defiant attitude of the sellers and manufacturers of these substances. In the newspapers they are saying that they will just bring in new substances that will replace the ones that are banned. But I am also equally pleased that the Minister has been equally defiant saying that if that happens those substances will be gazetted just as quickly and put under temporary drug order bans. 
This bill complements a suite of actions the Government has introduced to combat the effects of P—methamphetamine. This is just one part of the whole suite of actions. There is no doubt that P methamphetamine has had a devastating effect on our community and on individuals. It has wrecked lives basically. Specifically ephedrine and pseudoephedrine will now become class B drugs which means they will be available on prescription and people can no longer buy them across the counter as has been the case. We know that there are other alternatives to treat flu and colds. I am speaking of phenylephrine which will be able to be bought across the counter. Of course pseudoephedrine can still be a prescription medicine. 
The Supplementary Order Papers the Minister has brought in send a very strong message to our community that we do not want our young people to be harmed by these untested psychoactive drugs and that they have no place whatsoever in our society. We want to reduce harm from these untested psychoactive drugs and I applaud the Supplementary Order Papers that the Minister has brought in in a very timely way. Thank you. 
KEVIN HAGUE (Green) 
: 
 I will begin with some comment about clauses 4 and 6 of the Misuse of Drugs Amendment Bill. I reiterate the Green Party’s opposition to those clauses which relate to utensils. We will be supporting Iain Lees-Galloway’s Supplementary Order Paper 260 to remove clause 4 from the bill. In respect of clause 6 which relates to pseudoephedrine the evidence really points to the fact that the measure that is proposed in the bill will have little effect on its desired outcome but there will be considerable cost and inconvenience to many. 
The debate in this Committee stage has focused largely on the Minister’s Supplementary Order Paper and I want to make some comments about that. The Green Party will be opposing the Supplementary Order Paper but I will begin my comments about the Supplementary Order Paper by saying that we believe that it is ridiculous that psychoactive compounds without any kind of safety testing can reach retail shelves without any kind of control except for the provision that already exists in law for smokeable compounds to be restricted to people over the age of 18. That is absurd. I would think that probably everybody in the Chamber would agree with that. Therefore something does need to be done about this problem in our law. 
I also accept the point that Jackie Blue has just made that some of the synthetic cannabinoids in particular clearly do have harmful effects. There is an acceptance that there is some real harm. However I make the point that these compounds have in fact been on our retail shelves not just over the past few weeks but for years. So the urgency that the Minister is being praised for in this situation seems to be misplaced. 
There seems to me to be an opportunity to take a more considered approach which is what the Green Party favours. I accept the point that I think Iain Lees-Galloway probably made most strongly in this debate that the public has reached the point of wanting to see something done. I suspect that that is what lies behind the urgency here. Although it is important that we are responsive to public mood I am not sure that that is actually the most appropriate driver for this Parliament’s behaviour and decision making. 
The point that I made in the second reading debate about the Minister’s Supplementary Order Paper I think still holds true. Members may recall that at that time I challenged the Minister to table his Supplementary Order Paper then before the 2-week adjournment that this Parliament has just had. That would at least have enabled some form of truncated public process in order to enable members of the public to have a say about the Minister’s proposed approach to this issue. 
The reality here is that all of those who made submissions on this bill or perhaps chose not to make submissions could not possibly have had the expectation that this Supplementary Order Paper would now be included in it. Here we are about to make a very serious decision on the basis of public concern without giving the public and other interested parties the opportunity to have a say about it. That is poor process and it is one of the reasons why the Green Party will oppose the Supplementary Order Paper. 
The Minister is right that it is important to get this right. He is right about that. But we think also that the formulation of this Supplementary Order Paper is wrong. This is not the right way to go about that task. The Green Party may have supported an approach that enabled these substances to be classified as restricted substances according to the 2005 amendment to the Misuse of Drugs Act. However this approach is wrong in several aspects and I want to mention a couple of those. First of all in the Associate Minister’s comments in this debate he spoke about psychoactive substances and we have all approached this debate on the assumption that that is what we are talking about. That is not what the Supplementary Order Paper states. The Supplementary Order Paper talks about any substance; it is not restricted to psychoactive substances at all. For example there is the substance sodium chloride. That is a substance. It meets the definition in the Supplementary Order Paper. I think most scientists would agree that it causes harm. This Supplementary Order Paper enables the Minister of Health to gazette a notice to actually prohibit that from sale. Is that what we want? I guess we would say that sodium chloride is not psychoactive. There is a psychoactive substance called C2H5OH which is ethanol. Is it intended that the Supplementary Order Paper will be used for that? It certainly could be. Possibly it should be. 
I think there are some very real issues about the definition of “substance”. There are some issues around how the Minister will go about the task of drawing the line and of determining the risk or possible risk to individuals or society. This Supplementary Order Paper places an awful lot of discretionary power with the Minister with a political appointee rather than with say the expert advisory committee. Is that the appropriate approach? The Supplementary Order Paper also has no sunset clause. We think those are three fundamental problems with the Supplementary Order Paper. 
We do like the exemption that the Supplementary Order Paper contains for possession of small amounts. We believe that is a good start. 
I want to conclude by referring to the Law Commission’s report as others have done. I say that it is right that we take the appropriate amount of time to respond with all due haste to this. It may well not have been possible to fully respond to the report in the time available but it surely would have been possible in the time available to enact the commission’s recommendations about this particular problem and to place the onus on manufacturers importers and suppliers to establish safety before a product can be made available for sale in New Zealand. That is what should have happened in this case. 
NICKY WAGNER (National) 
: 
 I rise to support the Misuse of Drugs Amendment Bill in its Committee stage. I want to look at Part 1 and at some of the things that we have not really talked about too much today. Obviously this bill is designed to amend the existing legislation and to improve the effectiveness of drug control. But the main purpose of the bill notwithstanding the Supplementary Order Paper is to reclassify ephedrine and pseudoephedrine as a class B2 controlled drug. It also removes thalidomide as a class A controlled drug. It allows a hazardous substance to be scheduled also as a restricted substance. It extends the definition of amphetamine analogues and it extends the controls over drug paraphernalia. 
The reason we are reclassifying ephedrine and pseudoephedrine is designed to close off the local source of supply of precursor substance for the illegal manufacture of methamphetamine in the country. It is just another line of attack to support the Government’s determination to clamp down on P and to clamp down on the damage that it causes to New Zealand’s communities. At the same time as this bill being passed the Government is also taking steps to break drug supply chains and to improve the availability of and access to drug treatments for addicts. 
It was interesting that most of the submissions to the Health Committee considering this bill were about the drug utensils provision. Most were concerned that prohibiting drug utensils would not work because users would make their own implements—for example they would use light bulbs for taking P and bits of plumbing hardware to make pipes for smoking. However the majority of that select committee felt that the display of specifically redesigned drug-taking utensils in stores glamorised drug taking and attracted more users. It was interesting that this was a similar argument that was used about the display of cigarettes and tobacco products which was banned by this House just a few weeks ago. Making it an offence to sell supply and import utensils will assist the anti-drug effort by ensuring the public receives a consistent message about the unacceptability of illegal drugs. I think a comment made in the Chamber tonight is that we want some consistency in this area. 
