Psychoactive Substances Bill

There is a range of matters dealt with in Part 2. Can I say that it is excellent to be getting into some of the substance of the Psychoactive Substances Bill and some of the more constructive aspects of this legislation.

Part 2 deals with the range of licences that various participants in the manufacture and supply of psychoactive substances need to acquire. It also deals with the process by which products can be approved. Further, it deals with the register of products that are considered by the expert advisory committee. I would like to address each of those matters.

The first—and it is somewhat at the heart of this legislation—is the process for approving products. This, just quietly, is the big step forward in drug regulation in New Zealand, because up until now, every time we have seen a new drug, except for alcohol and tobacco, we have wanted to ban it. Ban it, ban it, ban it—that is the only reaction, the only response, that our legislation over the decades has been able to come up with. It is a rather blunt approach, and, in the 21st century, a less and less effective approach. So for the first time in our drug regulation laws there is a mechanism for approving a psychoactive substance.

Why would we want to do that? A lot of people have said: “Oh, just ban them—ban them. Get them out of the dairies.”, which, of course, this bill does do—

💬 Denis O’Rourke: I say that.

Well, I am glad to hear that New Zealand First thinks that. Its members can get up and explain why they think that. People say: “Look, just ban them. Get rid of them, and that will make the problem go away.” That has been so effective for cannabis, has it not! It was so effective for alcohol as well—it worked really, really well! It has worked really, really well for a whole range of other substances too! So the people who say “Just ban it and the problem will go away.” simply need to open their eyes and look around them to see all the harms that are actually caused by prohibition itself. I am not saying that prohibition is not appropriate for some substances, but I think it is absolutely certain that prohibition is inappropriate for a number of substances.

What this bill seeks to do is to create a legal regulated market for substances that have been proven to be of low risk. That is what clause 35, headed “Granting of approval”, is all about. The most important of the grounds for approving a product is that the degree of harm that the product poses to individuals using the product is no more than a low risk of harm. Those final words are important. Nobody is claiming that any of these substances are safe. That is not the intention here at all. The intention is to create a process through which certain substances can be proven to be low risk in comparison with other substances, and those substances, those products, can go on the market.

What we know is that people prefer to buy their drugs from a legal market. There really is not a legal regulated market at the moment, except for alcohol and tobacco, of course. These so-called legal highs have existed in a legal and unregulated market. But what countless submitters came and told us at the Health Committee, and, indeed, what I have learnt from going and visiting people who work in the mental health and addiction treatment sector, is that people who use cannabis have been replacing that substance with these legal highs because they prefer to go to a legal market. They do not want to go to the gangs, they do not want to go to the dodgy drug dealers who engage in criminal activity, they do not want to have to interact with criminals to buy these products, but they do still want to buy them. What we are creating here is an opportunity for people who do want to use psychoactive substances to be able to obtain those that are of lowest risk and those that have been proven to be of low risk. What that means is that, instead of the current situation, in which people are replacing cannabis with substances that are, in fact, higher risk than cannabis, people can replace that drug with substances that have been proven through clinical trials, which can now be undertaken, to be of lower risk.

That will be a significant improvement on the current situation. What we know right now is that our addiction treatment centres are dealing with people who were previously using cannabis—and that comes with a certain level of risk—and have replaced it with higher-risk substances because they are legal. We actually now know the mechanism as to why these substances are higher risk. They adhere at a much greater rate to the receptors in the brain that the active ingredients in these drugs adhere to, and because they adhere at a higher rate, the high occurs much more quickly, it is much harder, it is much faster, and these drugs are far more addictive. Trying to get off these drugs is a far greater challenge to people, and it is a far greater challenge to the professionals trying to support people who are trying to get off these drugs than it has been trying to support people who want to give up cannabis use. I think that is an important thing for us to be mindful of.

One of the changes that we made to the legislation following submissions by many of the submitters is to the register of products. Originally, this was going to be a register just of approved products, so that people could see all the products that had been approved and what the active ingredients in them were. The significant change that we have made is to say that this will now be a register of all the products. Every single product for which a manufacturer applies to the authority for approval, even if it is turned down, will now appear in the register. That means that people can actually see the facts about the substances that have been turned down: the harms that may be related to them and the reasons why they were turned down. I think that just having that knowledge available to people will help achieve the purpose of this legislation, which is to reduce the harm associated with psychoactive substances.

