Craig LizDr LIZ CRAIG (Labour): Thank you. It's a pleasure to rise and speak in support of this bill because of the huge impact that synthetic drugs are having in our community. Having worked in A & E in the past I was just reflecting on a story from Radio New Zealand in October last year. What they were talking about was the struggles that Christchurch Hospital was having in dealing with synthetic drug admissions. They interviewed an emergency department specialist and he was just describing what he was seeing you know: patients coming in with seizures some of them needing CPR on arrival. He was talking about patients being in trance-like states and just the agitation and how you know on occasion they'd have to call the police in to deal with that agitation and that behaviour and also the impact that that was having not only on patients and their families but also on emergency department staff. He also talked about the fact that at the time of the interview they had had a couple of patients there in ICU in intensive care and they'd already been there for two weeks and they were still seriously unwell.The problem we've got is that you know since mid-2017 we've had at least 50 to 55 deaths from synthetic drugs. Basically this has to stop. What this bill does is it provides that balanced approach because what it simultaneously does is it provides greater enforcement and penalties for those who are importing manufacturing or supplying dangerous synthetic drugs. These drugs are wreaking havoc in our community.It also takes a health-based approach because what it does is it affirms police's ability to have discretion when they're considering whether to prosecute if a health-based approach would be better. I think when you listen to the stories of people talking about their experiences with getting hooked on this stuff and just the huge impact—once they're addicted—it has on their lives and what they have to go through to fuel and fund their habits. This is a really really important balanced approach to a very significant issue.I just want to go through a little bit of the three key things that this bill actually does. The first thing is it reclassifies the two major synthetic drugs that have been linked to these recent deaths as class A drugs. For those not really familiar with the classification of class A these are the drugs which pose a very high risk of harm either to individuals or to society by the impacts that they cause. So by classifying them as class A what it's going to mean is that police and customs have much stronger search and seizure powers so they can intercept the drugs before they hit or cause harm in the community. It also means much tougher penalties for those who are supplying or manufacturing the drugs and that's up to life imprisonment. So this is a very significant enforcement in terms of those that are bringing this stuff into our community.The other thing though is that these drugs are always evolving and so what the bill does is it creates a temporary drug classification called class C1 for new and emerging drugs. What it means is that once something's classified as C1 police can come in and they've got the search and seizure tools that they need to interrupt the supply. That's particularly important where we're seeing you know clusters—some of the cases we've seen where you get clusters of hospital admissions or deaths—allowing people to come in and take that health approach and to interrupt that before we get further severe harm to our community.How it works is it allows the Minister by order published in the Gazette to specify any substance as a temporary class drug if they're satisfied that the substance poses or may pose a risk of harm to individuals or society. The undertaking is that that will only be a temporary classification so that it lasts for up to one year. The understanding there is that in that meantime the Minister will go away and he or she will seek further advice as Minister on what the final classification of that drug should be so that eventually it may end up being classified as A B or C as appropriate. If they need more time then you're allowed one extra renewal of that. That's critically important as we start to deal with you know emerging threats within our community.The thing that people have been talking about a lot is the health-based approach and the fact that what this bill does is just affirm what is happening in the community already and that police should have discretion in terms of prosecuting or not prosecuting someone if they've got drugs for personal use. So the understanding there is that if there's no public interest in prosecution then we shouldn't go ahead but that when they're weighing that up it's important to consider whether that health-based approach would be more appropriate.As I was saying before a large number of people were talking about the sheer addictiveness of these substances and the lengths that they'll go to to acquire these substances to the detriment of their own and their family's lives and well-being. So as part of this as well this is why the Government has talked about putting extra resourcing into addiction treatment services but also extra resourcing in terms of those emergency surge responses if we are indeed seeing these clusters of hospitalisations and deaths occurring in the community. So basically the wording is: When considering whether a prosecution is required in the public interest in addition to [anything else they should be considering] whether a health-centred or therapeutic approach would be more beneficial." So this is not decriminalisation by default; what this is is just affirming the discretion that's already happening in the community. It's affirming that in the legislation.The other issue though is to avoid that perverse incentive that may be created by making people switch from one class or group of drugs to another in terms of thinking about that discretion of prosecution. This will apply to all drugs not just the synthetics and I think that that's important in terms of making sure that we've got a balanced approach. But as I say it's about reaffirming the existing discretion that's already there. Police can still prosecute if they think that that is necessary.So just summing up this is a huge issue in our community—it affects many many families—and what this bill is doing is taking that really balanced approach. By classifying two of these synthetics as class A drugs it's giving the police a lot more ability to basically search and seize and also it's imposing much heavier penalties on those involved in the manufacture and supply of these drugs. But from a health perspective it's actually channelling people much more to that health service delivery in the context of addiction and treatment services. So I commend this bill to the House."