There was also concern from submitters that if cold and flu preparations containing pseudoephedrine were available only by prescription it would be unnecessarily expensive and inconvenient for patients to visit their doctor to get a prescription. However the committee was reassured by Professor Sir Peter Gluckman that there are plenty of effective alternatives available and I think we agreed with him that the risk of the diversion of pseudoephedrine-based products into the manufacture of methamphetamines outweighed the benefits of their over-the-counter availability. A more limited choice of cold and flu remedies was acceptable in the interests of the public good. 
I would like to move to the discussion on Supplementary Order Paper 258 and to support these amendments which are in the name of the Hon Peter Dunne. The key to this is that it introduces temporary class drug notices. They can provide a temporary ban for unregulated psychoactive substances such as Kronic and other synthetic cannabis products taking them off the market for 12 months. Although the risks of Kronic and other similar substances are unknown there are real fears of potential long-term effects. It is unacceptable to the Government that a product that causes potentially lethal risks is available freely to young people. 
Over the past few months there has been increasing evidence of the dangerous effects of these drugs and just like many members in the Chamber today I have been approached by concerned parents one of whom had had a near-death experience with their son who had taken Kronic. It is very frightening for parents but also for the community. Recently we have also seen contamination of these products with prescription medicines. 
I think that these temporary class drug notices are a good interim measure and a precautionary approach that will get these products off the shelves now and for at least 12 months. But as we have heard the Government’s long-term aim is to implement the Law Commission’s recommendations to reverse the onus of proof and to require the industry to prove that its products are safe before they can be sold to the public. The current situation is that manufacturers can come up with a product like Kronic and as long as it fits within the category and does not include illegal substances it can be sold as of right. The Government believes that this needs to be changed and it expects to introduce legislation to do this by the middle of next year. In the meantime this Supplementary Order Paper 258 will be a well-received stopgap measure and I thank the Minister for that. 
KRIS FAAFOI (Labour—Mana) 
: 
 Thank you very much Mr Chairperson for allowing me to have this opportunity to speak to Part 1 of the Misuse of Drugs Amendment Bill. Although the Labour caucus is supportive of both this bill and Supplementary Order Paper 258 which has been put forward by the Minister in the chair the Hon Peter Dunne one cannot help but think that the level of hype that has been afforded to this bill and the Supplementary Order Paper is a little above their station. 
In relation to the Supplementary Order Paper that the Minister has put in front of us on the banning of synthetic cannabis what mums and dads out there in New Zealand wanted to have was a consistent message from the Minister about what he was going to do about the likes of Kronic but we have not had that. Although I congratulate the Minister on coming to a position we have not had a consistent position for the last 4 months. Around 4 months ago when the Minister was asked about the limited sale and advertisement of synthetic cannabis what did we get from him? It was not the position that we see in the Supplementary Order Paper today; it was: “I have instructed the Ministry of Health to begin the process of putting the necessary controls in place. I expect these changes to come into effect next year.” There was not much urgency in that. 
Just as mums and dads may have got a whiff of Kronic from their sons’ or daughters’ bedrooms or the garage I think the Minister may have got a whiff of public sentiment and the public mood and he decided that things had to move a little bit quicker than he had first anticipated. There was some movement on 3 June when he was asked why he had not banned synthetic cannabis. The response then was that the evidence was not strong enough to go as far as doing that and that he did not want to go down that path. But we have taken a step closer to that in the Supplementary Order Paper that is before the Committee now and I think the mums and dads out there who are looking for a consistent message will be happy with that. 
Just a month and a half ago another question was asked about the Law Commission’s recommendations. The response from the Minister on that occasion was that the Government was “under certain statutory requirements and we have the complications of a general election occurring …”. I am glad that those complications have been sorted out since 17 June. Late yesterday afternoon as this announcement was made the message from the Minister finally was: “I felt we couldn’t wait. I wanted to make sure we had a mechanism that simply removes these items from our shelves completely.” So it took 4 months but we got a result in the end. There has been inconsistent messaging regarding that but we support the fact that this Supplementary Order Paper has been introduced to the Committee so that we finally have some form of action on the banning of synthetic cannabis. We support it but how we got here leaves a few questions to be answered. 
In terms of Part 1 of the bill at the moment we believe that it will do no harm but we think it could have gone further. Again this is another instance where the hype might not exactly marry up with what is included in the bill. This bill looks to control ephedrine and pseudoephedrine in the Government’s war on P but as I said in a previous contribution on this bill I think there is more of a fracas over P. It is not really a war on P. The Government is making huge capital out of it as it sends out its pamphlets about the war on P but this bill itself does not take serious action. I think it is more about politics than taking serious action against P. I understand clause 4 includes— 
Iain Lees-Galloway 
: Pipes utensils. 
KRIS FAAFOI 
: —pipes and utensils. My colleague sitting next to me Iain Lees-Galloway has put up Supplementary Order Paper 260 because we believe there is no scientific evidence that this clause will make much difference. Actually in some cases it could cause more harm to people who may not be using these kinds of utensils so we believe as the member’s Supplementary Order Paper proposes that this clause should be removed from the bill. 
There is also another cost of living issue here. Now that those people who have serious colds or the flu have to go to the doctor to get hold of the good stuff in terms of ephedrine and pseudoephedrine— 
Hon Ruth Dyson 
: How much will it cost? 
KRIS FAAFOI 
: —how much will it cost? Exactly. The Ministry of Health has not done sufficient work on the cost implications that will have for families who are struggling to make ends meet and also on the kind of impact it will have on the workload of general practitioners who may now have a flood of people during the winter months who come to them to ask for medicine that was readily available through pharmacies before this law came into effect. 
So we are also concerned about some cost of living issues around this measure and those have not been addressed in this bill. We still have some serious concerns about what may happen in terms of the effect on families who are struggling to make ends meet. 
We also have other concerns about Part 1 and I go back to the placing of further restrictions on drug utensils which Mr Lees-Galloway’s Supplementary Order Paper referred to and the negative health effects that that may have on people who are still using cannabis to date. If I recall correctly there is a filter in some of the utensils used to smoke cannabis that may ensure the filtration of some of the harmful toxins so the utensils were having some positive effects on some of the people who use the pipes. The fact that this bill looks to ban the use of utensils or the importation of utensils is of serious concern. 
I go back to the overriding theme that I touched on before and that is the politicisation around this bill and the fact that it does not really achieve what the Government has set out to do in its multi-pronged attack in the war on P. We believe that this bill does not really address the issue of ensuring that we cut down on the production and use of P in our communities. There is absolutely no debate about the fact that P is a massive problem in our communities—it certainly is in the electorate that I represent—but if we are to take some real action on it we need to ensure that this legislation has the detail in it to ensure that we can control the importation of ephedrine and pseudoephedrine. We do not believe it does. It is my understanding that 80-plus percent of the pseudoephedrine that comes into New Zealand for the manufacture of P does not come through the corner pharmacy—not at all. It is being brought in illegally through our borders. 
