Seymour DavidDAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT): Thank you Madam Assistant Speaker. I rise on behalf of the ACT Party in opposition to this bill and the reason for that is called evidence. I can't believe I'm going to say this but the only decent contribution to this debate except for the one that's in progress perhaps was made by Chlöe Swarbrick. The reason I can't believe it is twofold. One is I'm just not used to praising Green MPs and two is I can't understand why the Green Party thinks that people should be able to buy and sell marijuana but their approach to regulation of business means you can barely sell or buy anything else.But the real contradiction is actually in the National Party putting this bill through. There seems to be a belief that with no evidence whatsoever they can reduce harm from drugs. I've just looked through the member in charge's contribution—there is no evidence. That's why Chlöe Swarbrick made the best speech because she was the only one that came to the House armed with facts and pointed out that the history of trying to fight drugs with stricter penalties has not been successful. The National Party comes to this House and says We want to expand sentences but we have no proof that expanding sentences will keep our kids safe or reduce harm from drugs." That's the problem.I might add that there's a political problem with it because we are starting to witness a National Party guided by its backbenchers with this kind of Ronald Reagan moral majority approach to social issues that is more at home in Alabama than Ashburton. It's a far cry from the John Key who could mince down the catwalk at the Pride Parade in his lilac T-shirt and effortlessly win urban liberal voters and I worry for my erstwhile allies in Government and hopefully my colleagues in Government again that they are taking that approach. But that's what it looks like to the average New Zealander tonight.We need to reduce drug harm. It is a tragedy that we have substances being made and sold to vulnerable New Zealanders and harming their development and leading to deaths when we have alternatives that could be better. But it's also a tragedy to recognise that the bill put before us is exactly cut from the same mould as the legislation that formed those substances. You see nobody in an open market would ever purchase synthetic cannabis if that was the option available and there were other options there. The simple fact is that these drugs are created by prohibition. The only reason it's viable to make and sell them is that the natural alternative has been prohibited by this House and the National Party comes along with this suggestion that maybe if we do a bit more of the thing that created the problem we'll solve it. How crazy is that?So I won't be supporting this bill. What I will be doing is supporting a rational approach to keeping New Zealand's kids safe from drugs and that goes a little bit like this: we need to first of all ask the question "Has prohibition been a success?" That is how you get to deciding whether or not to support a bill that would increase penalties for people buying and selling drugs. Then we might ask what other options are available. This is just simple problem definition option generation and cost-benefit analysis—how any Government should make laws and regulations. We might ask ourselves what is happening when our friends around the world in Canada and Colorado start to try different approaches where they treat drugs as a health problem and don't just try and force it underground and have people taking clandestine substances from criminal elements getting upsold on to worse drugs. That's what our friends around the world are trying.Let me concede something to the proponents of prohibition: there are some points being raised. It may not be all rosy but it's a debate that is well worth having a modern debate about how we keep our kids safe from the harms of drugs because we're not doing very well now and we're not going to do better just by changing the sentences. That's the kind of debate that we should be having. Sadly we've had this retrograde step in the form of Simeon Brown's member's bill and for that reason I proudly oppose it so we can have a more enlightened drug debate. Thank you Madam Assistant Speaker."