Clark DavidHon Dr DAVID CLARK (Minister of Health): Thank you Madam Chair. I just want to respond to some of the questions that have been raised in particular those raised by the member Simeon Brown. The member asked why we used the legislative process for classifying the drugs as class A rather than an Order in Council process. I want to advise the member that the Order in Council process officials have reminded me can take up to a year. It is something that goes through a select committee process after it's issued by the Minister and then after consideration by a select committee it is confirmed by the House by affirmative resolution. So you know that does take a period of time. This way meant that we had a clear time line when we put the legislation in.It's also true of course that the peddlers of these substances as has often been covered in the debate change the nature of them swiftly and these substances are known to be harmful. When we announced our response as a Government we also announced at the same time that we were going to put funds into a drug early warning system—I want to thank the Drug Foundation for their contribution to that piece of work—and also have money put aside for swift community responses to outbreaks where it was clear that users—desperate people on the street—were having really negative effects from these drugs. We know as I said at the outset that there have been provisionally many dozen deaths linked to these drugs so far. So whilst these drugs may or may not be frequent on the streets now—we think less likely than they were earlier—they're still very dangerous drugs. So it's still appropriate to classify them as class A and in fact this may be the most efficient way of doing it.The second question the member raised was: will the temporary drug class order for a year be long enough? I would think ordinarily yes it would. You know it's going to be long enough for the committee to meet and for us then to change the class of a drug. I'm sure a temporary order could be sought subsequently again if that was needed. So it's to enable swift responses to new substances coming into the country.The member Michael Woodhouse raised a question about Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) 288 and asked what it meant. I did explain that in my opening comments but I appreciate the member may not have been in the House so I'll just repeat that—Hon Michael Woodhouse: Wasn't listening—yeah.Hon Dr DAVID CLARK: —sorry may not have heard that. So I'll just repeat that the reason that that SOP is there is to clarify because some of the submissions to the select committee had assumed that what was being weighed up here was a private interest for the individual and the fact that they might benefit from treatment against the wider public interest when in fact it's actually the public interest which is the overriding test as to whether that person should be guided towards therapy. For example if that person had resisted some kind of therapeutic approach previously and was engaged in domestic violence the police clearly would be likely to then pursue a prosecution because that would be in the public interest and the individual's private interests would be secondary. So it's really just to clarify because it seemed that some of the submissions were not clear on that point. It's belts and braces if you like but we think belts and braces are a good idea if that means that everybody understands the intent of the law in the same way. So I do repeat that but I appreciate the member may not have caught that at the time.So those are the questions that have been raised up until now in the debate. I shall let the debate continue.