To give credit where credit is due there have been a lot of high-profile cases recently where large consignments of ephedrine and pseudoephedrine have been stopped at our border but if we are to have a real crackdown on the ingredients for P I ask why we are bringing in this measure which will affect only the mums dads and families at home who rely on some decent medicine in our pharmacies in order to ensure that every winter they have a decent cold and flu remedy. This bill does not really take us in the direction that we need to go in the war on P. It is off target in a way because as I say the main factor in the war on P should be making sure that we crack down on the supply and importation of ephedrine and pseudoephedrine at our borders. 
Just to finish I say this bill does not address the real issue around the production of P. It is purely window dressing. Although we do support the Supplementary Order Paper that the Minister has introduced and we are very happy that we have got here the way that we have got here leaves a lot to be considered. 
MICHAEL WOODHOUSE (National) 
: 
 I am very happy to take a call on the Misuse of Drugs Amendment Bill a bill that was considered by the Health Committee when I was a member of it although I am not a member now. 
Grant Robertson 
: It’s gone downhill really. 
MICHAEL WOODHOUSE 
: I appreciate the sentiment but I am sure my colleagues are holding the fort extremely well. I am not sure whether there is any business. 
This bill was a really interesting one for the committee. We first heard about herbal tobaccos or herbal highs when we were deliberating the Smoke-free Environments (Controls and Enforcement) Amendment Bill and there was consideration of whether herbal tobacco should be included in the display bans. The amount of media coverage on and the committee’s awareness of this very harmful set of substances grew quite considerably. 
I was at a conference in Christchurch in May when a young man of about 21 talked to me about his experience with the Accident Compensation Corporation following a serious head injury. I have to say his experience with the Timaru branch was very good. The conversation turned on to the use of herbal highs and he described his experience of using Kronic Pineapple Express I think it was called. 
At that point I thought it might be worth trying. It is legal—even then it was only just classified R18—and I had contemplated giving it a go to see what the reaction might be. After the conversation with this fellow I did not. He described an extraordinary experience where he was hallucinating and where his peripheral limbs virtually went numb. He said to me that he was legally able to drive but he could hardly walk. There is a case in New Zealand where the police are investigating a fatal accident where Kronic may have been a contributing factor to a young person dying on our roads. 
This is a very important issue. Yes it is emotive. We may not have the science but I congratulate the Associate Minister of Health Peter Dunne and I encourage strength to the arm of the development of the regulatory framework that will avoid the cat-and-mouse situation that we run the risk of having over the next 12 months as Mr Grant Robertson described. I think that risk is low but real and I think we need to be extremely nimble in order to identify these products as they come on the market and to ensure that they are removed with all haste. I regret that we are not able to create that temporary regulatory framework but I understand that the definitional issues could be very challenging. I do encourage the Minister of Health and the ministry in that area. 
I will touch on the comments of ACT MP Heather Roy because I think there is a liberal streak in all of us on this side of the House that says there is an element of live and let live to this issue. I have to say that I would accept that to a point with two exceptions. One is the number of people who challenge me to ensure that our health services are accessible to the widest number of New Zealanders. I think we have done an extremely good job of providing a lot more with a little more resources but it really is not acceptable for me to stand by as a member of this House and not create a climate that prevents our young people from harming themselves to the point where they may be admitted to emergency departments around the country. I cannot then look other constituents in the eye and say that we are doing our best in the health sector. I simply cannot do it. I accept the liberal view of live and let live but these substances clearly have a very negative effect particularly on our young. To put it into our dairies and not even have an R18 classification on it—even though the manufacturers claim they encourage that—is quite a challenging situation that I am pleased we have resolved. It is about denormalising this thing. 
The Hon Damien O’Connor made some interesting comparisons with alcohol that I strongly disagree with. We could put motor vehicles or fatty foods into the same category. A lot of things will cause us harm if we use them in the wrong dosage. That is not the case with these herbal highs. None of it will do us any good. As Dr Hutchison said ingesting this stuff into our lungs has to be terribly harmful regardless of the psychoactive substances that will turn our neurons into scrambled eggs. 
In summary I really strongly support this measure. I am sorry that some members are not going to support it although I understand why. I do think this is progress and I think our children will certainly thank us for it in the long run. 
Hon RUTH DYSON (Labour—Port Hills) 
: 
 That was a pretty half-hearted speech from Michael Woodhouse and I completely understand why. I absolutely understand why. It is because that member was a member of the Health Committee he thinks about the issues and he knows that the Misuse of Drugs Amendment Bill does very very little to progress the issues that everyone in this Chamber cares passionately about. If this is the war on P I do not think we have even got the pistol let alone anything to truly deal with the drug problem in New Zealand. That member knows because he sat on the select committee and listened to people saying: “You seriously want to ban the import of pipes and you think that will do something? You seriously want to take flu tablets off the pharmacy shelves and you think that will fix anything?”. People were laughing at Associate Minister of Health Peter Dunne during the select committee process because this really does not meet the standard that we should be debating. 
I do not understand why this has gone backwards and forwards in the Hon Peter Dunne’s mind until suddenly he had a complete change of heart—for the fourth time—and said we had to do something urgently dramatically and immediately and he introduced this bill. It will not do any harm at all. It is taking up some of Parliament’s time and that is all right; it is a valid part of democracy. But it certainly will not take the sort of action we need to deal with issues like P and Kronic. I am just disappointed. I thought the Minister had a bit more innovation within his portfolio mandate but he does not seem to. 
I read the Attorney-General’s comments with some concern. I am surprised that Minister Finlayson is not here to take a call and explain why he is now silent on the issue of concern he raised in relation to this bill. He said that by the Government taking cold and flu tablets off pharmacy shelves and making them prescription only we are looking at a presumption of supply when purchasing those previously non-prescription medications. That presumption of supply I think is unfair on the overwhelming majority of New Zealanders who go into the chemist to buy their cold and flu tablets—guess why? It is because they have a bad cold or the flu and they want something immediate to deal with it. Why are those people now being required to buy something that may or may not be as effective as what they had been using or to go to the doctor? That does not make a lot of sense. 
Dr Paul Hutchison 
: It’s 20 percent of new pseudoephedrine. 
Hon RUTH DYSON 
: Dr Paul Hutchison was also at the select committee. He would have been paying attention I know because that is how he is wont to behave at the select committee. He would have listened to the submitters laughing at the fact that the problem we have with P manufacturing in New Zealand does not come from our chemist shops; it comes overwhelmingly from the illegal importing of ingredients—it is over 80 percent. So we are scratching a little bit. At the same time National members are parading up and down the country saying they have declared a war on drugs. That is just laughable. It is just laughable. 
The second point I will raise is much more serious because it does something I think is wrong. It is in relation to clause 4 of this bill. I spoke to a man recently who was moving to New Zealand. He brought with him a huge container of goods. When he went to collect it from Lyttelton Port he was told he had some questions to answer because some of the contents of the container had been confiscated. One of those items was a hookah a pipe. The customs people had referred it to the police who took it all to pieces and investigated it. The police said it was clearly an item that had been purchased as a souvenir and that it had never been used for smoking anything legal or illegal. But it was confiscated from him. He had to go through a big investigation. 
