Ardern Jacinda: Misuse of Drugs Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Ardern Jacinda: Misuse of Drugs Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:674;Page:20203] 
JACINDA ARDERN (Labour) 
: 
 After all that anticipation it is my pleasure to respond I guess straight after the contribution from the Minister in the chair Associate Minister of Health Peter Dunne although I thought he was slightly overzealous in his rebuttal of the Opposition’s argument. We acknowledge the need to take action on the issue of synthetic drugs in particular but our concern—and I tell the Minister that it is fair for us to express that concern—is whether the Misuse of Drugs Amendment Bill is the most appropriate way to deal with this particular industry. 
We have some questions that I hope the Minister will address in his next response. First as some of the members have already raised was the possibility of reversing the onus feasible? I would be interested to hear via the Minister and via officials whether waiting for products to enter the market and then gazetting them and taking them off the shelves was the most efficient and best way to minimise harm that we could have opted for. Is there any scope or international precedent for reversing the onus before a product goes to market in this area? I think that is a legitimate question. It is unfair that the Minister has labelled some of our questions as naive rather than addressing them directly so I would be interested in his response. 
I have just been reading through the Minister’s Supplementary Order Paper 258 and I think it is legitimate for the Opposition to ask whether there could have been more time for analysis of such a hefty Supplementary Order Paper. I am interested in whether the Minister could share with us based on that Supplementary Order Paper the kind of time frame. From the moment a new product goes to market what kind of time frame might it take for a Minister by notice in the  
Gazette 
 to specify a substance preparation mixture or article as a temporary class drug? How long would a synthetic product be available on the market before we are able to get through that process? Have officials looked at the kind of harm that possibly would be done in the intervening period and how much of that synthetic product could be purchased? 
Finally I wonder whether the Minister could talk us through some of the criteria—which could be deemed to be subjective; I am sure some more in-depth analysis probably has been done around the issue—of whether a product poses a risk of harm to individuals or to society. What kinds of criteria are used here? Is it broad enough to ensure that we are picking up all of the products that Parliament intends we pick up? 
I say to the Minister that this is a genuine concern for us. I walk through the area in which I live and there are a small handful of retailers who sell Kronic. I make a point every time I see it of going in and asking them why they sell it and whether they perceive that it is beneficial to the community—which they operate in which they live in and in which they do their business—for them to be peddling such a product. I have to acknowledge I get a very coy response every time. One shop owner promised me: “Ma’am I will take the product off by next week.” before I said I would come in and do my own spot check again. But this is the extent to which we are going as individuals who have concerns about these products in lieu of being able to react quickly. I acknowledge that the Minister is trying to do that. I question only whether there is another way that we could have responded. 
The Minister also mentioned the fact that New Zealand is held in high regard internationally for the way in which we deal with these issues. I would still say though that in comparison more broadly with the drug debate very few countries are currently in step with what the UN Global Commission on Drug Policy has recommended. I have to say that the commission’s paper really broached some subjects that the New Zealand Law Commission has broached as well. To date many countries have stood back from and have been very reluctant to adopt a full harm-minimisation approach. I would be really interested to hear the Minister’s view on some of that international discussion that has gone on at a UN level because from my perspective New Zealand is quite out of step with what that commission has recommended. 
In my first contribution on this bill I told the House that many years ago I sat in on a presentation given by a Hawaiian expert on the issue of methamphetamine—the drug that has become a scourge in New Zealand. It was clear at that point that this was a very different drug we were dealing with primarily because of the ability for it to be manufactured domestically. So often in New Zealand we perhaps have been saved by our borders but not in the case of methamphetamine. We are suffering as a consequence. Of course the public looks to Parliament to respond to that scourge and our question has to be whether we have done all that we could do. 
One thing that the Labour Opposition has been asking for is some of the evidence around the various measures around tools in particular but also evidence on whether requesting that people get a general practitioner prescription in order to get drugs with pseudoephedrine from a pharmacist will have the full impact on this industry that Parliament would intend. It seems clear from the Health Committee report which I read with some interest that the Ministry of Health in particular was not able to quantify the knock-on effect of this policy. We were not able to financially estimate what kind of cost it would have for consumers. 
I acknowledge that of course we want to do all we can around methamphetamine but also we must take it upon ourselves to take an evidence-based approach. Surely that is the expectation of the public as well: not only that we do as much as we can but that we base it all on evidence. I am yet to be convinced from what I have seen come out of the select committee that enough work was done on this particular area. 
Let us not underestimate the impact that it will have on consumers. I appreciate the remarks that were made by Dr Paul Hutchison on the alternatives that exist. Of course I unfortunately am able only to rely on my own anecdotal evidence of having found some of the replacements for pseudoephedrine to be mere placebos in my mind. I do not think there is anything that quite does the job of a pseudoephedrine. My concern is that when we are trying to take a preventative approach and at the same time trying to ensure that as many people as possible do not have to go through the cost of visiting a general practitioner for something that is usually easily manageable we have not weighed up the burden of cost in that regard and that is most unfortunate. 
Looking at the issue of evidence but also coupling that with the new modern notion—when it comes to drug law—of harm minimisation I would have been incredibly interested to see that Parliament probably would say that in terms of harm to society the cost of methamphetamine of course is high and the cost of alcohol is high. But let us look in terms of the relative spend in society on police time and on police resources at how much is spent on methamphetamine versus say cannabis. How many people are imprisoned in our country for minor cannabis offences versus methamphetamine offences? What resource are we spending on the drugs that do the most harm to our communities relative to others? I just throw that up as something that we should be having more debate over. Parliament probably spends a relatively larger amount of time on the issues that cause the greatest harm—alcohol and methamphetamine—but is that reflected in the way that we are operating on a day-to-day basis via our law enforcement and via our imprisonment regimes? 
I think it is a legitimate question to ask and that ultimately is why the UN Global Commission on Drug Policy has started questioning whether our emphasis is in the right areas. If we are going to look at international evidence I think we should start with those trends. If we are going to be world leading that is the kind of response we need to be giving. It is bold and the community will need reassurance that we are still doing all of this in the best interest of our communities but at the moment we have to acknowledge that we are failing and we are failing abysmally. That is not to say that we cannot continue to use the tools that we have and do as much as we can. But again it needs to be evidence-based and on this particular area on these two issues contained in Part 1—the issue of tools and utensils and requiring a prescription in order to purchase pseudoephedrine—I am not convinced these are the big hitters that we need in order to crack the methamphetamine issue in New Zealand which ultimately must be the aim of this Parliament.