Webb DuncanDr DUNCAN WEBB (Labour—Christchurch Central): Thank you Madam Assistant Speaker. Synthetic cannabis is clearly a scourge and I applaud Simeon Brown for bringing this to the attention of the House. It's just disappointing that the measure he proposes would have absolutely no effect whatsoever. We want to attack this problem on the basis of good evidence and the evidence says that increasing sentences for addiction-based crimes has no effect. All we're going to do is take the people who are victims already—victims already; people who are not cared for by our society people who are ill in many ways—and incarcerate them and to lock them away where we don't care for them. I want to care for those people and this Government is not going to attack those people. It's going to attack the problem—the problem of a society that has let things slide and that hasn't been addressing these issues. This is a problem of health and of mental health and of addiction and that's what we need to attack not the people who suffer these problems. I know that this is a terrible tragedy for many. We need to stop it but we're not going to stop it simply by further criminalising these activities and increasing sentences out of all order. This is a problem of health and of economics a problem of opportunity and a problem of growing inequality. This is a problem which afflicts our weakest and poorest most so this is poor policy. That's the first thing: this is simply poor policy. This is an Act which was in fact designed entirely differently. It was originally designed to regulate not prohibit and can I just say that in fact section 106 of the Psychoactive Substances Act—if the member had taken the time to read it carefully—sets out that the Act is to be reviewed five years after commencement. It commenced July 2013. A few months away we're going to have a review tabled in this House. Yes we can look at the problem; let's look at the whole problem. Look in the nine words of the operative section it is simply all over the place. We're attacking supply in this bill. We don't even address the question of importation or the question of manufacture so it's still a two-year sentence for those but eight years if you happen to be caught with a wad of this cannabis in your pocket. So look it's poorly implemented as well. So we've got poor implementation it's poorly timed—we're looking at this in a few months' time—and it's poor policy. What this is really just a knee-jerk reaction—a reaction where we see a problem and we say Increase the sentence." as if a person who is afflicted with these problems is going to even know that there's been a law change. We know for a fact that people in these communities don't follow with close attention what goes on in this House. It matters to them not one whit if we increase the sentence. It changes behaviour not at all. What we need is to be there on the ground addressing the social causes of this problem not simply incarcerating these people so we can put them out of sight and out of mind. There are real and critical social and health problems that we need to address. This is not a criminal problem in the same manner. Whilst absolutely we need to address it this is not the way to do it. So really what we've got here is ignoring the problem. It is miscategorising the problem in a way that we can be comfortable about as a comfortable society. Well let's not do that. Let's face up and accept that there are members of our community that we have failed. Some of them are young members. Some of them are members who are mentally ill. Many of them have addiction problems. Let's reach out and lift them up not cast them down and that's what this bill would do. It would take someone who suffers from these problems and cast them down and away into a descending spiral of criminality. So look we don't want to revictimise the victim. We don't want to live in a society where we lock away our problems. This Government is committed to addressing questions of health and mental health and addiction. It's got a massively ambitious plan to spend the money that is needed to do that and for that reason I will not be supporting this bill."