Dunne Peter: Misuse of Drugs Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
Dunne Peter: Misuse of Drugs Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
[Volume:674;Page:20019] 
Hon PETER DUNNE (Associate Minister of Health) 
: 
 I move  
That the Misuse of Drugs Amendment Bill be now read a second time 
. At the outset I thank the Health Committee for its consideration of this legislation. The bill will restrict the availability of the primary precursor substances used to make the class A drug methamphetamine as well as make some necessary technical amendments to the Misuse of Drugs Act 1975. The bill does not carry out a comprehensive overhaul of the Misuse of Drugs Act but it will address some fundamental problems with the legislation in the short term. 
Members will be aware that the Law Commission has recently made its final recommendations to the Government following a first-principles review of New Zealand’s outdated drug legislation. The Government has welcomed this thorough and wide-ranging report and will be carefully considering all 144 recommendations. In particular I am sure that most members will agree on the importance of dealing with the increasing number of uncontrolled substances such as party pills and substances like Kronic. As members will be aware currently the onus is on the Government to demonstrate the harmfulness of substances before those substances can be controlled. In the meantime those products can be sold without any restrictions. The Law Commission has proposed reversing the onus so that manufacturers must demonstrate a level of safety before products can legally be sold. The Government broadly accepts this approach and work is under way to put in place such a regime. 
However we now have a more immediate problem due to the increasing sale of psychoactive substances like Kronic without any controls. This bill will make changes to the current Misuse of Drugs Act to enable new restrictions to be put on new party pills and smokeable products. But these moves may not be sufficient given the way this industry operates so I have been working on stronger additional amendments to apply until the format proposed by the Law Commission can be put in place. These new amendments will be introduced by way of Supplementary Order Paper before the Committee of the whole House stage as the first item of business during the week after the coming adjournment and will take effect shortly thereafter. 
This bill will also make the illegal manufacture of methamphetamine more difficult by closing off the source of domestic methamphetamine precursor substances. This cannot wait. Methamphetamine is the only illegal stimulant drug commonly manufactured in our country and we have high rates of use by international standards. It is a particularly problematic illegal drug which causes significant harm to individuals families and communities. Gangs and other organised criminal groups are closely involved with the manufacture and supply of methamphetamine and its precursor chemicals and the trade of this drug is associated with significant crime and violence. The proposal in this bill is to reclassify ephedrine and in particular pseudoephedrine the classification of which will therefore be a significant component of the Government’s intention to tackle the availability of this insidious drug. The bill will reclassify pseudoephedrine and ephedrine as class B2 controlled drugs under the Misuse of Drugs Act 1975. This reclassification will remove over-the-counter access to pseudoephedrine from pharmacies and make it a prescription-only medicine. That will make it more difficult for potential manufacturers of methamphetamine to access the key ingredients to make the drug. 
Some people have suggested that taking away pseudoephedrine from over-the-counter sale in pharmacies will place an unnecessary burden on legitimate flu sufferers but those legitimate sufferers will still be able to obtain pseudoephedrine-based medications from their medical practitioners. Members may be interested to note that most people already use alternatives to pseudoephedrine to treat cold and flu symptoms and that currently fewer than 20 percent of the cold and flu products sold in pharmacies actually contain pseudoephedrine. 
Some have suggested that although there is a benefit in restricting the supply of such precursor drugs the method proposed in the bill is not necessary. Well I share the views of the Expert Advisory Committee on Drugs and of the Prime Minister’s Chief Science Advisor in saying that a B2 classification is the most effective way of shutting down the domestic diversion of pseudoephedrine while maintaining its availability as a medicine. Reclassification of pseudoephedrine and ephedrine as class B2 controlled drugs will also give the police and the Customs Service increased powers to control supply such as the ability to obtain a warrant to intercept communications. The penalty for the unlawful dealing of class B drugs is imprisonment not exceeding 14 years and for the unlawful possession or use of these drugs it is imprisonment for a term not exceeding 3 months or a fine not exceeding $500 or both. I intend to introduce a Supplementary Order Paper at the Committee of the whole House stage to change the date these provisions will come into effect to 1 month following the date of enactment in order to give the industry time to bring these changes into effect because currently the bill proposes they would take effect on 1 March 2011. 
I would be misleading the House if I were to claim that this amendment will of itself solve our methamphetamine problem. This is just one of a number of Government actions to address the harms from this drug. I am also fully aware that the major part of the pseudoephedrine currently used to make methamphetamine is smuggled across our borders into New Zealand. The Health Committee noted in its report that the methamphetamine market is worth around $1 billion annually and that at least 10 percent of that market is manufactured from domestic pseudoephedrine. We cannot therefore ignore the over $100 million worth of the methamphetamine market. We need to complement the valuable work the Customs Service already does and to strengthen our response to domestic diversion. 
The other components of this bill are technical. One of these amendments the amendment to tighten our existing drug utensils provisions has raised a certain amount of public interest and was I understand the subject of the majority of the submissions to the Health Committee. Let me make it clear that it is already illegal to import or supply drug-related utensils such as cannabis and methamphetamine pipes so the bill closes two loopholes to enable police and the Customs Service to enforce more effectively the law we already have. At the moment it is an offence to sell drug utensils but not an offence to display them in a shop or advertise their sale. This places limitations on the police who can act only if they witness an illegal sale. The second loophole affects the ability of the Customs Service to seize illegal utensils being brought across the border. At the moment it is not illegal to bring in components of drug utensils and then assemble them in New Zealand to be sold illegally. This bill will give the Customs Service the power to seize the recognisable parts of methamphetamine or cannabis pipes such as a bowl which requires only a mouthpiece to become a cannabis bong. 
This bill will remove thalidomide from class A of the Misuse of Drugs Act so that it can be more appropriately controlled under the Medicines Act. Thalidomide is not psychoactive nor is it used recreationally and its place under the Misuse of Drugs Act is therefore an anomaly we propose to rectify with this amendment. 
The bill also proposes to correct a problematic overlap between the Misuse of Drugs Amendment Act 2005 and the Hazardous Substances and New Organisms Act 1996 by removing the exclusion that a hazardous substance cannot also be a restricted substance. The restricted substances regime is an important mechanism that we need in order to place robust controls on low-risk psychoactive drugs such as the so-called party pills and some of the legal highs that would otherwise be uncontrolled but the current wording of the legislation unintentionally acts as a barrier to the scheduling of any substance as a restricted substance. This amendment bill will remove that barrier. I have already made reference to the problem of synthetic cannabinoids and the Government’s plans to deal with them culminating in the implementation of the Law Commission’s recommendations. But they themselves do not remove the need for this technical amendment to be made and it is essential that we address the barrier posed by the wording of the restricted substances definition to ensure that this mechanism is available for controlling new substances in the short term. 
I am also proposing a related change in the Supplementary Order Paper to give effect to the Ministry of Health’s view that synthetic cannabinoid products intended for smoking purposes should also fit the definition of herbal smoking products under the Smoke-free Environments Act 1990. An exclusion currently exists in the drug legislation to the effect that a restricted substance cannot also be a herbal smoking product. Therefore the amendment in the Supplementary Order Paper will propose a further change to the principal Act to allow for certain smokeable products to be regulated as both restricted substances and herbal smoking products under the Smoke-free Environments Act. 
These amendments will go a long way to strengthening our drug rules but they are only the precursor—if I can use that phrase—to far more substantive change following the Law Commission’s report. That change will be enacted next year.