I want the Minister to comment on the most interesting point in relation to the fairness or unfairness of it. He may have the opportunity over the dinner break to get some advice on whether this was the correct procedure or whether my constituent has fallen foul of incompetence. Despite the fact that the police said there was nothing legal or illegal on this pipe and there was no reason for charges to be considered—clearly the man had bought this pipe as a souvenir and brought it along with all his other goods—they refused to return it to him. The question I pose to the Minister is whether he thinks that that is fair. It would be different if there were something illegal on that pipe but this was clearly a souvenir. My constituent has never got his blessed hookah back. I think he should have it; he did not do anything wrong. It is legal to buy it is legal to import and it did not have anything illegal on it. Will the same thing happen if my colleague Iain Lees-Galloway’s Supplementary Order Paper is not supported now that we are going to clamp down on all of these other drug utensils and identifiable parts as they are described in the bill? 
I think that that provision of the bill is just a nonsense. It is a totally interfering way of approaching people who may be doing no harm like my constituent. They may end up being caused a lot of anxiety and grief for no good reason. This will not help the drug problem we have in New Zealand. This will not go any way towards that. It is just an absolute nonsense and I am surprised that the Minister who has so often referred to solutions as being common sense would allow his name to be attached to this ridiculous clause. There is a great opportunity this evening and tomorrow as we debate the Committee stage for the Minister to quietly support Iain Lees-Galloway’s Supplementary Order Paper and we can get rid of this nonsensical provision. 
The final point I will make is about the inconsistency of us dealing with this piece of the overall drug abuse requirements outside of the Law Commission report. It is very unusual and it is an inconsistent way of this Government dealing with issues. I do not know whether it was because the other issues were too hard and are therefore being put off because this Government does not like dealing with tough issues or whether the Government needed some sort of declaration of action and picked up this little thing rather than waiting for the comprehensive response from the Law Commission but either way for whatever reason it is inconsistent with how this Government has previously dealt with issues. It has approached matters alongside the Law Commission’s reports. I do not understand why it is not doing it in this regard. We should be looking at the recommendations from the Law Commission. 
The Misuse of Drugs Act is clearly outdated. It was written in the mid-1970s. Drugs were different then the use of them was different then and the way we respond as a society should be different and should keep up with the changing use and abuse of drugs. The only thing that has not kept pace with the change is the law itself so we need a comprehensive look at the misuse of drugs and at how we can ensure that the focus of our legislation is about reducing harm to individuals and to our communities. That should be the centre not this ad hoc bitsy punitive approach that as the Attorney-General said assumes people buy their cold and flu tablets at the chemist because they are going to supply some illegal purpose. That is just a nonsense. It is a very shallow way of dealing with what I think New Zealanders have overwhelmingly accepted is a problem that we should all work constructively together to solve. 
The Minister would have been better off ensuring that we had a total cross-party agreed response to this so that we would have an enduring solution that had been well considered and well debated at least amongst the various parties in Parliament. That is the way the Minister often says in public is a good way of operating—less of this confrontational arguing party versus party and more along the way of agreeing that we have a problem looking at all the options and overseas experience looking at evidence in terms of responding to that problem and then trying to get as much political support across parties as possible. 
Dr PAUL HUTCHISON (National—Hunua) 
: 
 Thank you for the opportunity to speak on the Misuse of Drugs Amendment Bill. There are clearly two parts to the debate with Supplementary Order Paper 258 in the name of the Associate Minister of Health the Hon Peter Dunne but I will go back and address the major thrust of Part 1 which the Hon Ruth Dyson spoke about just recently. 
I find it quite astounding that she discounts the domestic supply of amphetamine precursors. The Chief Science Advisor to the Prime Minister Sir Peter Gluckman pointed out in a very very well-considered paper that the amphetamine market in New Zealand is worth about $1 billion and that at least—at least—10 percent of that is due to the domestic market. The police recognise that it is probably in the area of 30 percent of the $1 billion so it is worth somewhere between $100 million and $300 million. So when someone like the Hon Ruth Dyson discounts the importance of the domestic supply it should be of great concern to any New Zealander. 
There is no doubt that amphetamine and its precursors affect every stratum of New Zealand society. I made the point in debate on the second reading of this bill that in my electorate in Pukekohe there was a well-respected chemist in his 60s. He was an elder of the Presbyterian Church and a member of the Rotary club and he did all sorts of very worthy things in our area. He was recently arrested for selling precursors to gangs over a long period of time. We do not know how he got involved but I just illustrate that as one of the points that absolutely rebuts what Ruth Dyson is saying. The sale of precursors in New Zealand is deeply embedded in every stratum of New Zealand life. It is not just the importation of precursors from countries like China but also involves unfortunately a roaring trade within New Zealand. 
She also made the point of asking what about those poor New Zealanders with coughs and colds who want ready remedies. I am sympathetic to that; I do believe that the pseudoephedrine medication is perhaps slightly more effective than those containing phenylephrine. But there is no doubt that on prospective controlled trials little difference is shown in terms of the way those medications relieve normal coughs colds and cases of the flu. Under this legislation pseudoephedrine medication is actually available under prescription. Yes it will cost a little more—there is no question about that—but there is no doubt that very effective substitutes are available. 
I will make some other comments relating to what Iain Lees-Galloway and Damien O’Connor were saying in relation to the synthetic cannabinoids. There is no doubt that one of the major problems about them is that the manufacturers will be continually thinking up new recipes to get around this sort of legislation. That has happened in the past and it will happen in the future. I think we have all agreed that the Law Commission’s proposal is right and proper. However there is absolutely no doubt in my mind that this Supplementary Order Paper is appropriate. 
When Kevin Hague suggested that this was just a parliamentary knee-jerk reaction I thought that was again absolutely inappropriate. We have seen right around the country corner dairies selling these synthetic cannabinoids in all sorts of different forms right in the faces of young New Zealanders. This has started to normalise these psychoactive drugs in the ethos of young New Zealanders let alone New Zealanders right across the board. 
Heather Roy claims that the Supplementary Order Paper will only drive the psychoactive drugs underground. That may be correct to a certain extent but we now have a situation in New Zealand that certainly was not here 10 to 20 years ago. Those drugs are being sold all over the place apparently legitimately. Mixed with a culture of alcohol and of binge drinking that we know prevails in New Zealand they make quite a terrifying public health challenge that we just have to face. 
It would be nice to be liberal if indeed a liberal approach worked. There is no doubt that the Law Commission’s suggestions about education harm minimisation and making sure that we have appropriate rehabilitation facilities are very important but this Government wants to give absolutely clear messages about the harm of these substances to young New Zealanders. The great worry is that they may well become entrapped by the ruthless marketing that we have seen from these manufacturers. 
I absolutely reject the views of the Hon Ruth Dyson and I am very concerned about the views of Heather Roy when we have a situation of normalising many of these drugs for our young people in New Zealand. 
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. 
Hon PETER DUNNE (Associate Minister of Health) 
: 
 A certain naivety is creeping into some of the speeches we are hearing from members opposite. On the one hand they are saying to us not to rush but to take this sensibly—to take a deliberative approach. On the other hand they are saying that because these people are very cunning and will find every loophole imaginable we should go out there and consult widely. There is an inconsistency of monumental proportions in that position. To suggest that because the people in the synthetic drug industry are cunning and will find loopholes wherever they can find them we should have gone out and consulted them about how we developed this legislation is clearly absurd. I signalled at the second reading stage of this bill that an amendment would be coming. It would have been simply daft of me to go out there at that stage trail it around the country and get every synthetic drug manufacturer in the country to work out the way to get around it. How can Opposition members be so naive? That is the reality of the situation. 
