O'Connor GregGREG O'CONNOR (Labour—Ōhāriu): There's a book Chasing the Scream that should be required reading for every member in this House by a man called Johann Hari. He talks about the evolution of the war on drugs talks about all sorts of different drugs and he talks about of course Reefer Madness and how so often when we start talking about illegal drugs in particular immediately we go to some sort of reefer madness". So what we need to do is actually examine some facts around this. In that book one thing he does talk about is that in societies countries jurisdictions that have tried to liberalise drugs there's one drug where all the rules they apply really go out the window—and that's methamphetamine or P. The opiates generally we can handle and all those other drugs but P is out there on its own. It's interesting that as we make a decision we really understand the journey—relatively short journey—of this that we have arrived at New Zealand. Our waste-water testing around New Zealand—big towns small towns cities—is showing up vast amounts of methamphetamine. My own hometown Westport the locals affectionately call "Methport". And that's not an unfamiliar story.What actually happened in New Zealand? New Zealand had a heroin problem in the 1970s. The Mr Asia syndicate—some of you may have heard of it—was decimated so was the heroin supply. So we didn't have a white-powder problem in New Zealand till the early 1980s or really late 1980s early 1990s when the biker gangs—Hells Angels in New Zealand—sat at the top table in the United States; they started bringing the expertise in for this P. I was an undercover police officer and in the early days it was only really speed—it was the biker gangs that used these things; it wasn't something that was widely used.The difference with methamphetamine and P from every other drug is that it is made up of legal substances that ultimately become illegal when they're put together. And the commodity was the expertise—the meth cooks or the chemists who could make the P. Of course getting hold of those raw ingredients the core products the precursors of methamphetamine—or pseudoephedrine—was the most important factor.Now that brought about a big change in the crime scene in New Zealand because the people who were out doing the shopping for the pills the pill shoppers were largely Māori from the ethnic gangs or from the Polynesian gangs—they then provided this to the biker gangs. So you then had an amalgam: our crime groups that previously had always been at odds—violent odds often—then came together. So you actually had the basis of an industry based on pseudoephedrine and other legal substances things like red phosphorus and acetone—again all these things were legal.So we then came into the mid-2000s and I was president of the Police Association at the time—as Ms Costello will know she was my deputy at the time—and actually police officers were coming to us and telling us there's been a massive change in the crime scene. The dog handlers were saying "All of a sudden criminals are behaving very differently." And that was where we had a bit of a policy failure by both parties actually because we were still looking at a problem we had with heroin that hadn't been a problem for about 10 years.Anyway by the time we did actually make this substance illegal and it was difficult to get from the pharmacies it was actually too late. And yeah the Minister was actually right in that actually we do now have a situation where most of our product does emanate either in Europe or in Mexico or in Asia. However if we now legalise this substance make it available again we have to be very careful—we are playing with a very dangerous thing.Now I'm pleased to see it's going to go through select committee I think most parties are agreeing with that but I just hope there's some really informed debate there and we understand what we're playing with with this because it is potentially very dangerous—it is very dangerous. We could very well get back to the situation again where people who can't afford P—and despite the fact we are awash with the stuff it is actually relatively expensive still and if it becomes a cheap option to go and get hold of your pseudoephedrine to make this product again locally we will actually have the cycle starting again. So it's good that it's going to select committee but be very very wary of this product that we're dealing with. Thank you Mr Speaker."