Genter Julie AnneJULIE ANNE GENTER (Green): Our outdated drug laws need to change. Now is the time that we should be legalising cannabis and making medicinal cannabis available to those who need it and not at a cost of over a thousand dollars a month—that is ridiculous. If we want to minimise the harm associated with drug use we should treat it as a health issue because that is what it is. It is not a criminal issue. Looking at the National members sitting in the House right now you would think that they had not realised that the Law Commission delivered a report on this very issue nearly 7 years ago recommending a fundamental change to our drug laws so that we treat it as a health issue not a criminal issue.Criminalising cannabis has not stopped it from being widely used. It just makes more harm by making people criminals. It is ridiculous. The New Zealand Drug Foundation estimates that between 2007 and 2011 which is 4 years we spent $60 million on imprisoning people for minor drug convictions. What happens after that? How are those people supposed to turn their lives around after spending that time in prison? That does not even include the amount of money that was spent on police on courts on everything else. An amount of $15 million a year could go a long way to helping people with drug issues and the last thing we should be doing is locking up people for minor offences when the activity they are engaging in does not even cause harm to themselves or anyone else.I know it will come as a huge surprise to National members sitting opposite but these laws were never evidence-based in the first place. If you go back in the 1930s medicinal cannabis was being prescribed by doctors in New Zealand. It was actually international pressure pushed by completely uninformed bureaucrats—very ideologically driven bureaucrats from the United States—that forced New Zealand to change the law and impose the drug law we have today which is horribly horribly out of date.I know the Green Party is usually a little too far ahead of its time and certainly way ahead of this National Government. The reality is that the evidence has shown we were right about climate change. The evidence has shown we were right about a capital gains tax when we argued for it in 2002. The evidence has shown we were right about public transport and now pretty much everyone—even the people voting for the National Party—understand that the only way to solve Auckland's transport problems is to invest in public transport. Above all evidence has shown that the Green Party was right about drug law reform. We have been leading on cannabis law reform for a quarter of a century now.Hon David Bennett: Yeah that is why you never got in.JULIE ANNE GENTER: Yeah a few decades ago people were laughing about it but now look who is out of date. New Zealand is decades behind other jurisdictions which are demonstrating that treating drug abuse and use as a health issue is far more effective at reducing the harms associated with it. Nearly half of the states in the United States—more than half the population live in states where medicinal cannabis is now legal or cannabis itself is legal for recreational use. Portugal has taken a completely health-based approach to regulating drugs and I have to commend the Hon Peter Dunne for recommending that we adopt that same approach here in New Zealand.It is really unfortunate that 15 years ago the Hon Peter Dunne as part of his supply and confidence agreement actually blocked progress on drug law reform which many people had been advocating for. But I am happy to say that 15 years later now that he is the Minister responsible he has seen the evidence and he is trying to get this Government to take some baby steps in the direction of an approach that would actually help New Zealanders.But it is not good enough. The minuscule moves in this direction are not going to help the very sick New Zealanders who could really benefit from being able to use cannabis to relieve their pain or their nausea or to help with sleeping. The reality is and the evidence shows that cannabis has very low side effects—much lower than the opiate-based pain relief that they are being prescribed. Yet the medicinal cannabis products that are available to them cost over a thousand dollars a month.This graph shows that cannabis has a far lower chance of dependency and risk of side effects than many other substances that are legal. The Green Party will continue to lead on this issue and we will make drug law reform a priority because we know it will benefit all New Zealanders. It is time—it is time—to legalise cannabis. Thank you.