We do face a serious problem and I concur with them on that point. But we have to have solutions that work. To some extent Mr Grant Robertson was right when he said at the beginning that this would be a cat and mouse game. I said that yesterday myself because that is the reality. But we have to have the tools to do the job and this amendment will give us that capacity. It was interesting to watch the reaction of industry members because they clearly were not expecting an amendment of this type. It will curtail their activities very very strongly indeed which is in line with the public sentiment and in line with what we have been seeking to do right from the outset. 
Let me turn to the issue of the methamphetamine campaign. Again the same naivety applies. We know that a substantial amount of the pseudoephedrine that comes into New Zealand to be used as a methamphetamine precursor comes in illegally across the border through a whole range of subterfuges. We also know that a certain amount was being made available in the way that will now be made illegal by this bill: through pharmacies. It was logical to do two things. Firstly it was logical to cut off that obvious chain of supply and that is what this bill will do by bringing in the ban. Secondly at the same time my colleagues the Minister of Customs and the Minister of Police have dramatically increased the resources available to their departments and we are starting to see significant increases being made in the seizures of illegal product. The change in terms of the outlawing of pseudoephedrine in pharmacies allows us to concentrate more resource on the much more difficult area of targeting the illegal importations. That is entirely as it should be in terms of the campaign against this particular item. 
It is worth reporting to the Committee that I went to the United Nations convention on drugs meeting in Vienna in March and New Zealand was asked to give a presentation there on our methamphetamine campaign because it is seen as world leading. Over 200 delegates from a range of nations including President Obama’s self-named drug tsar and other leading officials like the president of the European Commission came to our session to learn what New Zealand is doing in that area and to congratulate us on the initiatives we were taking. So on the one hand we are seen by the international community as having a cutting edge policy but on the other hand we come back to this Chamber and are seen by the Opposition as being too slow doing too little and being too ineffectual. We cannot have it both ways. I would far rather take the view of the international experts—the people who are seeking New Zealand’s advice on how to deal with this issue—than the view of the Opposition members who are here carping today. This bill makes substantive progress in both orders. 
Let me make one other point before I sit down. Steve Chadwick the member who just resumed her seat said we should have enacted the Law Commission report. The Law Commission’s report came out at the end of May. There are about 170 recommendations in it altogether some of— 
Grant Robertson 
: Excuses excuses. 
Hon PETER DUNNE 
: “Excuses” says the member—“Action Man” from the Opposition—“excuses.” I must say that having taken action is never a charge that would have been laid against the honourable member. There are 170 recommendations with 45 in this particular area and all of them are at a very high level that needs to be translated into practical decisions in the areas that the Government chooses to proceed with. In some areas it will not choose to proceed with the Law Commission’s recommendations; that is fairly obvious. But the recommendations need to be worked through. We need to get the structures in place we need to get the legislation drafted and we need to be in a position to put a comprehensive package in place. I have said that from the day the report was tabled. But we cannot sit here and say in the interim we should therefore just do nothing—that we should sit on our hands and wait until that more detailed work is completed and we have a coherent regime to bring to the House. 
This amendment will put in place a regime that the more sane members of the Opposition acknowledge is sensible. They welcome it I heard Mr Lees-Galloway say in terms of curbing the incidence of synthetic cannabinoids on the market at the moment and that is as it should be. The Committee faces a couple of choices. It can continue the game of “We will be tougher than you.” or vice versa. It could even take the line that Mr Hague and—curiously—Mrs Roy take which is do nothing and simply let things go. I guess both members have never found a drug that they do not like. But the Committee has the opportunity tonight to put in place a very strong regime and send a clear signal to an industry—which everyone has described as disreputable—that we disapprove of its activities. This amendment is comprehensive and deliberately so. It would have been simply naive to go out there and wave it around to the contentment of the industry long before putting it into the House. When this amendment is in place it will give mechanisms and powers that will enable speedy action to be taken and if the cat and mouse game is what we are to play then we are ready for it. Just as the industry players bring a new product on to the market we will be there to gazette it and take it off. We will go for as long as it takes to get that pattern established and then we will have the long-term legislation in place and a coherent long-term solution to this issue. 
JACINDA ARDERN (Labour) 
: 
 After all that anticipation it is my pleasure to respond I guess straight after the contribution from the Minister in the chair Associate Minister of Health Peter Dunne although I thought he was slightly overzealous in his rebuttal of the Opposition’s argument. We acknowledge the need to take action on the issue of synthetic drugs in particular but our concern—and I tell the Minister that it is fair for us to express that concern—is whether the Misuse of Drugs Amendment Bill is the most appropriate way to deal with this particular industry. 
We have some questions that I hope the Minister will address in his next response. First as some of the members have already raised was the possibility of reversing the onus feasible? I would be interested to hear via the Minister and via officials whether waiting for products to enter the market and then gazetting them and taking them off the shelves was the most efficient and best way to minimise harm that we could have opted for. Is there any scope or international precedent for reversing the onus before a product goes to market in this area? I think that is a legitimate question. It is unfair that the Minister has labelled some of our questions as naive rather than addressing them directly so I would be interested in his response. 
I have just been reading through the Minister’s Supplementary Order Paper 258 and I think it is legitimate for the Opposition to ask whether there could have been more time for analysis of such a hefty Supplementary Order Paper. I am interested in whether the Minister could share with us based on that Supplementary Order Paper the kind of time frame. From the moment a new product goes to market what kind of time frame might it take for a Minister by notice in the  
Gazette 
 to specify a substance preparation mixture or article as a temporary class drug? How long would a synthetic product be available on the market before we are able to get through that process? Have officials looked at the kind of harm that possibly would be done in the intervening period and how much of that synthetic product could be purchased? 
Finally I wonder whether the Minister could talk us through some of the criteria—which could be deemed to be subjective; I am sure some more in-depth analysis probably has been done around the issue—of whether a product poses a risk of harm to individuals or to society. What kinds of criteria are used here? Is it broad enough to ensure that we are picking up all of the products that Parliament intends we pick up? 
I say to the Minister that this is a genuine concern for us. I walk through the area in which I live and there are a small handful of retailers who sell Kronic. I make a point every time I see it of going in and asking them why they sell it and whether they perceive that it is beneficial to the community—which they operate in which they live in and in which they do their business—for them to be peddling such a product. I have to acknowledge I get a very coy response every time. One shop owner promised me: “Ma’am I will take the product off by next week.” before I said I would come in and do my own spot check again. But this is the extent to which we are going as individuals who have concerns about these products in lieu of being able to react quickly. I acknowledge that the Minister is trying to do that. I question only whether there is another way that we could have responded. 
The Minister also mentioned the fact that New Zealand is held in high regard internationally for the way in which we deal with these issues. I would still say though that in comparison more broadly with the drug debate very few countries are currently in step with what the UN Global Commission on Drug Policy has recommended. I have to say that the commission’s paper really broached some subjects that the New Zealand Law Commission has broached as well. To date many countries have stood back from and have been very reluctant to adopt a full harm-minimisation approach. I would be really interested to hear the Minister’s view on some of that international discussion that has gone on at a UN level because from my perspective New Zealand is quite out of step with what that commission has recommended. 
