O'Connor Damien: Misuse of Drugs Amendment Bill — Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeO'Connor Damien: Misuse of Drugs Amendment Bill — Third Reading[Sitting date: 04 August 2011. Volume:674;Page:20361. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon DAMIEN O’CONNOR (Labour): It is great to speak on the Misuse of Drugs Amendment Bill. My colleague the Hon Rick Barker just asked how good I was on drugs as if that was a qualification to speak on this. Well I can confess that I am addicted to caffeine I have used nicotine and I am an irregular user of alcohol—but none of the other substances that we are trying to reduce the harm from today. But it is I think pertinent to remind ourselves that we are all in some way dependent upon drugs. Most of us hopefully use them sensibly but we are trying through the passage of this bill—and Labour supports the bill—to reduce harm from drug abuse.We have heard lots of wonderful words and rhetoric in the House about what we are trying to achieve here and I spoke earlier on in this debate in the Committee stage to try to bring things into balance. There is the immediate assumption that in trying to reduce harm from drugs we are trying to protect young people from themselves. That isa very noble gesture for this House but the reality is that young people are smarter know more and probably see the future in a different light from most of us here. So our attempts—and there have been many over the years—to regulate drugs have been futile for the most part. That is not to say that Parliament should not make a judgment set a line in the sand and attempt to reduce harm. But it should do that in a way that is effective not in a way that just satisfies our conscience or appeases the relatively uninformed public who make quick judgments on things like P. P is a horrific drug that has terrible side effects and direct effects on both the users and their families and on communities.But when it comes to synthetic cannabinoids we are not quite sure what the manufacturers might come up with next so the bill is an attempt to stay ahead of the innovation the evolution and the creativity of drug manufacturers. Many of them try to connect with youth because they see an obvious market there. For the most part manufacturers are just commercial entrepreneurs who see an opportunity and get out and sell their wares often with little or no regard for the effects of that. We have seen it before through what we call party pills. We saw harm and we changed legislation; we had to change the law of the land to try to stay ahead of that problem. Again we are trying now to regulate I guess the precursors to other drugs. More recently of course a synthetic cannabinoid—I will not use the brand name—has come on to the market and we hear that it is causing an adverse effect on many young people who use it.The point I have to make again is that there is before the Government a Law Commission report on alcohol which has been sitting around for too long. The Government does not want to tackle it because it is an election year so it has parked it. The harms that we know occur every day every week and every year in terms of road deaths road injuries child abuse domestic violence and cirrhosis—you name it—have many many clearly researched identified and well-known downsides in relation to the abuse of alcohol. This is not about the sensible use but the abuse of alcohol and there are people who of course become dependent. But in my view we have been totally unprepared under-resourced and uncommitted to addressing the problems of treatment for those people who need it.Coming back to the Misuse of Drugs Amendment Bill I have to say that dependency whether habitual or physiological—Chris Auchinvole: Addictive.Hon DAMIEN O’CONNOR: —or addictive—means that in all ways people’s lives are affected and we have to put in place treatment programmes. In my view the industries themselves particularly in relation to alcohol and tobacco should be levied and should be paying for the treatment programmes we need up and down this country. We have not gone so far as to do that and the commission I think has been a little vague in that area. The commission has made a lot of recommendations but this Government has sat on its hands and refused to do anything about them.So in supporting the passage of this legislation let us not get over-excited. Let us not praise the Government for its wonderful stance in reducing harm from drugs when it is dealing in relative terms with a small issue. It is quite an acute issue for many people but it is a small one compared with the underlying issues of alcohol and tobacco. I acknowledge—I do not like doing this—the Government’s efforts in relation to tobacco. In fact it hiked the price. It is looking it says at displays at point of sale and I applaud that. We need to make progress on that because again we know the harms from tobacco. We know the harms from alcohol but the Government is doing nothing. We know the harms from P from other class B2 controlled drugs and from class A drugs and we are attempting with the passage of this legislation to stay ahead of those.I think the provisions the Minister has come up with are a good way forward. They do not ban outright but lead to control. Then of course there is prosecution for manufacture or supply of something we know to be harmful. It is no good passing bills in this House that do not have widespread support and cannot have sensible implementation. We simply run into the problem of the implementation creating a whole lot of illegal activity and giving another huge challenge for the police. We ultimately need better education. We need to say to consumers and potential consumers that if they might be considering consuming—be it smoking drinking sniffing or whatever—they need to know exactly what they would be taking on board their bodies and what the potential harms might be from that. So better education and better identification of all the ingredients are really important and I think this bill goes down that path. The Minister will have discretion to intervene; that is always a dangerous thing when we have a National Government in place. I am not quite sure what drives its decision making at times but although giving discretion to a Minister gives flexibility it also depends on the wisdom of the Minister and the advice given to him or her.Again the passage of the legislation is our best attempt at this point to move forward on this issue but let us not get too excited and think we have reduced harm from drugs in this country when the big elephant in the room has yet to be addressed. I say that there are hundreds and thousands of people around the country who are disappointed that alcohol has not been moved on before now. So it is with some enthusiasm that I support this bill but again make the note in this House that I do not feel this is a significant step forward. It is a step sideways. It is a new attempt to address a problem. But I know that we will be back in the House in a short time I am sure trying to address some other smart thing that has been created out in the market place. If we have a Government that is committed ideologically to the market providing the signals and the answers then we will be in trouble. I support the passage of this legislation and note that we need to see a bit more in the House.