At the beginning of Part 2, in clause 12, we deal with the licences that are available and the licences that it is necessary to hold in order to be a manufacturer, an importer, or a supplier of these substances. What I think was one of the glaring mistakes in the original drafting was that there was no need for a licence to be a retailer of these substances. You have to hold a licence if you are to be a retailer of alcohol. It makes absolute sense that you must hold a licence in order to be a retailer of psychoactive substances.

That really achieves two things. The first is that in order to hold one of these licences you have to be a person of good character. Ultimately, that is a subjective statement, but it is analogous to the situation with the sale of alcohol, for which someone has to prove that they like to act within the law, they are a careful person who is mindful of the activity that they are engaged in. It is important that we have only the right people selling these substances to youngsters. The other thing is that, hopefully, they should actually know something about the substances that they are selling and they will be able to provide factual, evidence-based information to the people who are purchasing these substances. That, again, is an important step in trying to achieve harm reduction.

I think that is something that was missing from the original legislation that everybody on the committee instantly recognised needed to be included. Paul Hutchison, the chairman, indeed, instantly recognised that there was a need to include licences for retailers. I think that also recognises around about where these substances lie in terms of relative harms. If it is appropriate for the sellers of alcohol to hold a licence, then it is also appropriate for the sellers of these substances to hold a licence. I can say that on this side of the Chamber we wholeheartedly support those amendments to the legislation.

I am delighted to speak briefly on the Psychoactive Substances Bill. First of all, let me say a few words about the importance of the bill generally. We have all heard about the harms of legal highs—harms done to individuals, families, and communities. Much has been done to regulate the legal high industry, but not enough. According to a new study published in the New Zealand Medical Journal, a growing number of synthetic cannabis users are being admitted to psychiatric care, and this is consistent with the observations of those in the health services. Patients relating to synthetic cannabis are delaying the treatment of more worthy cases. I am pleased that New Zealand Lotteries has recently decided to demand its retailers stop selling party pills and synthetic cannabis alongside Lotto products, but we need to do more, and sooner rather than later.

This bill sets up a sophisticated mechanism to regulate licences to import, manufacture, research, and sell psychoactive substances. A person who commits an offence in respect of an application for a licence is liable on conviction to a term of imprisonment not exceeding 3 months or a fine not exceeding $500,000, or both. What is more important is that the onus of proof will be on manufacturers, not the Government. This is a game-changer. In essence, it ends the dangerous game of cat and mouse that Governments have been forced to play with the legal high industry.

New Zealanders deserve to know that products available to them are safe. They should not be exposed to untested, risky psychoactive substances. Young people are particularly vulnerable to such substances, so this bill is particularly important for protecting our young people. Thank you.

I want to continue on from where my colleague Iain Lees-Galloway left off. This Part 2 deals with a licensing regime. I think this is a very sensible approach that is being taken in this bill, the Psychoactive Substances Bill. We did include, as Iain Lees-Galloway said, that we are going to have people who must have licences not only to import these psychoactive substances and to manufacture them and to research on them but also to sell them and to sell them at retail and at wholesale. So this is a very interesting approach to these particular drugs, and I am wondering whether we are not putting in place a very, very good regime for the future for the selling of tobacco, because we know that these substances, when they finally hit the market, would have to be shown to be very low risk. This is the whole tenor of this bill. So, having been found to be low risk, we are then requiring a licence to be able to sell them at retail, wholesale, etc.

What we do know is that tobacco is a much, much more dangerous product. In fact, not one cigarette is good for you. We know the dangers of tobacco—we have known for many, many years—and we have seen the impact of tobacco on health and on mortality in New Zealand. I am wondering whether this is a very good opening for us to have licensing of tobacco sellers. At the moment you can buy tobacco at a supermarket, in a dairy at the corner—it is freely available to people of the right age. We say that there is an age to buy these low-risk products and we license them and we run a licensing regime. I think the time will come to consider a similar regime for tobacco, and I am thinking that maybe our committee, in our recommendation to licensed retailers, is groundbreaking in our approach for the future.

What this licensing regime does is ensure that you have a fit and proper person, or a body corporate that is a fit and proper body corporate, to be able to apply for a licence. I think that there will be those who will be looking at what the meaning is of that “fit and proper person”. There is a feeling that some of those who have sold legal highs are not really particularly concerned about what the impact is of those legal highs on the people to whom they are selling. They are not all that concerned about what is in them, so long as they are turning over a quick buck. I think the idea that when the application is by an individual, the person must be a fit and proper person to have that licence, and that is regardless of what they are doing—whether it is the body corporate or whether it is the individual, for me, I want to know what that “fit and proper” test is going to be. It does set out whether they have had a conviction and so on, but are they able to get around that by getting somebody else to apply for their licence? This will be a part that we will need to keep an eye on.

