Pallett SarahSARAH PALLETT (Labour—Ilam): Thank you Madam Speaker. Thank you so much. It's with pleasure that I stand this evening as the final speaker for the Drug and Substance Checking Legislation Bill (No 2). It's always fun to have the last word. But before I start with wrapping up what we've heard before us this evening I have to first begin by standing in defence of my colleagues Dr Leavasa and Dr Sharma who I would like to point out are doctors in name because they have clinical medical practices. Both have lived clinical experience of treating people who have experienced drug overdoses and the side effects of taking MDMA that was not so they are very familiar with the effect of this legislation and why we are standing here in support of it. But to wrap up this bill allows drug and substance - checking services to operate with legal certainty and the drugs we're talking about are MDMA cannabis LSD ketamine magic mushrooms amphetamines methamphetamines etc. [Interruption]ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jenny Salesa): Order! Order! We will hear this speech in silence thank you very much members on my left. SARAH PALLETT: Thank you so much Madam Speaker. So what we're doing is testing to see whether the drug is fundamentally what the person thinks it is and I'd like to start by just highlighting the fact that I think most of us agree on—yes I hope we do—and that's that no drug use is the safest option. So when we're looking to see if the drug is what we think it is it could be sugar—and when I say we" I beg the House's pardon. I'm not referring to us here in this House. We could be looking at sugar plaster of Paris or ketamine being sold as MDMA or cocaine. It's really—Simon Court: Oh what a rip-off. SARAH PALLETT: Yeah it is a rip-off. Thank you I do agree. It would be a rip-off. You would feel cheated but wouldn't you be fortunate if that were the only thing that you were experiencing because what you don't want is to be getting synthetic cathinones. It's really important when you're doing this testing to give advice because advice is resulting in information and harm reduction. Advice allows people to make informed decisions. Then of course the other purpose of these testing stations is to safely dispose of the samples being tested and also of the drugs themselves if they're surrendered. Why do we do this? Not to put too fine a point on it we do it because people die when they take contaminated drugs and I do absolutely 100 percent agree that drug use is not a safe activity and not one that we want to encourage. In New South Wales tragically we saw that six young people died in 2018-19; in New Zealand we've seen 13 young people hospitalised due to contaminated MDMA and a Canadian study has shown that about a quarter of samples they found when tested were contaminated. But if we'd like to look at the amazing work being done by KnowYourStuffNZ looking at the years 2019-20 they tested 1368 samples—according to their excellent website which I'd like to refer you to for further information—and 86 percent were as expected but not safe-use drugs. We're not saying that drugs are safe here. Two percent of those were cathinones: n-ethylpentylone which can cause death and mass hospitalisations. Two percent of them were mixtures. They also found high-dose mixtures so they had two or more doses when only one was expected and it doesn't take a rocket scientist to work out that that's not the best plan. So when people are tested—and we're looking at about 78 percent I think of people who are attending festivals who are planning to use drugs at those festivals. So it's quite a few people and interestingly only 4 percent of those would be first-time users. Testing resulted in 68 percent of them altering their behaviour. They were either taking less declining to use the drugs or deciding not to mix them. So this pragmatic piece of legislation substantially reduces harm. Ninety-seven percent of people that attend festivals and 97 percent of those that don't think that this legislation is a good idea. Medical personnel think that this law change is a good idea because they recognise that young people will take drugs even if they're illegal. Festival organisers themselves have had far fewer serious incidents resulting from drug consumption. But what I have to end with is the words of KnowYourStuff—which we would all agree with I think—which are "that the safest option is always not to take the substance." With that I commend this bill to the House."