Wall Louisa: Psychoactive Substances Bill — Second ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeWall Louisa: Psychoactive Substances Bill — Second Reading[Sitting date: 27 June 2013. Volume:691;Page:11397. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]LOUISA WALL (Labour—Manurewa):It is my pleasure to take a call on the Psychoactive Substances Bill in this second reading. I am also a very proud member of the Health Committee which as my colleague Iain Lees-Galloway has said has worked very very collaboratively to bring to the House a piece of legislation that I think we are all very proud of. I want to acknowledge the Hon Peter Dunne and the leadership that he has shown in bringing this piece of legislation to the House and to also thank him for tabling a petition on behalf of 3533 members of the Manurewa community. In acknowledging that petition being tabled I want to acknowledge Jan Lim who owns a chemist’s on Great South Road very near a legal high shop that was established 2 months ago I believe to dump these products as this legislation progressed through the House. In acknowledging Jan I want to acknowledge Dr Tim Wilkinson who owns and manages the health centre next door to this legal high shop and who has worked very hard to be a representative and an advocate of our community. I want to acknowledge Mr Youkhanis who is the barber in the store next to the legal high shop in my Manurewa electorate and also young people such as Meliana Ngata who is the chair of the Manurewa Youth Council and Warriors of Change representatives Benjamin Tamarua and Susan Fotunga who organised a march for the community of Manurewa to come out against this legal high shop but in support of the Psychoactive Substances Bill.The main point that I want to make in my contribution really is about the select committee process and the number of changes or amendments to the original legislation that we have worked so collaboratively on. I would like to highlight for example that in the original purpose statement for this particular bill nowhere did we state that this bill was about protecting the health of and minimising the harm to individuals who use psychoactive substances. The committee came to the conclusion that actually this was about instituting a regulatory regime but coupled with that the heart of this legislation was to make sure that New Zealanders in the consumption of these products were going to be safe. That I think is a very fundamental point about this piece of legislation because these substances are not drugs. These substances are not foods. These substances were pretty much unregulated. They were nothings that a whole lot of people capitalised on packaged up and sold to New Zealanders. The reality of these substances was that they were hurting our community. Technically I think they were poisons. So the ability of the select committee yes to institute a regulatory regime but fundamentally to say that at the heart of this legislation we are going to protect the health and safety of New Zealanders is something that needs to be acknowledged.I certainly received and I know that many of the Health Committee members received communications particularly from mental health workers who were very concerned about their ability to engage constructively particularly with young people who were going through counselling because they had addictions. The fact was that these substances were legal substances so they may have got off the drugs but they were getting into these psychoactive substances. And also one of the things that we made very clear was that there could be a demand on public services in terms of mental health and addiction services. We particularly wanted to highlight that that was something that the select committee had obviously heard and was concerned about. So we have given notice to the health Minister and to the health sector that that is a possible consequence of this bill going through and regulation of these particular products.I also want to highlight a couple of other substantive debates that we had. One of them was around the age of purchase. It was very interesting because again all the professionals who understand addiction and who understand the development of our brains are particularly concerned about how these substances engage or interact with young people’s consumption. Again we are all very clear that we should actually have an age of purchase of either 20 or 21. It did I guess inspire a lot of heated discussion around the table within the context of a bill that we had approved just recently as a Parliament in terms of the alcohol consumption age. Fundamentally I think what we have done is reinforce a decision that this Parliament had previously made. I have to say that I stood on the side of making the age of purchase either 20 or 21 based on the scientific evidence.At the end of the day as you will see and as people will see if they read this bill what we have primarily done is said that these psychoactive substances fit into the category of either alcohol or tobacco which is what a lot of the initiatives or amendments to this legislation have replicated. In doing that we then had to be consistent. We could not say that psychoactive substances were worse and so they deserved a higher age of consumption because from our perspective alcohol tobacco and psychoactive substances—all of these products—have detrimental effects particularly on young people. So to the Manurewa Youth Council and to the young people of Manurewa who were very clear to both me and Cam Calder that we should be advocating for an increase in the age of purchase that is the rationale. Hopefully they will understand that that is the position that we came to.The other heated discussion we had was about whether or not we should provide a mechanism for the police to engage with young people under the age of 18 who are in possession of a substance whether it be an approved substance or an unapproved substance. What we did in the end was to enable the police—through them coming to the Health Committee—to be empowered to engage with young people and basically to confiscate any psychoactive substance that they have in their possession. To enable them to do that we had to create an offence but we as a select committee were very clear that it would not be a criminal offence. We do not want young people to be criminalised for being in possession of psychoactive substances. But what we did want was for the police to have the tool to engage with young people. It was our hope that in engaging they would actually look at whether or not health or social services were an appropriate medium. At worst-case scenario there would be an infringement for possession but it will not be a criminal offence.I would like just briefly to touch on the aspects of sponsorship and advertising. The select committee was very clear that any retailer or manufacturer of psychoactive substances would not be able to advertise the product or provide sponsorship of the product that then puts the product out into the market. Advertising particularly isrelevant to the shop in the heart of our Manurewa community the High Zone shop so we were very clear and we insisted on a specific provision clause 53A which sets out restrictions on what retailers can call shops. From our perspective that has been specifically put in to ensure that High Zone shops or legal high shops cannot advertise and establish themselves in communities like ours. The other thing that we were very clear about was that local people—our local boards—have to be involved in the decision making about where these shops are established. We made specific mention of these shops not being near schools not being able to have a detrimental effect on young people particularly. What I say to Angela Dalton who is the chair of the Manurewa Local Board to Colleen Brown to Simeon Brown and to Toa Greening who all made submissions on this bill is that this piece of legislation will give you the tools so that you can protect our communities.I want to thank once again my fellow committee members. It was a very constructive process. I look forward to this bill being passed as soon as possible because we have to get these products off the shelves and out of our communities. I commend the bill to the House. Thank you.