Smith StuartSTUART SMITH (National—Kaikōura): Thank you Mr Chair. This is an interesting section. Unfortunately this is the first opportunity I've had to speak on this bill but I'd have to start by qualifying that actually I'm a very liberal person in this space. I'm not personally against the consumption of cannabis particularly for medicinal purposes but I think that we need a good framework to deal with it and I don't believe this is. I think this bill is really akin to a legislative blank cheque and I think that's been well covered by my colleagues to the left of me—in their seating not necessarily in their political spectrum.But what I don't get in this clause 5A is it says that a person who requires palliation may procure possess consume smoke or otherwise". It is my understanding that the main thing for a code of ethics for a medical practitioner is to first do no harm—"Primum non nocere." So on the basis of that how does smoking get into this bill? If we're talking about medicinal purposes while I accept that things like chemotherapy certainly do do some harm on balance when all the evidence is looked at while it does some harm to the body it is actually doing more good than harm therefore it is a medicine and therefore it is able to be used in a considered way. But when you're smoking loose-leaf cannabis where is the balance in this to allow it?I'm not a medical practitioner but I'm not aware of any medicine being delivered by smoking. My question to the Minister is: what work did he do or his department do to put smoking into this clause with that main thought being what potential harms that smoking does? We spend an inordinate amount of money in New Zealand trying to get people off smoking tobacco because of the harm it does and there's new evidence coming out now that smoking cannabis also does quite a lot of harm to the body so where was the work done on this to put that into this clause? I think that we as legislators also have a duty of care and we should not be passing laws that allow people to do harm in effect to try and treat another harm—that is their medicinal use for them in the first place.Now my colleague talked about a medicinal marijuana card or cannabis card. Certainly the places I'm aware of that allow medicinal cannabis all require a medicinal cannabis card and I think that it seems crazy that we wouldn't have one. To have it handed over to a bunch of officials who may well consult with the public—we don't allow other regulations to be made in that source. We give a steer to those regulation-making powers so that they fit within a framework that Parliament has considered.Now I know one of the previous speakers said "Well it should go out to full public consultation." Well this is the first part of public consultation with the elected members in this Chamber. It is our role to try and get something in the legislation that is fit for purpose and that gives a good steer on how this might be managed and I don't believe this bill does that at all. I was very very green on this space. I didn't really know a lot about it until Dr Reti put his particular bill up and we all had an opportunity to learn a great deal because of the work that Dr Reti has done in this space.As I said I'm quite liberal on this but I think if you're going to make a law you've got to make a good one. It should be incumbent on us to actually first do no harm ourselves and I think that this bill is actually leaving it wide open for us to do a lot of harm and particularly when we are sanctioning and saying "OK don't smoke tobacco. We're spending a lot of money to stop you smoking tobacco because it's going to do you a lot of harm but actually in this case here we're going to send you another message: the public please if you're feeling you need medicinal cannabis it's OK to smoke it." We are effectively sending a mixed message and I don't approve."