Chadwick Steve: Misuse of Drugs Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
Chadwick Steve: Misuse of Drugs Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
[Volume:674;Page:20066] 
Hon STEVE CHADWICK (Labour) 
: 
 I am going to take the last call because not all parties have spoken in the House and I think it is important that we take the full complement of calls today. I am disappointed in this bill the Misuse of Drugs Amendment Bill. I chaired the cannabis inquiry and we said then that we needed to have a comprehensive review of the law relating to drugs and this bill just does not cut it. There is a wonderful opportunity before the Government now with the Law Commission report  
Controlling and Regulating Drugs - A Review of the Misuse of Drugs Act 1975 
. I cannot see why other than the Prime Minister’s so-called war on drugs this bill has been brought before the House as a Government bill. 
I think this bill is small. I do not think it will make much difference at all because a lot of the precursors for the manufacture of P are from imported precursors of amphetamine and methamphetamine and that needs to be cut off at the border. But we must also have a far more comprehensive approach than this bill. For a Government bill to go through the stages of being referred to a select committee the select committee calling for responses then to be back in the House today is frankly in my view a rather cynical view of the tools the Government could have used if it truly wanted to look tough on crime and drugs. 
It was interesting to hear Mr Auchinvole say that the root of all evil used to be money but now it is drugs without even mentioning the impact of alcohol on society and the tools that this Government has had in its hands with the Law Commission report to implement comprehensive legislation to curb the harmful effects of alcohol. However I must congratulate Tariana Turia on her comprehensive approach to harm minimisation in relation to tobacco. We have one Minister in this Government doing good things about harm minimisation in relation to tobacco but the Government is actually playing around with being tough on drugs and it is not addressing the impact of alcohol to its full extent. It is now avoiding another opportunity to be tough on the impact of drug regulation and drug control in New Zealand today. I think that is a great pity. I think this Government has wasted 3 years because it has gone soft on bringing in what the Law Commission recommends is a comprehensive overhaul of drug reform. 
One comment I will challenge was made by Rahui Katene about the sale of precursors of P by pharmacists. When we were in Government pharmacists themselves were the first professionals to take a proactive stance and we congratulate the pharmacists who did that. It began in Rotorua where pharmacists clubbed together and put precursors under the counter. They would not sell packets and packets of precursors and common cold remedies to a person without checking out with other pharmacists as to whether they had been asked to sell five boxes of cold remedies. They were truly proactive professionals. That was a great initiative and it certainly saw a curbing of the domestic precursors of methamphetamine. I put on the record that pharmacists were the first proactive professionals and they set up a network. That model caught on in several other communities. I think we ought to look at the Pharmaceutical Society. In its submission it said that alternatives to pseudoephedrine were not as effective yet I heard members in Government say that there are plenty of other cold remedies that are just as effective. 
Also there is an unnecessary level of blockage in the bill—we would not have brought it in as a Labour Government—of having to have a prescription for common cold remedies from a doctor. That will cost people more so they might go without common cold remedies and spread infection. We looked at that from a public health perspective but I also think this will create another unwelcome workload pressure on pharmacists and general practitioners. General practitioners do not want to prescribe for the common cold. They have much more work to do and much higher-need patients coming to see them on a daily basis than having to prescribe for common cold remedies. I think that is an unnecessary barrier. Access to health care is something that we in Labour really do see as a primary public health imperative. I think that measure is silly. I think pharmacists were under way and should have been supported far more comprehensibly by the Government to carry on with their initiatives for getting precursors to methamphetamine out of sight off shelves and under the counter. I think that measure is rather stupid. 
I also congratulate Iain Lees-Galloway who will bring in an amendment looking at—what were they called— 
Iain Lees-Galloway 
: Utensils. 
Hon STEVE CHADWICK 
: —utensils that drug users use. Honestly that is just a waste of time. We learnt on the cannabis inquiry how nimble drug users are at making their own utensils. Drug users will create them out of anything—straws bits of glass teaspoons anything. I cannot understand what the Associate Minister of Health the Hon Peter Dunne was proposing to do about drug utensils. We will never stop them. It is an innovation in technology how users go out and create sometimes quite artful utensils for their enjoyment of these drugs which none of us think are safe to have. 
When members are in Government they are there to do the right thing and they are there to be bold. This bill does not have the boldness that John Key went out in 2009 and said he would have in this Government in its so-called war on drugs. This bill does not cut it. I think that is a lost opportunity which is really sad. 
I am now going around community health providers and mental health providers. There are two in our town of Rotorua that have lost their contracts and they are closing their doors in October of this year. I think that is a disgrace. They are Maori mental health providers. I have been in to see them. They are for people who suffer from chronic mental health problems—not always drug related. They are kept out of acute forensic units by community mental health providers which are shutting their doors because the primary focus is now on youth mental health. I do not say that it is wrong to look at youth mental health but I tell members to not close the doors on community mental health providers who are doing a wonderful job of keeping people well and their family members keeping them well and keeping them out of mental health institutions. 
I think the Prime Minister is no longer sticking to what he said in his five-pronged approach. He said that the Government would support families in the first place. The support for families in the first place is through access to community mental health provisions. That is where these people and their wider families are supported and awhi-ed about the problem that these people and these families have. That is the Whanau Ora approach which we will also support when we get back into Government. 
I think it is very sad that this opportunity is a lost opportunity and that 2½ years later this is the best that this Government can do. When we were in Government we set up the Expert Advisory Committee on Drugs. That was so it could be flexible nimble and fast at rescheduling. I absolutely applaud it for coming back with a rescheduled approach in this bill for the precursors to methamphetamine. But boy it is not as fast nimble or flexible as we intended that committee to be. Perhaps there has been other legislation before the House in 2½ years that was considered to have a higher priority. I think it is a sad opportunity lost. The Law Commission report calls for a comprehensive reform of drug use and of legislation relating to drug use in this country. We will be looking at that reform in our approach to managing the scourge of drugs in our society. We will support this bill—after that little rave; I feel better for getting it off my chest—because it is something but it is small and not too consequential. I am afraid that in 3 years we will be coming back to this House.