Little AndrewMISUSE OF DRUGS AMENDMENT BILLThird ReadingHon ANDREW LITTLE (Minister of Justice) on behalf of the Minister of Health: I move That the Misuse of Drugs Amendment Bill be now read a third time.This bill makes three key changes to the Misuse of Drugs Act 1975. The bill classifies AMB-FUBINACA and 5F-ADB as class A drugs. This is in response to the Expert Advisory Committee on Drugs which provides recommendations to the Minister of Health on the classification of substances. The committee recommended the substances be classified as class A due to the high risk of harm that they pose.The bill affirms the existing police discretion. It specifies that when determining whether a prosecution is required in the public interest for personal drug possession and use consideration should be given to whether a health approach is more beneficial. The discretion emphasises the Government's health-based approach to personal drug use and reinforces the police's focus on those who profit from drug dealing and not on those who use illicit drugs.The bill enables temporary class drug orders to be made by the Minister of Health. The order will immediately classify a substance which will be treated as if it was a class C controlled drug under the Act. Penalties for import manufacture supply possession and use of class C controlled drugs would apply to temporarily classified substances.These changes are being introduced to address the harm caused by synthetic and other drugs. They increase opportunities for health and social services to be provided to people caught in the web of addiction and to focus enforcement efforts on suppliers rather than on users. This bill is a key milestone in achieving our goal of reducing synthetic drug harm and implementing a health approach to drug use.I'd like to thank all submitters for their valuable feedback on the bill. Changes have been made to the bill and I'd like to thank the Health Committee for their consideration of the bill. There were two minor changes and these were confirmed subsequently. The first is to remove product name" as a term used to describe a substance in the temporary class drug order provision. The term was used when temporary drug class notices were previously introduced and reflected the fact that there were legal products on the market. Since the Psychoactive Substances Act 2013 came into force there are no longer legal products marketed under a product name.The second change is an amendment to better align the bill with the policy intent. The discretion to prosecute in the bill as drafted applies to all offences in section 7 including supply and administration. The intent of the bill however is for the discretion to apply only to possession and use offences. The amendment will mean that the discretion applies only to those possession and use offences as originally intended.I'd like to thank the committee of the whole House and our coalition and confidence and supply partners in particular for their recent consideration of the bill. One change was made as a result of the committee of the whole House's consideration and that was to clause 6. Clause 6 is intended to support a health-based approach to drug use and to reaffirm current police practice. We believe the wording of this clause could have been improved by providing clarity that a health-based approach was a relevant public interest consideration alongside other factors relevant to the public interest test as set out in the Solicitor-General's prosecution guidelines. This more closely aligned with current police practice and meant that prosecution was still available to prevent harm and keep people safe if the offence was serious enough. Therefore I moved the following amendment which was supported by a majority of the committee of the whole House and that was in clause 6 in new section 7(6) after the words "more beneficial" insert the words "to the public interest". It clearly confirms and clarifies that the practice had to be in the public interest. The new wording further supports the Government's intent to strengthen a health-based approach to drug use and provides clarity for front-line officers as to how to apply the public interest test so that this intent is met.The Government has a number of measures in place to implement the health-based approach and reduce drug harm to users and the wider community. The Police Commissioner will issue tailored guidance to front-line officers on how to apply discretion. The guidance will help officers assess where the public interest lies and whether a health approach would be more beneficial to the public interest than proceeding with a criminal justice response. If a decision is made not to prosecute the guidance will indicate other options available—for example these could be a verbal or pre-charge warning or connection to health services for assessment triage and referral. If police make the decision to connect a person to a health service and the individual gives permission police will refer them to a health service for screening via an app. A health professional will contact each person to assess triage and refer the person as appropriate.The Government is committed to taking a health approach to drug use and it was on the back of this plan that it provided additional funding of over $10 million at the end of 2018 to strengthen the capability and capacity of alcohol and other drug services to respond to increasing need. A drug early warning system is being developed which will help respond to these emerging substances. The system facilitates information sharing on drug supply networks enabling agencies to identify supply networks faster and plan enforcement responses. Temporary drug classification orders can then be used to classify substances faster.I just conclude by drawing the House's attention to a programme that I visited recently in Whangarei. Many members of the House will know it. It's the programme set up by the police in conjunction with the local district health board (DHB) up there to deal with the methamphetamine problem up there. It was a classic health-based approach to what is a very insidious but actually very serious problem in that region of New Zealand and the police using their judgment and their front-line street knowledge as well as the resources of the DHB backed by funding from the Government have made major inroads into communities and families and whānau who are suffering the effects of addiction to that insidious drug. That is a health-based approach. That's what we need to see more of and I am confident that the measures outlined in this bill and the changes that it enacts will make a huge difference to the approach we take to dealing with those who are prone to using illicit substances those who are addicted to them but most importantly to the communities and families who are afflicted by them. I commend this bill to the House."