There are also going to be penalties—and they are quite stiff penalties in this legislation—for those offences relating to importation of psychoactive substances without a licence. If someone thinks that they are going to be able to bring in a substance and they are not going to have to have a licence, they are going to find that they are hit by a pretty big fine indeed. In fact, if they are an individual, they will find that they could be in line for a term of imprisonment not exceeding 2 years, or, in the case of a body corporate, a fine not exceeding $500,000. So what we have put in this bill are pretty strong penalties for those who decide to import psychoactive substances without that licence. I think that is also a very good move.

We do also in this bill require there to be a code of manufacturing practice. This was an area I was interested in because quite a number of these legal highs will be manufactured overseas. They will not be manufactured in New Zealand; they will be done on premises in different parts of the world. So what this bill does, first of all, is establish a code of practice that must be adhered to, and that code is what that manufacturer will be audited against. So there will be an audit and the ability to audit a manufacturing premises and practices outside New Zealand. I can see how easy it would be to have an authorised person, or persons, within New Zealand to do an audit, but I was concerned that it would be a very costly exercise to do an audit outside New Zealand. What we have been informed is that, in fact, the cost of that audit outside New Zealand has to be borne by the manufacturer of that product. So taxpayers do not need to feel concerned that they are going to be up for the cost of flying authorised people from New Zealand to the backblocks of China, India, Denmark, or wherever the substances are going to be made. In fact, this cost is going to fall on to the manufacturer who has to have that audit carried out.

We also made an amendment in this bill, which I am desperately trying to find, and it was around changing the date for the code to come in force. The code was going to come into force after 1 year. This is the code that you would have to audit against the manufacturing of these products. We in the Health Committee decided that it should come into force much sooner than that. In fact, we amended it so that it comes into force within 6 months. I think that work has to be done in getting everything in place, and we acknowledge that work will need to be done, but we are making sure that within 6 months there will be a code that goes alongside all the other changes so that we can audit the manufacturing of these products both inside and outside New Zealand.

Another part here in Part 2 that I think is worth mentioning is that this part also sets up a Psychoactive Substances Appeal Committee. The function of this committee is to determine appeals against the decisions of the authority. This is seen to be having to have a natural justice course for appeals against decisions an authority makes. Of course, in any of these things, there does have to be the ability to appeal decisions—they are not always right; they do not get everything 100 percent right—so there does need to be an appeals committee. It is a three-member committee and one of the members of that committee must be a lawyer with not less than 7 years of legal experience, so that there can be a legal eye put over some of the decisions if there is an appeal to this authority.

This part is very much the working part, if you like—the nuts and bolts of how this legislation is going to work. The other part that is in here is the approval of products and what sorts of products would be approved. It goes into some detail about the information that would be required and so on. I think we made this better at the select committee. I think we are going to make it work better, and I certainly support the changes and the way that we are going about this whole regime, by having a licensing regime and requiring there to be a high standard in terms of the manufacturing, the selling, the wholesale, retail, etc. of these products.

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.

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 $40,000 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.

I thank the Associate Minister of Health, Todd McClay, for his contribution, and I take this opportunity to thank him for his gracious concession around the voting order for the Part 1 votes on this bill, the Psychoactive Substances Bill. The contribution he has just made and, indeed, that from the Hon Annette King offer quite a good point of departure for me, because the first set of points I want to make about Part 2—I am mindful of the time; these may be the only ones before the dinner break—are around the fact that we have some incoherence in our New Zealand law.

There is a range of substances that people consume because it is fun to do so or they derive some personal benefit or utility from doing so, but they pose some risk of harm, and they are the substances that are regulated under the Misuse of Drugs Act. There is alcohol, which is regulated under a separate statute, and there is tobacco, which, again, has a separate and different regulatory regime. And we are actually adding, in this bill, a fourth strand.

For this to be a useful addition, I think one of the characteristics that we need to look for is a way forward for converging those various strands into a single rational regulatory framework. I am very pleased to say—and I think there is probably violent agreement around the House on this—that this bill actually does provide a path forward for that convergence.

