Andersen GinnyVIRGINIA ANDERSEN (Labour): There is significant agreement across the House on one thing: that New Zealand is confronted with an issue that is causing large-scale damage to our community. We agree on that. Where we don't agree is on how we respond to the issue that we face. And here's the difference: over here we believe that you cannot address any drug issue in a piecemeal way and it is ironic that the members opposite have used the word naive" to talk about the previous member because I believe it is naive simply to consider that supply control alone will cause this problem to be minimised when the past has shown us as we've heard tonight that that has got us into this mess in the very first place.We believe that you cannot address any issue around drugs with supply control alone. Any drug strategy around the world has three strong components: supply control which this bill does; demand control which looks at therapeutic and treatment; and harm reduction which acknowledges that a level of drug use goes on and that that needs to be done in the safest way possible while we get people into support and treatment. These need to be done simultaneously—at the same time—in order for there to be any success in this space and what this bill does is it pulls out just one and that's why it will fail just as the primary legislation failed in the past. Dealers gangs users pushers people who are homeless people on the streets are part of the same problem. They are part of the same complex web and the view that this can be pulled out as one issue—supply control—is naive and it will fail.We should learn from the mistakes of the past. We should learn that there was an attempt in this House to regulate highs and that a moral panic that gave us cold feet and made a complete U-turn drove these drugs underground created a black market and made these substances far more harmful than they ever were when they were known as legal highs. And that is where the deaths occurred that is where people lost their lives and this bill is no different. It drives it further underground.The last Government had the opportunity to completely overhaul the Misuse of Drugs Act. We had the Law Commission tasked under the former Labour Government in 2007 to take a good look at that Act. In 2011 they reported back and the National Government refused to do anything on it. They carved out one simple Act—the Psychoactive Substances Act—and that is the reason we are in this mess today. They had the opportunity to do something and if they had acted back then we would not be standing here today discussing this mess that we're confronted with now. In 2011 they did not do it and that should have been done. By playing politics it has just caused harm and further damage to our communities and that is why this bill will not make any difference.I sat on the Justice Committee and I heard submissions from 78 people from 58 of those who were opposed and I heard the stories of people who take these drugs every day because they have no hope because they have nothing else going on and it is a sad and debilitating place to be in this world. And by thinking about whether just increasing penalties is going to alleviate the lives of those people it will not because the truth is that as long as synthetics are cheaper than cannabis people will continue to take them and they will continue to die in New Zealand without that help.The departmental report clearly acknowledges that increasing penalties do not provide a corresponding deterrent: "While there is strong evidence for the general deterrent power of a criminal justice system increases in the severity of penalties do not necessarily produce a corresponding increase in deterrence." And that is the truth. That is what the research shows us.The political game that we must do something; that is the same push we hear from those members opposite—that we must do something; that push and that imperative; that quick ability. It gives you a photo in the paper it gives you some quick political points but it fails to understand and address those underlying problems—the underlying problems that are driving that. Addiction poverty and mental health: those are the issues that are contributing to this problem being around and until those are addressed we will continue to see people dying in New Zealand. It is not right that we can simply pull out and by changing it from two to eight years have any hope of trying to fix this issue. It digs us deeper into a hole and it plays politics with people's lives and I refuse to support something that trivialises life in such a way."