McClay Todd: Psychoactive Substances Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeMcClay Todd: Psychoactive Substances Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 09 July 2013. Volume:692;Page:11807. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon TODD McCLAY (Associate Minister of Health):Part 2 is an important part of the Psychoactive Substances Bill and I agree with the Hon Annette King that this is the part that gives us the ability to make it work to provide certainty to New Zealanders around the products that may in the future be available to them because the regime will show they have a low risk of harm.This part is around licensing and I just want to read from the bill so that it is clear to all those who will be paying attention to this because it is such an important piece of legislation. There will be a requirement for people to hold licences to import psychoactive substances to manufacture these substances to research them to sell a product that is not approved to sell approved products by way of retail and to sell approved products by way of wholesale. So from the conception of one of these products until finally it is approved and able to be sold there will need to be licences. The reason this is important is that it is the way that our health authorities with the support of our police force and justice force will be able to control this. I believe that the Health Committee has done an important amount of work for us to help clarify a number of provisions here.Contravention of these licensing provisions in many cases will be quite severe—up to 2 years’ imprisonment and up to a half-million-dollar fine. The reason we are doing this is that we need to get it right. To give you an example we all know about the harm that we suspect anecdotally and we are observing is happening around New Zealand at the moment. What is to stop through this regulated procedure people ignoring it and manufacturing these products anyway or importing them and selling them—selling them all over New Zealand just as we know illicit drugs are sold?The first thing that will be important is that we are giving authority to our services to apply sanctions. Sanctions for importation of a psychoactive substance with or without an approval for that substance outside of a licence—somebody without a licence—will be up to 2 years’ imprisonment and a half-million-dollar fine. Some would say that might seem heavy-handed but in laboratories—Hon Trevor Mallard: No soft on it—soft on the crime.Hon TODD McCLAY: Well I would agree with Mr Mallard. It is soft on crime in some respects. He could put up a Supplementary Order Paper to make it stronger. I will certainly talk to my side to support it. But that there are laboratories around the world that can synthesise almost anything that we might imagine—almost anything at all—and therefore the cost of this production is not what it would have been many years ago when people used to have to grow crops and change them and so on in different parts of the world. So we need to take this seriously and there needs to be a penalty for those who transgress these rules today and in the future with products that we know are probably going to be much more harmful. For manufacturing without a licence—that is importation and manufacturing without a licence—there will also be a fine of up to half a million dollars and 2 years of imprisonment.I am making two amendments to Supplementary Order Paper 268 that I want to touch on briefly and the first is around retail. I am glad that the committee looked at this and decided that we do need licensing when it comes to retail outlets. I think in fact these rules would not work well without that. We are aligning them very much with the Sale and Supply of Alcohol Act. Parliament went through an extended period of time—the last Parliament and some of this one—to look at ways that we will get this right. So one of my amendments to Supplementary Order Paper 268 is to make it an offence to sell an approved product without a licence. What that means is that if you do not have a licence to sell an approved product—the product has been attested to be OK at low risk of causing harm; it has gone through the full procedure—as with alcohol if you do that in premises or in a way that is not licensed then it will be up to 3 months’ imprisonment and a $40000 fine. That is aligning the rules with alcohol.The second amendment that I want to make to my Supplementary Order Paper 268 is around clause 48(1). I know there was some discussion of this at the select committee. This is around the offence of providing an authorised product to a minor. Indeed as drafted from the committee the bill said it was an offence to provide one of these authorised products to a minor in a public place. Well I think that should just be an offence. It does not make sense that it is against the law to sell to a minor anywhere in the country and to give to a minor on the street outside a house but it is not against the law to invite that minor in—even the neighbour’s kid who is 6 years of age—to stand on your front porch to give it to them. The moment that that young person receives it they are breaking the law but to give it to them is not breaking the law and to sell it to them is not either. I want to align this and just say that anywhere in this country that you provide one of these products to a minor will be a contravention. I hope the Committee will support that.Indeed it is important today because of the products that are available but let us just say in the future that somebody synthesises drugs that are so much worse than these that are already on our schedules to the Misuse of Drugs Act and it is not against the law to give that to a young person in the home. I just think that sends the wrong message.Finally in summation the licensing provisions are important but I want to make it very clear and it is spelt out in the legislation that anything contained in the Misuse of Drugs Act schedules 1 through 4 and alcohol is not covered by this regime. That could be a debate that Parliament might want to have in the future but as a new member and an Associate Minister of Health who is responsible for drug and alcohol policy this bill is about cleaning up a problem that is causing great harm to New Zealanders. But anything that is scheduled currently or in the future under the Misuse of Drugs Act and around alcohol and some other products that are described in the bill will not be able to rely upon these processes and I think that is most appropriate. Thank you.