To that end, we have taken, I guess, provisions certainly from the tobacco framework and from the alcohol framework and pulled them into this bill. Indeed, there could potentially be elements of the Misuse of Drugs Act—you know, in fact, I think there are even elements of that Act that we have used in this framework. One of those elements is the licensing regime and that is what is set out here in Part 2. It draws, as the Minister has said, quite heavily on the regime that we have in place for alcohol, and it provides, I guess, a template for reform in those other strands.

So both here in Part 2 under the licensing regime and, indeed, in Part 3, where we look at some of the regulatory responses that would be available to the authority, we see aspects that could be applied to those other strands. Gradually, over time, it will make sense for this House to pull those strands further and further together, to actually converge them in a single framework that regulates all of those substances.

One of the things, as speakers have mentioned, that Part 2 does is provide the retail licences—an innovation from the Health Committee and one that is certainly very valuable. It is interesting that the select committee rejected only a few years earlier the prospect of using a licensing regime for tobacco retailers.

Sitting suspended from 6 p.m. to 7.30 p.m.

As I was saying before the dinner break, this bill represents a great opportunity for us to be moving towards convergence of the way that we regulate various kinds of substances. Some of the particular features in Part 2 that are useful are the licensing of retailers, which is, of course, something that we have done in relation to alcohol but which we still need to do in relation to tobacco. Similarly, the opportunity for councils to develop their own plans as to where retailers may be located is another innovation that we have made in relation to alcohol, and maybe that indicates the kind of direction that we need to be taking in relation to tobacco.

The register of products, as others have mentioned, is a very, very good innovation. In particular, the change made by the select committee to incorporate into the register products for which applications had been made but were declined is a very important opportunity for us to have more information about these substances. Otherwise there would be substances around that people would have no information about at all. As others have said, the manufacturing code of practice is another important element of Part 2 of the bill and another very good change made by the select committee, bringing forward the establishment of that code of practice from 1 year to 6 months.

I want to remind the Committee of the whole House about the important balance to be struck here. It is important that this bill does not end up being prohibition by stealth. Some of these substances must get through this process, must get licences, for this to be meaningful, because if it is prohibition by stealth, what will happen is that we will force this market into a black market, and the concerns that everyone from right around the House has been expressing around the health and welfare of New Zealanders, and particularly young people, will be magnified in a black market situation.

As I indicated in the debate on Part 1, most of Supplementary Order Paper 260 put forward by my colleague Mojo Mathers in fact relates to elements of Part 2. I just want to recap some of the basic points here. One is that had the select committee been able to consider the submissions, this House would have been able to see evidence of alternatives to animal testing. Those alternatives are at least as good as—and maybe better, in fact—than animal testing for determining safety.

The approach that is advocated in the Supplementary Order Paper is one of saying that when someone applies for a licence the information that they use to support that application may not include data derived from animal testing, except historical animal testing. What that does is it actually then puts the onus on those applying for licences to invest in and support alternative approaches to animal testing.

Nobody is saying “Well, you don’t get to use animal testing, therefore there will be no testing; therefore all of these products should just simply come to the shelves and be available for sale.” No one at all is suggesting that. What is instead being suggested is that there is a narrower range of tests—only the non-animal tests—that can be used for the licences that people apply for in Part 2. So, effectively, what we would be saying is the person applying for a licence still has to prove that their product is no more than low risk, but they have to do it without using animal testing. The reason that this is so important is that the alternatives to animal testing, although at least as effective, are not used currently because of expense. They are a much more expensive test than the animal testing equivalent.

So although the select committee did hear some submissions from manufacturers and importers of the products saying that they oppose the use of animal testing, the economic, cold, hard fact is that some of those applying for licences in those categories will choose to use animal testing if the regime allows them to, simply because it is cheaper—simply because it is cheaper.

So it is in their interest, and we can understand their argument for wanting to continue to be able to use animal testing. What we cannot understand is the Government’s argument, because the reality is that both the Government and ourselves are saying we want there to be no more than low risk; only we—those who are supporting Mojo Mathers’ Supplementary Order Paper—are saying that in addition to that we want animals not to be harmed.

Kia ora, Mr Chair. It is my pleasure to talk to Part 2 of the Psychoactive Substances Bill, which is really about licensing to import, to manufacture, to sell, and, in addition, to research psychoactive substances. I want to highlight that addition, the research addition, because that was absolutely something that submitters made clear—and I thank them for highlighting it to us—was a requirement to enable them to continue to research the impacts of psychoactive substances, particularly the addiction and mental health researchers at Auckland University. So I thank them for that addition.

