Robertson Grant: Misuse of Drugs Amendment Bill — Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeRobertson Grant: Misuse of Drugs Amendment Bill — Third Reading[Sitting date: 04 August 2011. Volume:674;Page:20353. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]GRANT ROBERTSON (Labour—Wellington Central): It would be fair to say that I stand in the third reading debate as a reluctant supporter of the Misuse of Drugs Amendment Bill—not because I in any way want to be seen to be endorsing the production of methamphetamine in New Zealand or in any sense countenancing or accepting the great harm caused by P in our community. I totally accept the need for us as a Parliament to work together on the scourge that is P and to make sure that we minimise harm as my colleague Iain Lees-Galloway has said across the spectrum of drug abuse. Those things we take on board.But as we look through the provisions in this bill I am concerned. As somebody who was not for the most part on the Health Committee when the bill was being dealt with I ask myself whether this is the best use of Parliament’s time when it comes to dealing with questions about the Misuse of Drugs Act. I think we need to make sure that when we are making changes like this the changes are long-lasting durable and actually modernise law when we should modernise law. The Minister has taken the decision to use a stopgap-style approach. At one level we can support that and Labour is supporting the bill because we recognise there is a need to do something here. But at another level the fact that the Government has dragged its heels is intensely frustrating as is the fact that we have a Law Commission report available to us that provides the basis for a full rewrite of the Misuse of Drugs Act yet we are not making progress on that.I will speak about three sections of the bill. The first of those is the reclassification of ephedrine and pseudoephedrine. Again we know that the precursors to methamphetamine are ephedrine and pseudoephedrine. We on this side of the House realise the importance of being able to deal with the supply of those precursors. But as my colleague Iain Lees-Galloway has said 90 percent probably—maybe 80 percent or with a big stretch 70 percent—of that precursor product is imported into this country. It is not being bought across the counters of pharmacies. That is the truth. As somebody I might say who is unable to use the product phenylephrine I find myself struggling to find a cold remedy available to me when suffering from a cold as I am today and have been for the last week. Pseudoephedrine products are important to people and I acknowledge that they will still be available via prescription. But the question we have to ask ourselves when we make law like this is whether this position is the best we can come to.I know that in the select committee the Pharmaceutical Society of New Zealand stated in fact that the alternatives to pseudoephedrine were not as effective and that they leave many people needing to visit a general practitioner for a prescription for symptomatic relief. That exposes them and others to further infection and poses an unwelcome increase in workload for general practices. So the truth is that the expert evidence—indeed including evidence from some experts within this House—is that pseudoephedrine products tend to be those that have the most effective results. There are alternatives to moving to a prescription-based approach for pseudoephedrine and ephedrine products including having models trialled in some parts of the country where there are pharmacy systems to detect and report inappropriate purchase. Those models could be tried. So it is reluctantly that I say yes we must do something about this. We do not want to stand in the way of that; there are elements of this bill that are good. But I look at this and ask whether this is the end result. I have a feeling that when we returnto these matters as part of an overall review of the Misuse of Drugs Act we might find that things change.I will speak briefly about the Supplementary Order Paper that the Minister has brought in about the creation of these temporary class drug notices. That is obviously the stopgap measure that the Minister has brought in to try to do something about products such as Kronic and others that we have had a lot of publicity about in recent times. I spoke in the Committee stage of the debate about the fact that I am concerned there will be loopholes in this legislation that mean that despite the best efforts of the Minister products with slightly different chemical make-ups will appear on the market. The Minister will clamp down upon them via hisGazettenotice—7 days and then it is off the shelf—but then lo and behold another product will appear with a slightly different chemical make-up and the whole process will have to be repeated over and over again. I do not foresee that this legislation will remove those products from the market but as Iain Lees-Galloway has said it will limit them and it will prevent them from being available in so many places and from being as visible as they are now. Therefore some good will be done but I believe that the loopholes will be such that there may not actually be the amount of restriction of supply that the Minister would like to see.Overall though what this highlights is the desperate need to change the onus of proof about a product a synthetic cannabinoid product so that before it enters the market in New Zealand it is properly tested and assessed. It is in my view ridiculous that we have a situation where products such as these psychoactive substances such as these can enter the New Zealand market without any kind of testing. The onus of proof must be turned on to the producers of these products so that we do not continue to repeat this situation. When it comes to temporary class drug notices I join with my colleagues in supporting the fact that a stopgap measure is available but I am concerned that there are loopholes and that the possibility of stockpiling continues to exist. As my colleague—again Iain Lees-Galloway—has said let us be honest about this provision. Let us be honest about the fact that it is not going to rid the country of synthetic cannabinoids. What it is going to do is limit the way in which they are sold and perhaps the amount of them that is available. We support the provision because that is a good thing but it is most certainly not the end of the story.The other matter I will particularly address is the question of the long-term future of drug law in New Zealand. I believe that it is the responsibility of this House to consider today and as soon as possible how we can come up with a whole new piece of legislation on the question of the Misuse of Drugs Act. As other speakers have said during other stages of this debate the Misuse of Drugs Act is from another time. It is from a time when different drugs were available. The availability of drugs in total was completely different. The Law Commission recognised that in its report tabled in this House on 3 May. That report has 144 recommendations in it. It actually includes making the possession of drug utensils legal which is an interesting point given what we are going to be doing in this bill today. Should we come to the situation where we decide to implement the Law Commission’s report we may well be undoing elements of what we are doing today.But the report also calls for a more lenient approach to social dealers and those caught with small amounts of illegal drugs for personal use. The Law Commission President Justice Grant Hammond said that although the law must continue to impose heavy penalties on those who profit from the manufacture and sale of illicit drugs there are compelling arguments for adopting a more holistic focus to individual drug offending. To simplify that I say that the criminal element around drugs is in the supply. We need to have a harm-minimisation approach when it comes to use andpersonal use and we need to ensure that we address the real crime of drugs rather than create crimes in an unnecessary focus on some of that individual personal use. This is not just me; this is the Law Commission. I think it is vitally important today as we pass what everyone in this House is acknowledging as a stopgap measure that we acknowledge there is a need for a fundamental reform of drug law in New Zealand. The Law Commission has given us the blueprint for that; I am disappointed that the Government is not moving forward more quickly on it.On this side of the House we know that we need to take a responsible approach and send a signal to the community that the purveyors of synthetic cannabinoids need to know that their products represent a risk and that they will not enter this market without being watched closely monitored and removed where possible. But I call upon the House to ensure that we can with all speed possible return to this House with a bill that properly addresses the misuse of drugs and that creates a modern law rather than this kind of stopgap measure.