Seymour DavidMISUSE OF DRUGS (PSEUDOEPHEDRINE) AMENDMENT BILLSecond ReadingHon DAVID SEYMOUR (Associate Minister of Health (Pharmac)): I present a legislative statement on the Misuse of Drugs (Pseudoephedrine) Amendment Bill.DEPUTY SPEAKER: That legislative statement is published under the authority of the House and can be found on the Parliament website.Hon DAVID SEYMOUR: I move That the Misuse of Drugs (Pseudoephedrine) Amendment Bill be now read a second time.It gives me great pride to stand in support of the Misuse of Drugs (Pseudoephedrine) Amendment Bill 2024. I'd like to start by thanking those members of the Health Committee chaired by Sam Uffindell but also Drs Hamish Campbell and Carlos Cheung Ingrid Leary Cameron Luxton Hūhana Lyndon Jenny Marcroft Debbie Ngarewa-Packer and Dr Ayesha Verrall. These guys I think have done tremendous work. There have been a total of 169 people who have submitted in the very compressed time frame available of four weeks to hear from the public. In addition to those people nine organisations made a submission and they report that most organisations including pharmaceutical industry bodies and drug harm prevention groups indicated support for the bill in their submissions.The select committee says it's not recommending any amendments to the bill as introduced and that is in a way expected because it is an extremely simple bill. In fact here it is; it's really just 1½ pages and two pieces of paper is the whole thing. And all it really does is move the drug pseudoephedrine from one schedule of the Misuse of Drugs Act where it's a class B drug to another schedule where it's made a class C2 drug. So it's not surprising that the select committee didn't decide to make great changes. However they did hear from many members of the public who gave some feedback that I think we found very helpful and I certainly appreciated reading their report.They pointed out that pseudoephedrine is a precursor drug; it can be used to make methamphetamine. And yet since 2011 when pseudoephedrine was banned the price of pseudoephedrine has gone down; the quantity consumed unfortunately has gone up; and according to the availability index it's become more available. They point out according to one submitter that to make a kilogram of pure meth you would need 27.8 kilograms of pseudoephedrine medication. At that point you could probably just cure a lifetime of colds and coughs! In contrast only 1.75 kilograms of higher-efficiency precursor is needed for the same yield—2430 packets of pseudoephedrine cough medicine to make 1000 grams of P and you start to understand why it is that the people who supply these drugs have started bringing it in in more pure forms from overseas rather than going round pharmacies trying to buy up pills that they can cook down into meth.None the less they acknowledge the possibility that some people may try that. And it's a concern because methamphetamine is probably—in fact almost certainly—the worst drug available in New Zealand and doing more social harm than any other drug. That is something that we should be concerned about. And what the—Ricardo Menéndez March: Apply that analysis to cannabis.Hon DAVID SEYMOUR: And there's a man here who says Apply that analysis to cannabis." But that member has been doing his own trials for far too long!DEPUTY SPEAKER: I don't think that comment is necessary. Thank you.Hon DAVID SEYMOUR: It's not necessary. But some of the best things in life Madam Speaker aren't necessary. We just do them anyway.Ricardo Menéndez March: Like you in Parliament.Hon DAVID SEYMOUR: He's still trying to heckle but I can't hear clearly what he's trying to say.There were serious concerns raised about crime and the safety of pharmacists and one suggestion that was made was that perhaps there should be a register kept on a nationwide basis of everybody who buys pseudoephedrine products. That certainly would appear at face value to be helpful. At the moment there is a system that exists called the New Zealand ePrescription Service and increasingly pharmacists are adopting electronic dispensing so it may well be that due to advances in technology we're not far off the time when people can actually get a record of every purchase of pharmaceuticals and track patterns of people who are strategically shopping to stockpile pseudoephedrine drugs so they can manufacture methamphetamine. And that might be a very useful thing to have.On the other hand there's strong indications that because as I was saying earlier it's no longer economically viable to make meth out of pseudoephedrine tablets it's most likely that that regulation won't make a great deal of difference. And yet the technology may make it possible soon in any event. Regardless as the Labour Party and the majority of the committee as well have noted the comments I made to the committee it would seem sensible to give New Zealanders the clear benefits of the convenience of pseudoephedrine cough and cold medicine as soon as possible while monitoring the situation with a view to more enforcement measures if they turn out to be necessary. And that's the thing: they may not turn out to be necessary; in which case over-regulating and overspending on things that aren't necessary can sometimes be as bad if not a worse mistake than testing whether there is truly a problem to be solved particularly when there's every reason to believe that there is not a problem anymore with people cooking pseudoephedrine.I hope that all parties will support this legislation. I think it's a symbol of a few things. Too often it feels like New Zealand is a place where people are trying to make life harder where you have to obey rules that don't make sense just because that's the way it is. We want to be a happy and successful country where if Government makes a mistake and there's an opportunity to improve people's lives by admitting that and reversing the mistake then—you know what?—we do it. And people actually can be free to make the most of their time on earth on their terms so long as they're not harming others. And so when the Government realised that banning pseudoephedrine banning the good cough medicine didn't stop the bad people making P the right thing to do is to reverse the policy and let people have the medicine that makes them feel better again. It's just the simple straightforward thing that anybody in this circumstance would do.And it also shows that we have a Government that is committed to making rules and regulations based on good evidence of what works. In this particular instance we've actually done a 13-year trial if you like and what we've discovered is that the regulation didn't work. We didn't get the benefits of stopping P; we just paid the cost of having to use frankly rubbish cough and cold medicine. Well actually if something doesn't work we just stop doing it and I think being prepared to be responsible regulators I hope as the Minister for Regulation at least will be another hallmark of this Government—that we define the problems we are trying to solve and use proper cost-benefit analysis. I think that across a whole range of activities everything from farming to finance to teaching to trying to get decent pharmaceuticals that's really going to do a lot for New Zealanders' ability to make a difference in their own lives and those they care about to provide for themselves and their families without being restrained by unnecessary rules and regulations. That seems like the thing that a country that wants people to have long happy and healthy lives would do and that's what a responsible Government would do in response.So in conclusion I'm very pleased that this bill has come through the select committee. I'm grateful to the 169 people and nine organisations who took the time to make a submission to help inform the committee even in the compressed time frame that they had. And I'm grateful for those members of the select committee who took the time to hear those members of the public and make their recommendations and suggestions so that this bill could benefit from the best of our representative democracy and the parliamentary process in order that we can make better laws. I now look forward—Hon Rachel Brooking: It's not the best process.Hon DAVID SEYMOUR: And someone said it's not the best. Well actually I think listening to the public and making your views known and deciding where to go—I think that is the best of our democratic process. What is wrong with the Labour Party? Why are they so down this week is what I want to know. What has gone wrong over there? Maybe they are ill and need some pseudoephedrine! Well I've got good news there too. And what we're going to see increasingly is a piece of law that is going to make it better for New Zealanders when they feel ill and with that I commend this bill to the House. Thank you Madam Speaker.DEPUTY SPEAKER: The question is that the motion be agreed to."