In my first contribution on this bill I told the House that many years ago I sat in on a presentation given by a Hawaiian expert on the issue of methamphetamine—the drug that has become a scourge in New Zealand. It was clear at that point that this was a very different drug we were dealing with primarily because of the ability for it to be manufactured domestically. So often in New Zealand we perhaps have been saved by our borders but not in the case of methamphetamine. We are suffering as a consequence. Of course the public looks to Parliament to respond to that scourge and our question has to be whether we have done all that we could do. 
One thing that the Labour Opposition has been asking for is some of the evidence around the various measures around tools in particular but also evidence on whether requesting that people get a general practitioner prescription in order to get drugs with pseudoephedrine from a pharmacist will have the full impact on this industry that Parliament would intend. It seems clear from the Health Committee report which I read with some interest that the Ministry of Health in particular was not able to quantify the knock-on effect of this policy. We were not able to financially estimate what kind of cost it would have for consumers. 
I acknowledge that of course we want to do all we can around methamphetamine but also we must take it upon ourselves to take an evidence-based approach. Surely that is the expectation of the public as well: not only that we do as much as we can but that we base it all on evidence. I am yet to be convinced from what I have seen come out of the select committee that enough work was done on this particular area. 
Let us not underestimate the impact that it will have on consumers. I appreciate the remarks that were made by Dr Paul Hutchison on the alternatives that exist. Of course I unfortunately am able only to rely on my own anecdotal evidence of having found some of the replacements for pseudoephedrine to be mere placebos in my mind. I do not think there is anything that quite does the job of a pseudoephedrine. My concern is that when we are trying to take a preventative approach and at the same time trying to ensure that as many people as possible do not have to go through the cost of visiting a general practitioner for something that is usually easily manageable we have not weighed up the burden of cost in that regard and that is most unfortunate. 
Looking at the issue of evidence but also coupling that with the new modern notion—when it comes to drug law—of harm minimisation I would have been incredibly interested to see that Parliament probably would say that in terms of harm to society the cost of methamphetamine of course is high and the cost of alcohol is high. But let us look in terms of the relative spend in society on police time and on police resources at how much is spent on methamphetamine versus say cannabis. How many people are imprisoned in our country for minor cannabis offences versus methamphetamine offences? What resource are we spending on the drugs that do the most harm to our communities relative to others? I just throw that up as something that we should be having more debate over. Parliament probably spends a relatively larger amount of time on the issues that cause the greatest harm—alcohol and methamphetamine—but is that reflected in the way that we are operating on a day-to-day basis via our law enforcement and via our imprisonment regimes? 
I think it is a legitimate question to ask and that ultimately is why the UN Global Commission on Drug Policy has started questioning whether our emphasis is in the right areas. If we are going to look at international evidence I think we should start with those trends. If we are going to be world leading that is the kind of response we need to be giving. It is bold and the community will need reassurance that we are still doing all of this in the best interest of our communities but at the moment we have to acknowledge that we are failing and we are failing abysmally. That is not to say that we cannot continue to use the tools that we have and do as much as we can. But again it needs to be evidence-based and on this particular area on these two issues contained in Part 1—the issue of tools and utensils and requiring a prescription in order to purchase pseudoephedrine—I am not convinced these are the big hitters that we need in order to crack the methamphetamine issue in New Zealand which ultimately must be the aim of this Parliament. 
JO GOODHEW (Junior Whip—National) 
: 
 I move  
That the question be now put 
. 
Hon RICK BARKER (Labour) 
: 
 I have two questions that I would like to put to the Minister in the chair Associate Minister of Health the Hon Peter Dunne—if the Minister has finished his texting. 
Hon Members 
: Oh! 
Hon RICK BARKER 
: That is all right. The first is a very serious question. There was a case that went to the Supreme Court concerning the presumption in the law as it stands which is that if a person has a certain amount of cannabis or any particular drug they are deemed to be dealing not just consuming. The Supreme Court looked at this issue and in the end chose not to strike down the legislation but gave very careful consideration to it. The court’s fault with the legislation was that there was a presumption in it of someone being guilty of a charge and not a presumption of innocence. 
This is I think a very serious issue. As I understand the legislation that is being put forward here if people have a certain amount of material that will be presumed to be for personal supply but if it is over a certain amount there will be a presumption of dealing and that is the charge that people will get. I want to know whether the Minister and the people who drafted this legislation have taken into account that Supreme Court decision which was a split decision and whether they have fixed what the Supreme Court saw as the deficiencies in the legislation passed by this Parliament. I would like the Minister to give me an explanation about that. 
The second issue is a question about Supplementary Order Paper 258. I have just picked up a copy of the Supplementary Order Paper and I see that it amends new section 4D(4) to state: “Possession by a person of 56 grams or more in total of any products (including cigarettes) or any drug forms (including flakes tablets or capsules)”. The general rule of legal interpretation is that if a number of items are specified the list is deemed by the law to be complete. That is what has been interpreted. I see one of the officials shaking their head but I would ask the Minister whether it is possible that if someone had a powder or liquid form they would be able to say they were exempted from the scope of this legislation. By any definition a powder is different from a flake and a liquid is different from a solid form. The Minister may not know this but a number of drugs such as methamphetamines and pseudoephedrines are usually in a crystal form but the drug can be used and transported in a liquid form. 
I am just concerned that the legislation we have here is very narrow in its definition of “flakes tablets or capsules” and does not cover powder and liquids. I would like to be assured that the matters that I have raised have been considered by the officials and I would like the Minister to advise me that the issues contained in them have been dealt with so that if a person is caught in possession of a liquid that will not defeat the purposes of the legislation because the Minister has not specified that it covers liquids. I would also think that a powder is different from a flake. A flake is a chip or a chunk and a powder is quite differently defined in the dictionary—I have taken time to check that. I would like the Minister to respond to that issue and say yes or no to the question of whether the recent Supreme Court decision has been taken into account and yes or no to the question of whether the drug comes in the form of a liquid or powder has been taken into account. 
IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY (Labour—Palmerston North) 
: 
 I wondered whether the Minister in the chair the Associate Minister of Health Peter Dunne would respond to the Hon Rick Barker’s questions but maybe he needs a little time and I am prepared to help him take that time. 
I come to my own Supplementary Order Paper 260 on clause 4 but before I do that I will respond to Heather Roy and briefly set out why Labour will oppose her Supplementary Order Paper 261. Although to be fair she is absolutely right in saying that I have expressed the view in this Chamber that prohibition has its limitations I think what Heather Roy is proposing will first of all not change the status quo very much. Secondly it will allow for the continued commercialisation I suppose of these products. Even if one has concerns about the effectiveness of prohibition as a mechanism of controlling drugs it is also true that the over-commercialisation of substances is of equal concern. 
Heather Roy has proposed that these drugs can be sold only to people over the age of 18. In fact the status quo is that most of these substances already have an R18 restriction on them. That does not come about because they are psychoactive substances; it comes about because the vast majority of them can be smoked and therefore they fall under the purview of the Smoke-free Environments Act and have an R18 restriction on them. For the overwhelming bulk—and probably just about all the substances that we are really focusing on here—the notion of introducing an R18 restriction makes no difference to the current situation. 
