Hague Kevin: Psychoactive Substances Amendment Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeHague Kevin: Psychoactive Substances Amendment Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee Third Reading[Sitting date: 06 May 2014. Volume:698;Page:17531. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]KEVIN HAGUE (Green): I want to start by picking up on a comment from Dr Paul Hutchison about the actions that police are apparently taking tonight going around to stores and advising them what the outcome of this debate will be. I have to say that I am slightly offended by the assumption about my rhetoric in advocating against the interim prohibition.I sat on the Health Committee that considered the psychoactive substances legislation and was very pleased with the outcome from the select committee process. I have to say that this bill we are considering tonight the Psychoactive Substances Amendment Bill leaves me with very mixed feelings. On the one hand one of the issues that was raised in the select committee was the matter of animal testing and members will be very familiar with the Green Party minority view in the select committee report which sets out the arguments against using evidence from animal testing. It sets out what the alternatives to that are. We went on in the Committee stage to advance a Supplementary Order Paper in Mojo Mathers’ name. Unfortunately it did not gather the necessary majority support at that time. I am very pleased that apparently I think all members of the House are now convinced by the arguments for the change that Mojo Mathers proposed at that time.On the other aspect of the bill however I am sure that all members of this House are aware that we oppose in fact the effective repeal of the interim regime and replacement of that interim regime with a prohibition regime until the Act takes full effect. So ourparty probably disagrees I think with all other members in the House on this point. I just want to take this opportunity in the second and third readings in this debate to advance our reasons for that and to respectfully disagree with other members.We believed that that interim regime established by the Act although very far from perfect was the best way of approaching the period between the completely unregulated regime that had previously applied and the Act taking full effect. We thought it was the best way to go about that. We think that the prohibition regime that is being substituted for that regime now is the wrong approach and is being taken for the wrong reasons.Paul Hutchison also spoke about some of the opposition to the Act in his electorate being based on wrong information or misleading information. I think that is a bit of a common theme. I have been travelling around the country quite a lot and people have been saying things to me like “We don’t understand why Parliament chose to legalise synthetic cannabis.” Well OK. There are two problems with that idea. The first is that these substances were many. They were not a single substance and the substances that are still legally on the shelf tonight are in fact still many. They are different products. They are made up from different compounds. They have different effects. Some of them are very low risk. Some of them may be higher risk. It is a mistake to assume that they are all the same thing or that they all pose the same level of risk. Yet that is the assumption that members of the public have been led to believe in.The second point of course is that Parliament did not legalise the availability of these substances. They were legally available. In fact Parliament chose to impose a very substantial regulatory regime on the interim regime and an even more substantial regulatory regime would take effect when the Act comes to be in place completely.The third thing that I have heard from members of the public who are justifiably concerned about what is occurring out there in the community is the assumption that the harm caused prior to the Act is still being caused. So for example there was a national day of action that community organisations held some little while ago. The Television New Zealand piece that preceded it was largely comprised of an interview with someone whose son tragically had suffered some very major psychological effects of consuming a psychoactive substance. That consumption had occurred some 3 years prior and that substance had not been on the shelves for some considerable period. In all of the debate that I have seen about substantial harm still being caused actually the debate has related to substances that are no longer available.Fourthly there is I think a widespread belief that problems have got worse. In fact I think as some speakers in the debates on this bill so far have probably alluded to that is not the case. The number of outlets has drastically reduced. The number of products on the shelves has substantially reduced. Sales have reduced and harm has reduced. I want to quote from the Ministry of Health. NicolaKean who is a producer forThe Nation programme asked the Ministry of Health I guess 2 weeks ago now—so just prior to the announcement of this approach—what the trend is if any for people presenting at accident and emergency for problems with psychoactive substances since the law was introduced. The ministry’s answer was: “While it is early days the Authority has received anecdotal reports demonstrating the number of severe presentations to emergency departments has reduced since the Act came in. The Authority monitors approved products received from the Centre for Adverse Reactions Monitoring (CARM) and calls from the public to the National Poisons Centre on a regular basis. These reports also show a reduction in the number of severe issues being reported. Where severe adverse reactions are reported the Authority has the power to act and has already removed products from the market where reports to CARM identified they posed more than a low risk of harm.”There you are. The Act as we passed it was working. The interim regime was reducing harm and the power existed for any products that were identified as causing harm to be removed from the shelves. And the ministry the authority was taking that step. Therefore it was a bit of a puzzle when I heard Mr Dunne on the television saying that this new regime an interim prohibition on all of these substances was being introduced but it was not possible to identify any particular substance associated with reports of adverse reactions. That is unbelievable nonsense. The regime absolutely existed to be able to identify reports of harm with a particular substance. The ministry the authority had already been using that fact to suspend products to take them off the shelves.The fact is that the community concerns were being driven by increased visibility. That is precisely what we wanted to happen. For every shop still selling these products at least 20 had been closed down. So although usage had been reduced it was being concentrated and being made more visible around the surviving outlets. Visibility access to treatment is precisely what we want. I absolutely understand those community concerns but the way that the Government should have responded to those concerns was with better quality information for communities better quality information for local bodies better access to information about treatment and better resourcing for treatment services. Communities deserved leadership and instead what we have is a knee-jerk response that although popular is based not on fact but on populism. Thank you.