Beaumont Carol: Misuse of Drugs Amendment Bill — Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeBeaumont Carol: Misuse of Drugs Amendment Bill — Third Reading[Sitting date: 04 August 2011. Volume:674;Page:20364. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]CAROL BEAUMONT (Labour): I rise to speak in the third reading of the Misuse of Drugs Amendment Bill and to say as my colleague Damien O’Connor did that Labour supports this bill but has a number of concerns about it. The bill itself will amend the Misuse of Drugs Act 1975 to reclassify ephedrine and pseudoephedrine as class B2 controlled drugs remove thalidomide as a class A controlled drug allow hazardous substances to be scheduled as restricted substances—and I will come back to that—and extend control over drug paraphernalia. Although Labour supports the bill we remain concerned that the bill as written would not achieve the aim of reducing the availability of methamphetamine P or reducing drug-related harm. Certainly the Government has taken a long time to get to the point of implementing this legislation given that John Key announced in October 2009 I believe an Action Plan on Methamphetamine with five prongs. I understand this bill to be prong No. 1. Here we are nearly at the election and we are on prong No. 1.The other issue of course is dealing with the ban on synthetic cannabis. This again is another instance where the Government has dithered on an issue. Associate Minister of Health Peter Dunne has talked tough about cleaning up the synthetic cannabis industry and it has largely been hot air. He dithered on this ban despite recommendations from the Law Commission and calls for action from the public and from sector groups. Labour raised the issue with Mr Dunne 6 months ago and at the time even provided him with examples of this legal high this synthetic cannabis.Mr Dunne has made a number of comments since that time. On 30 March he said: “I have instructed the Ministry of Health to begin the process of putting the necessary controls in place. I expect these changes to come into effect next year.” On 3 June on why he had not banned synthetic cannabis he said: “The evidence wasn’t strong enough to go that far and I didn’t want to go down that path and then be challenged in court and overturned. Because you end up looking a bit silly at that point.” Well here we are probably looking a bit silly in August. On 17 June on why the Law Commission recommendation to make suppliers prove the safety of synthetic cannabis could not be introduced until after the election he said: “We’re under certain statutory requirements and we have the complications of a general election occurring.” On 1 August more recently he said: “I felt we couldn’t wait … I wanted to make sure we had a mechanism that simply removes these items from the shelves completely.” In the course of those few months we have seen all sorts of variations on the theme from the Minister.Of course we now have in Part 1 new clauses 3A and 3B providing for the temporary class drug notice. This amendment will place a 12-month ban on the sale of all synthetic cannabis products and other new drugs to allow enough time for theMinister to obtain the necessary advice on the appropriate classification for these drugs. Labour supports that. This amendment provides that the Minister will publish a notice in theGazette specifying as a temporary class drug a substance preparation mixture or article that is not a class A class B or class C - controlled drug a restricted substance or a precursor substance but that the Minister is satisfied poses or may pose a risk of harm to individuals or to society. That will mean that the temporary class drug will be treated for most of the purposes of the Act as a class C1 controlled drug except as specified. The temporary class drug will not be added to any of the schedules of the Act while the notice is in force. While that temporary class drug notice is in force the Minister must seek advice as to its appropriate classification. A 12-month period will provide an opportunity for that.As I said Labour welcomes the decision to place that 12-month ban on synthetic cannabis products and other new drugs—as Mr O’Connor said there will undoubtedly be other drugs that come through—until there is more sustainable regulation of new substances. But we are concerned that the Government has taken too long to do this. Despite all the public protestations by Peter Dunne that the Government takes this issue particularly seriously it has dithered on it since last year. For example this bill has been buried on the Order Paper since November last year. In addition the Government has done little in response to the Law Commission’s report which was tabled in May of this year. So the Government’s so-called stronger additional amendments to current drug legislation will simply continue the decades-old ad hoc approach to drug abuse and control in New Zealand. We have been pushing for the Government to implement these stopgap measures so that no more harm is caused to individuals until the Ministry of Health has had time to research the effect of the drugs.I will talk about the response to harm because it worries me. Mr O’Connor alluded to the issue of alcohol harm. I am on the Justice and Electoral Committee which is dealing with the Alcohol Reform Bill. We have the research base on this issue; there is no doubt about that. Fantastic work has been done by the Law Commission on alcohol and the issue of harm. I want to compare it with the response to the synthetic cannabis issue and also the P issue. Really if we are looking at priorities we have to say that the alcohol issue is the priority in terms of drug harm. Certainly in comparison with all other forms of drugs including P synthetic cannabis and whatever else one likes alcohol is really significant because of the scale of the problem.Also unlike every other drug—we saw research in the select committee that compared all of the other drugs with alcohol—the interesting difference with alcohol is this: for most drugs the harm is to the individual. For the individual using P—certainly I will come back to P—or the individual using synthetic cannabis the harm is predominantly to the individual. In the case of alcohol more harm is actually done to other people. When we look at the harm caused by alcohol we see that yes there is harm caused to the individual—there is no question about that. Mr O’Connor went through some of the issues of addiction: cirrhosis other health issues—cancers mental health issues; you name it. But the harm to others is what is really significant with regard to the issue of alcohol: the harm to people subjected to violence by those who are drunk; the harm to people who are driving cars.Alcohol has some similarities I admit with P which is subject to the provisions of this bill. But I am very concerned that we have taken too long in dithering around on this bill and we are taking far too long in dithering around on the alcohol issue. As it stands sadly it looks likely that there will not be new legislation in place before the election. We will have a watered-down bill in response to the Law Commission’s report on alcohol and a first reading on that. I wanted to make that comparison.I come back to this bill specifically which the Deputy Speaker suggests that I do. I will talk about the issue of the importation and supply of drug utensils which is in clause 4 of this bill. Clause 4 broadens the scope of section 22 of the Act by prohibiting the sale importation and supply of drug utensils including pipes other utensils and identifiable components of a pipe or other utensil. The broadening of the scope of section 22 will mean the police will more effectively be able to deter the sale of drug utensils by removing the limitation that an offence occurs once a sale has been made—in other words if someone buys a pipe and then does something with it that is an offence. The police also understand that this amendment will remove the difficulties that the Customs Service has with restricting the importation of incomplete drug utensils and identifiable parts. Making it an offence to sell supply and import utensils would assist so that is the purpose of this clause.We are aware that the Health Committee received no evidence—I repeat no evidence—whatsoever that the changes in this clause would bring about a reduction in drug use which one would think is the important factor here. Fifty-nine of the 65 submitters opposed the proposed amendment to the utensils provisions. Many submitters stated that the utensils provisions may prove to be a minor inconvenience to those who import and sell utensils but that they are likely to respond with small changes of behaviour in order to evade the law. I will leave it there as that seems to be a relatively less useful part of this bill.