What it does not do of course is get these products out of dairies and out of sight. A concern for everyone I suppose in this Chamber—except for the ACT Party perhaps—is that substances such as Kronic are heavily marketed at the point of sale. When we go into a dairy or some liquor stores these days we see a lot of that advertising. There is a tobacconist in my electorate in Palmerston North whose outside wall now seems to be completely covered in Kronic advertising so it is still well and truly on display. We know for a fact that even though these substances are already R18 young people under the age of 18 are able to get their hands on them. There is no real effect of that proposal and still there is the issue of the advertising and commercialisation of the substance. As a number of us have said although we do not think that what the Minister is suggesting is ideal or that the process is ideal it is a useful stopgap measure in the interim whilst we get this issue sorted out and come up with something more permanent and sustainable. 
On the issue of pipes and other utensils and the amendment that I have put up to have clause 4 removed this is a matter of harm minimisation. We are supporting the measures in this bill that support the minimisation of harm. Some of them we argue will do very little to minimise harm but they will do something; others we support because we think they will do more to minimise harm. But further restricting access to drug utensils will do absolutely nothing to minimise harm. 
I refer to the comments made by Nicky Wagner who compared this measure to the recent ban on point-of-sale tobacco advertising. Of course what we did not do when we got rid of tobacco advertising was get rid of the ability to display tobacco smoking pipes for instance. In fact when I put up my own bill to deal with the tobacco display issue the Attorney-General said that getting rid of tobacco smoking utensils was too great a contravention of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act to be allowed. So the consistent approach—and Nicky Wagner sought a consistent approach—is not to get rid of the ability to display these drug utensils. Nicky Wagner made the argument that it somehow glamorises drug use. But actually these utensils offer a mechanism by which the harm— 
DAVID BENNETT (National—Hamilton East) 
: 
 I move  
That the question be now put 
. 
A party vote was called for on the question  
That the question be now put. 
Ayes 62 
New Zealand National 57; Maori Party 4; United Future 1. 
Noes 57 
New Zealand Labour 42; Green Party 9; ACT New Zealand 4; Progressive 1; Independent: Carter C. 
Motion agreed to. 
The question was put that the amendment set out on Supplementary Order Paper 261 in the name of the Hon Heather Roy be agreed to. 
A party vote was called for on the question  
That the amendment be agreed to. 
Ayes 4 
ACT New Zealand 4. 
Noes 115 
New Zealand National 57; New Zealand Labour 42; Green Party 9; Maori Party 4; Progressive 1; United Future 1; Independent: Carter C. 
Amendment not agreed to. 
The question was put that the amendment set out on Supplementary Order Paper 260 in the name of Iain Lees-Galloway be agreed to. 
A party vote was called for on the question  
That the amendment be agreed to. 
Ayes 53 
New Zealand Labour 42; Green Party 9; Progressive 1; Independent: Carter C. 
Noes 66 
New Zealand National 57; ACT New Zealand 4; Maori Party 4; United Future 1. 
Amendment not agreed to. 
The result corrected after originally being announced as Ayes 43 Noes 76. 
The question was put that the amendment set out on Supplementary Order Paper 258 in the name of the Hon Peter Dunne be agreed to. 
A party vote was called for on the question  
That the amendment be agreed to. 
Ayes 105 
New Zealand National 57; New Zealand Labour 42; Maori Party 4; Progressive 1; United Future 1. 
Noes 14 
Green Party 9; ACT New Zealand 4; Independent: Carter C. 
Amendment agreed to. 
DAVID CLENDON (Deputy Musterer—Green) 
: 
 I seek leave to change the Green Party vote in respect of Mr Lees-Galloway’s amendment on Supplementary Order Paper 260 to nine votes in favour and the Hon Chris Carter’s vote to one vote in favour. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch) 
: Leave is sought for that purpose. Is there any objection? There is no objection. The corrected vote on Iain Lees-Galloway’s amendment is Ayes 53 and Noes 66. The amendment is not agreed to. 
A party vote was called for on the question  
That Part 1 as amended be agreed to. 
Ayes 105 
New Zealand National 57; New Zealand Labour 42; Maori Party 4; Progressive 1; United Future 1. 
Noes 14 
Green Party 9; ACT New Zealand 4; Independent: Carter C. 
Part 1 as amended agreed to. 
Part 2 Amendment to Misuse of Drugs Amendment Act 2005 
IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY (Labour—Palmerston North) 
: 
 Part 2 of the Misuse of Drugs Amendment Bill contains clauses 12 and 13. These clauses deal with amendments to the 2005 amendment to the Misuse of Drugs Act. Essentially clauses 12 and 13 amend section 31 of the Misuse of Drugs Amendment Act 2005 by repealing “Paragraph (b)(v) of the definition of substance” so that hazardous substances as defined in section 2(1) of the Hazardous Substances and New Organisms Act 1996 are no longer excluded from the definition of “substance” for the purposes of the 2005 amendment Act. That essentially means that at the current time a substance cannot fall under both the Misuse of Drugs Act and the Hazardous Substances and New Organisms Act but this change allows substances to be able to come under the purview of both Acts. 
I suppose to be honest this was not a part of the bill that attracted an awful lot of attention from submitters to the Health Committee. In fact only three of the submitters at the select committee referred to clause 13 and nobody referred to clause 12. One was in favour of clause 13 and two were opposed. Those who were opposed to clause 13 were concerned that this provision would give the Environmental Risk Management Authority the ability to regulate substances listed in the schedules of the Misuse of Drugs Act. Submitters were I suppose concerned that the Environmental Risk Management Authority lacks expertise in this area and would apply unduly strict criteria with high barriers to entry which would mean that no legal products would meet the requirements to be approved as being safe. 
I suppose that is very much part of the debate we have been having about how to actually determine that a product is safe and how new substances are to be determined to be safe. However that is not actually what this change does. Clause 13 does not propose to give the Environmental Risk Management Authority the ability to regulate psychoactive substances. Rather the clause seeks to remove the exclusion that a hazardous substance cannot also be a restricted substance under the Misuse of Drugs Act. I suppose given that that is the case in fact what is actually occurring is probably in line with what the submitters would have liked to see. Essentially the provision just smoothes the path for substances to be able to come under the purview of both of these Acts. 
Under the Hazardous Substances and New Organisms Act a substance is “any element defined mixture of elements compounds or defined mixture of compounds either naturally occurring or produced synthetically or any mixtures thereof:” and I suppose that is exactly what Kronic Dream Spice and the other synthetic cannabis products are. They are products that are made up of both synthetic and naturally occurring substances. From that point of view that is the sort of thing that some submitters were concerned about: that in trying to establish whether something like Kronic is actually safe to come to market if it had fallen under the Hazardous Substances and New Organisms Act then that might not have been the most appropriate way to determine the safety of such a substance. Of course that is not what clause 13 does. The submitters can rest assured that that is not actually how the system will work. In fact we do not know exactly how the system will work at the moment but that is for the Minister to work on hopefully with some speed to come up with a solution to that question. 
Hon PETER DUNNE (Associate Minister of Health) 
: 
 I acknowledge the member who has just resumed his seat Iain Lees-Galloway. I am tempted to say his explanation of what has actually happened is far too charitable. He tried to imply a degree of rationality in the processes that led to this change. In fact what we are doing is correcting a cock-up; let us put it as bluntly as that. 
