Hutchison Paul: Motions — Misuse of Drugs (Classification of Ephedrine and Pseudoephedrine) Order 2003—Approval 
Hutchison Paul: Motions — Misuse of Drugs (Classification of Ephedrine and Pseudoephedrine) Order 2003—Approval 
[Volume:615;Page:11490] 
Dr PAUL HUTCHISON (National—Port Waikato) 
: 
 Thank you for the opportunity to speak to the motion which effectively allows the scheduling of ephedrine and pseudoephedrine under the Misuse of Drugs Act. It is important to think of the genesis of that. I would like to pay tribute to the Rt Hon Wyatt Creech who back in 1999 pressed for a special rapid classification of drugs so that it would be possible to keep up with the innovation of the criminal gangs who were just in a very small fashion changing the chemical formula of drugs and therefore avoiding the classification of those that were on the schedule already and managing to avoid the law. 
This time the situation is slightly different. It is not as though the formulae of the drugs have been changed but the precursors of pure methamphetamine pseudoephedrine and ephedrine have become readily available not only through the chemists of New Zealand but more important as Jeanette Fitzsimons was saying through illicit illegal importation into this country in considerable numbers. I think it is very important to put in perspective how pure methamphetamine has become such an incredibly important and a worrisome drug in New Zealand in 2004. Back in 1996 a clandestine laboratory was discovered for the first time. By 1999 there were something like nine laboratories. By 2001 there were 41 and by 2002 147. There is an estimate that there will be in the order of 300 clandestine amphetamine laboratories discovered over the 2003-04 period. 
I do have some degree of criticism of the Government here because there has been an escalation of this problem before our eyes and there was no response by the Government until last November-December when this process was put into place. The process itself has been gone through reasonably rapidly. In fact in some respects it has been gone through too rapidly or in a manner that has not allowed part of the process—that is the calling for public submissions—to occur. That was partly because of the Christmas adjournment but if the Government had recognised the problem earlier—and it should have been recognised at least by 2001—then we would have had this Government motion in place at a much earlier stage to be part of the jigsaw puzzle needed in order to stop the epidemic of drug use that is upon us. 
It is important to put things in perspective. New Zealand certainly has a huge drug problem. During the marijuana inquiry considerable note was taken of the Fergusson study from the South Island. It was pointed out that in the cohort of under-21-year-olds something like 10 percent of young males and I think 8 percent of young females were theoretically addicted to marijuana according to World Health Organization criteria. That is horrific if we extrapolate those figures from the relatively conservative cities of Christchurch and Dunedin on to the East Coast or Northland areas. At the time there was no appreciation of the rapid increase in the usage of P. Along with that has been a rapid escalation in the use of pseudoephedrine and ephedrine. That has been noted both by the incredibly increased rate of pickup by the Customs Service and the hugely increased rate of pickup by the police. 
In fact as many speakers have pointed out pseudoephedrine is part of the ingredients of common cough mixtures and we certainly know that if we go to almost any chemist throughout New Zealand that chemist will have been subjected to repeated break-ins by people trying to get medicines like Sudafed from display boxes in the shopfront. Many chemists now are just leaving empty cardboard boxes on display in the front of the store and ensuring that the medicines are kept under lock and key at the rear. Despite that break-ins at chemists have become a huge continuing problem in New Zealand. Something like 30 tabs of Sudafed can produce at least 1 gram of pure methamphetamine which can be sold on the street for $1000 to $1200. That is a huge amount of money. Similar amounts can of course be made from amphetamine. 
I think it was pointed out also that the difficulty both the Customs Service and the police have is that under the previous classification of those drugs in the Medicines Act the maximum fines certainly did not deter the criminals involved with the processing of those drugs. The maximum fine was $500 and the term of imprisonment was something like 3 months. Those penalties are certainly nowhere near to being the sorts of deterrents that are required. Under the new classification the penalties will increase to up to 8 years’ imprisonment for importation manufacture or supply to up to 7 years’ imprisonment for conspiracy to commit an offence and to up to 3 months’ imprisonment or a $500 fine or both for possession. Personally I think that that is a little too light given the fact that pure methamphetamine is highly addictive and is associated with bizarre psychological behaviour after its use. New Zealand has witnessed that particularly in the tragic circumstances in the Wairarapa where a young girl was strangled to death by an individual who had something like 50 convictions against him and who at the time was on P. That was a tragedy. 
There is absolutely no doubt that in terms of the jigsaw puzzle of getting the bits together to stop this epidemic in New Zealand this motion is very important. But it is clearly not the whole answer. Undoubtedly there needs to be far greater resourcing put into enforcing the law. There needs undoubtedly to be far more effort put by this Government into building up specific squads of specialised police officers and Customs Service agents to concentrate on the criminal activity that is occurring up and down the country. Undoubtedly one of the worrying things is the fact that the Crown research institute the Institute of Environmental Science and Research does not have the ability to process all the evidence so that it can be presented in the courts. In fact there is something like a backlog of over a year’s work. Again there is a huge need for the Government to ensure that the Institute of Environmental Science and Research is appropriately resourced so we do not have the ridiculous situation whereby criminals are left waiting and are finally discharged because of a lack of evidence being available to the courts. I hold the Government responsible for that wretched situation. 
It is also absolutely important to recognise that New Zealand has a huge drug problem and that it is not only a problem of P. Most important and first and foremost it is a problem of alcohol followed by nicotine and then by marijuana. But the extraordinary rise in the use of P throughout the country is hugely worrying. I note that Sweden is a country that decriminalised marijuana in the 1960s but re-criminalised it back in 1969. It is vital that in New Zealand we have absolutely strict rules and enforcement regarding illicit drugs such as P.