Swarbrick ChlöeMISUSE OF DRUGS (MEDICINAL CANNABIS AND OTHER MATTERS) AMENDMENT BILLFirst ReadingCHLÖE SWARBRICK (Green): I move That the Misuse of Drugs (Medicinal Cannabis and Other Matters) Amendment Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Health Committee to consider the bill.Surely the point of our laws is to keep people safe and prevent them from suffering. Where people are already suffering it is to ensure that they get access to help or relief. So what happens when the law itself is responsible for suffering and prevents people's access to that help or relief? I believe it is Parliament's moral obligation to change that law or at the very least be brave enough to listen to those who it is hurting—to open our hearts and our minds. This bill is about how we treat our sick. It is about what happens to all of us when we find ourselves sick. It is about the help that we as a society can give and the help that we deny.This bill will provide affordable sustainable access to medicinal cannabis for people like Grace Yeats who I met earlier today on the Parliament lawn. At 10 years old Grace was diagnosed with a rare brain illness that left her unable to walk to eat to sit or to speak until she was prescribed a medicinal cannabis product Sativex. This treatment costs her mum Tracy a prohibitive $1100 a month. They currently rely on the generous charity of their community to afford it. Their family is asking for the ability to produce their own medicinal cannabis spray by extracting it from cannabis plants which would guarantee consistent affordable access and dignity. They are asking for your support on this bill.I'm sure all MPs have received similar stories this past week. I hope that they have read them. I hope that they've understood that there are thousands of Kiwis who are out of work for example due to pain meaning that they are often receiving Work and Income benefits; meaning that even if they are lucky to be able to jump through the Ministry of Health hoops they are faced with a cost that they are unable to meet; and meaning they either remain in pain or out of work or turn to the black market and become effectively criminals.I ask all in this House to put themselves in the position of the late Helen Kelly and her son Dylan Kelly who had to watch the pain and hurt his mother experienced in the last few months of her life. She found relief in medicinal cannabis which under current law—and indeed under the Government's proposed law which was voted through yesterday—would have made her a criminal. I know that there is support across this House in each and every party for this bill and I know that each and every one of us voted for the Government's bill just yesterday which in the immediate term serves only to create a criminal defence for those with a terminal illness. As many in their speeches pointed out yesterday that is not enough. It does not provide legal access let alone for those with chronic pain with muscle spasticity symptoms with epilepsy and with other illnesses and ailments that could benefit from the prescription of medicinal cannabis. This bill does that and all of us in this House know that.I acknowledge there's a few who have concerns about the potential ramifications of this bill. There have been murmurings that people will pretend to be ill that people will wander into their doctor's office faking a toothache and supposedly walk out with a prescription for medicinal cannabis. To address this point head-on: quite frankly it's ludicrous. New Zealand's health profession does not hand out pain medication willy-nilly. Anybody who has this concern should seek to place this bill before a select committee so that technical aspects and definitions can be borne out so that they can hear the evidence learn about how similar frameworks have worked in other jurisdictions and listen to the experiences of those suffering at the hands of an outdated law that makes them criminals for using the only medicine that works for them.The past few months have seen a handful of prosecutions for otherwise regular people who produce and supply cannabis products to the terminally ill or those in chronic pain. One of those people was Rose Renton who in recent times brought an 18000-strong petition to Parliament calling for safe affordable medicinal access to cannabis in the legacy of her son Alex Renton for whom she fought tirelessly to secure access to medicinal cannabis to stop his suffering and seizures near the end of his life. You do not find a solution to a problem by beating it with a blunt and broken instrument. The law here is broken and good kind otherwise law-abiding people are risking jail to help their neighbours and those in their community currently experiencing unnecessary suffering.A Curia Market Research poll commissioned by the New Zealand Drug Foundation in mid-2017 demonstrated that 78 percent of New Zealanders were in support of growing and/or using medicinal cannabis for any medical reasons such as to alleviate pain. That is an unequivocal majority of New Zealanders ready and willing to have that debate including a majority of voters from every single party in this House. Seventy-eight percent of National Party voters believe New Zealanders should have access to medicinal cannabis when they need it. That is in sharp contrast unfortunately to the publicly stated National Party caucus support. I would like to invite any National Party MPs who support this to stick their neck out and to be on the right side of history tonight. It will not pass without your votes. This is also a plea to those on this side of the House. This bill and the people it affects need your support as well.We have seen substantial legal development in comparable jurisdictions. The law in Australia has been liberalised to allow for greater access by way of doctor's consultation which is not dissimilar from the threshold of this bill. In Canada and certain states in the United States they for a very long time had the ability to grow their own plants for medicinal use and studies have quelled the moral panic by demonstrating no greater uptake in recreation or amongst young people as is often the catchcry of opposition to this bill.An incredibly thorough and reputable meta-analysis in 2017 entitled The Health Effects of Cannabis and Cannabinoids: The Current State of Evidence and Recommendations for Research— which I have circulated to members of this House via email—found that there was conclusive and substantive evidence that cannabis and cannabinoids are effective for the treatment of chronic pain for example in adults and are an effective treatment for chemotherapy-induced nausea and vomiting and for improving patient-reported multiple sclerosis spasticity symptoms. None of this of course is to ignore the reality that there is a risk of harm that comes with cannabis—the abuse of it. Notably however the risk of that harm is currently far higher with the class A narcotics that are currently prescribed to patients that may otherwise receive medicinal cannabis. A user cannot overdose on cannabis as is possible with morphine tramadol and other prescription drugs. Medicinal cannabis too does not come with the same host of side effects nausea and decreased quality of life that sometimes accompany these drugs.Friends of the late cricketer Martin Crowe noted that he self-medicated with liquid cannabis during his final days of aggressive lymphoma. Lady Deborah Holmes widow of Sir Paul Holmes has opened up about he turned to cannabis for pain relief in his final weeks dealing with prostate cancer. I wage without a shadow of a doubt that the stories I have told tonight are the tip of the iceberg. If we in this House are bold and brave enough to take this to select committee and open our arms our hearts and our minds to New Zealanders we will hear many more stories like this.We cannot pretend that this is not a problem. It is a problem because people are suffering. It is a problem because people presently risk going to jail for helping their friends and whānau. The status quo is not working and we as a House of Representatives have an opportunity—nay I would say a moral obligation—to forge a better path forward. I ask my colleagues in this House across all party lines to vote with their conscience and to allow the voices of the people of Aotearoa New Zealand to be heard at select committee.