When the Hazardous Substances and New Organisms Act was passed a change was made that meant that in effect a substance designated as a hazardous substance under the hazardous substances and new organisms legislation could thenceforth not be designated as a restricted substance under the Misuse of Drugs Act. Some arguments were advanced at the time that things should be dealt with under their own particular bits of legislation. I have been back to have a look at the Health Committee’s report from 2005. It had in mind keeping things like ordinary commercial or household products that are also psychoactive such as butane gas from being further brought under the control of the restricted substances framework. It overlooked of course that the consequence of being very specific in that area effectively made the restricted substances regime unworkable. So we had a situation in which we have had the capacity to designate substances as restricted substances for some time but until this amendment is passed it has actually not been possible to do so given the almost countervailing provisions of the Hazardous Substances and New Organisms Act. 
Although I appreciate the very lucid explanation given by the member who spoke earlier and his charity in trying to apply some logic to the position that had developed I think it is fair to say this is a technical amendment to clear up a mistake that was made way back in 2005. The mistake was not actually seen at that time as significant because the rationale was actually about a different category of products. It was only when we started to look at a range of substances like the Kronics of this world for instance that we realised there was actually a problem and that needs to be corrected. That is what this amendment does. It is very straightforward and as I say I do not think it need delay the Committee for any great period of time. I appreciate and acknowledge the member’s very kind summary of the situation when he could have been far more vicious. 
KRIS FAAFOI (Labour—Mana) 
: 
 Taloha ni Mr Chair. I thank the Minister in the chair the Hon Peter Dunne very much for being so frank about the motivation behind this part. I do not want to take up a hell of a lot of time in terms of speaking to Part 2 of the Misuse of Drugs Amendment Bill but for those who are tuning in—and I think there actually will be quite a few people interested in this bill given the relevance of the announcement made yesterday—there are some clarifications we want to seek. 
While they are being sought we thought it might be useful just to reinforce what my colleague Iain Lees-Galloway has said and just to lay out exactly what Part 2 pertains to. It amends the Misuse of Drugs Amendment Act 2005 in just two technical clauses. Clause 13 repeals the definition of “substance” in section 31 of the 2005 Act which claims that a substance “(a) means any mixture preparation or article that is manufactured for the primary purpose of being administered ingested inhaled or injected in order to induce a psychoactive response; but (b) does not include any … (v) hazardous substance (as defined in section 2(1) of the Hazardous Substances and New Organisms Act 1996):”. Referring to that Act under section 2(1) a hazardous substance means “unless expressly provided otherwise by regulations any substance—(a) with 1 or more of the following intrinsic properties: (i) explosiveness: (ii) flammability: (iii) a capacity to oxidise: (iv) corrosiveness: (v) toxicity (including chronic toxicity): (vi) ecotoxicity”. I am no scientist as I have pointed out before in the debate on the Royal Society of New Zealand but I know that that is definitely one of the clauses in the Act. 
I guess when we are talking about substances that have those properties and we want to correct “a cock-up”—a direct quote from the Minister— 
Michael Woodhouse 
: A very technical term! 
KRIS FAAFOI 
: It is a very technical term and maybe we will come back to it tomorrow when we debate the Royal Society of New Zealand Amendment Bill again. But in looking at Part 2 and at the Minister correcting this legislation I guess that when we are dealing with those properties this is a positive move—which we will support as we are supporting this bill in its entirety and the Supplementary Order Paper the Minister has put forward. 
STUART NASH (Labour) 
: 
 I would just like to make a comment. I have mentioned this before in the Chamber but I would like to reiterate it. I was speaking to an old member of Parliament—sorry a member of Parliament who had been here a while ago—who is older than Mr Chair Robertson of course and we were talking about the Committee stage. I bemoaned the fact that during the Committee stage what was happening was that Labour members were putting a lot of questions out there. I felt that the vast majority were relevant to the Minister in the chair and the Minister in the chair at the time was just sitting there reading and not even taking any notice whatsoever. 
But do I note that whenever Associate Minister of Health the Hon Peter Dunne—and I would like to commend him on this—is sitting in the chair whether it is on a tax bill or this sort of health bill if Labour members ask questions or make comments he always stands up and addresses the questions or comments. Some of them are rather banal I must admit but he always addresses them and I think that is in the true spirit of the parliamentary process. It just shows that the Minister has been around for a while. He respects the House even if sometimes we are in major disagreement with regard to some of the policies that he advocates. I would like to thank the Minister for doing that because I think it is in the true spirit of what the Committee stage is about—absolutely. 
As everyone said in rather unparliamentary terms—I am surprised Mr Chair being the stickler that you are for process that you have not pulled up members for the use of the word “cock-up”— 
Hon Member 
: Be careful! 
STUART NASH 
: The Minister used it and as the Minister said the clause seeks to remove the exclusion that a hazardous substance cannot also be a restricted substance. When we get to bills a lot of these issues are about semantics and when we go through the Committee stage on a lot of bills I suspect that those who are listening or the person who is listening must sit there and go: “Goodness me! This really is semantics.” But when it comes to law it really has to be quite tight and these sorts of bills and these sorts of amendments are required just to make sure the law gets it right because it has to provide direction first to the public second to the judiciary and third to the industry or business that is dealing in this sort of carry-on. 
As the Minister mentioned—and it has been very topical recently; I think Iain Lees-Galloway has talked about this at great length as has Kris Faafoi—we are faced with numerous toxic substances these days and people will do whatever they can to alter their mind— 
Kris Faafoi 
: Ecotoxic. 
STUART NASH 
: That is a good word—“ecotoxic”. I think it is important that we do send a very clear message to the people of New Zealand to the youth of New Zealand but also to the industry that Parliament will not tolerate this sort of behaviour. We need to send the message that it will not tolerate this sort of industry and I suppose this bill is a step in closing a lot of it down. Am I right I ask Mr Lees-Galloway? This bill is just a first step. There is much more work to be done; of that there is no doubt. It is a shame that it was not done a little earlier and it is a shame that the Minister did not act a little faster. That is a conversation for another day so maybe it will be in a third reading speech—or it might have already been had. 
We are supporting this bill but I would like to thank the Minister very much for getting up and clarifying a lot of this stuff. We support this bill. As I said it does not go far enough but it is a start. Thank you very much. 
The question was put that the amendment set out on Supplementary Order Paper 259 in the name of the Hon Peter Dunne to clause 13 be agreed to. 
A party vote was called for on the question  
That the amendment be agreed to. 
Ayes 105 
New Zealand National 57; New Zealand Labour 42; Maori Party 4; Progressive 1; United Future 1. 
Noes 13 
Green Party 9; ACT New Zealand 3; Independent: Carter C. 
Amendment agreed to. 
Part 2 as amended agreed to. 
Schedule agreed to.  
Clause 1 agreed to.  
Clause 2 Commencement 
The question was put that the amendment set out on Supplementary Order Paper 259 in the name of the Hon Peter Dunne to clause 2 be agreed to. 
Amendment agreed to. 
Clause 2 as amended agreed to. 
Clause 3 agreed to.  
Bill to be reported with amendment presently.