I would like to highlight clause 15, which is really about the grounds for granting a licence. Throughout this process we wanted to make sure that fit and proper persons are able to get these licences. So if you have had a dishonesty offence or if you have had any offence against the misuse of drugs legislation, then it automatically disqualifies you from being able to hold a licence. I absolutely agree with that.

Clause 16 is really about ensuring that when you do have a licence to import, there is going to be a requirement for you to name the product that you are bringing into the country and the quantity of that substance being imported. I think those requirements are incredibly helpful and beneficial to an ongoing monitoring of these products. I think we all would agree that we are entering into a new space where we are trying to regulate a substance that in any other circumstance possibly would be classified as a drug, and therefore you would be unable to use it. So having these requirements about knowing what is coming in, in what quantities, and, hopefully, then also knowing what region of the country and what communities these substances are going to be consumed within is, I think, also part of an ongoing requirement of us to ensure that we negate any negative consequences of this piece of legislation.

One of the things I wanted to highlight too through this process is that clause 24 will make it an offence to import psychoactive substances without a licence. It is incredibly important that we have measures in place that are going to absolutely deal to people who try to manipulate our systems and bring in substances that they know they can sell for quite a bit of profit. So a $500,000 fine as the penalty for that offence is, I think, absolutely congruent with the message that we want out there.

This regime that we are entering into really is one where we are creating the law as we progress through the implementation of the bill. I think nobody is naive to the fact that many communities being affected by these psychoactive substances have had to contend with many of the current importers of those psychoactive substances trying to sell as much of them into our communities as possible. It is one thing that I know is on the agenda of the Minister of Health and, obviously, the Minister of Police, because I think we have to be vigilant about the consequences of this bill going through. We know already that shopkeepers have been encouraged to stockpile psychoactive substances, and that there have been attempts to discount the product to get it out into our communities. We know that we are going to have to be vigilant, once this legislation goes through, to confiscate as much of the product that is out there as possible, so I think these monitoring regimes, these signals to the psychoactive substances business community, are really, really important. Obviously, we support these regimes 100 percent.

The only other thing I really wanted to highlight in Part 2 is clause 41, which is about the registering of those products that go through the process and that our expert committee deem to be sufficiently low risk to be granted a licence for sale. But, in addition to that, we are also going to make sure that the public are aware of the products that have been through the process but are not approved. I think that was a really good requirement that the Health Committee made in the interests of the public good, so that everybody has some transparency around the process and we know what products have been through the process of being verified or certified as being of sufficiently low risk to be sold within our communities, but also that the non-approved products will also be listed.

Again, I want to highlight that the distinction between some of these products is very difficult. Obviously, if the packaging of some of the non-approved substances ends up out into the community, or, in fact, some of the manufacturers just sell it in spite of it not being approved, I think that what we need to make sure of is that this process educates our communities, and that we have constructive conversations with our communities, as we all have attempted to do. I can say that in my community in Manurewa, Manurewa Local Board member Colleen Brown and I visited our 32 dairies. We identified six dairies that were selling psychoactive substances. We informed them about the legislation that is going through the House. We said to them that it was likely that the manufacturers would try to sell those products to them at discounted rates. We warned them about stockpiling. We were also very clear that these products are hurting our community.

What I would like to acknowledge again, which I did during Part 1 of this Committee stage debate, is the community members, the dairy owners, who through their own recognition of the harms have chosen not to sell these substances. Twenty-two percent of my community dairy owners sell these products, but what I want to focus on are the 78 percent who do not. What I see as an ongoing process from here is that I would prefer that none of these products were sold in my community, but I am a realist and I also stand up for the rights of adults to choose to partake in these types of products that are akin to both cigarettes and alcohol. That concludes my contribution. Thank you.

I rise to take a call on Part 2 of the Psychoactive Substances Bill. I refer to clause 35, “Grounds for approving product”, which states: “The Authority may approve a psychoactive product as an approved product only if the Authority is satisfied that …”—and there are a number of conditions. I could not help but think of that in relation to the Food Bill. I hold before me the Food Bill, which is quite a substantive document, and I ask why we have got ourselves into this dilemma.

When it comes to food—the good stuff that we need every day to live and to survive—we have got, or the Government is about to pass, a bill that is this thick on the conditions pertaining to the production, the sale, and the safety of food. For the most part food is ingested. I do not think there is any way of injecting it or any other way; most of it is eaten. So I have gone to the meaning of “safety” and “suitability” right at the start of the bill here and I want to draw the comparisons, because in some ways this Psychoactive Substances Bill is ludicrous. What we have got is a substance that people are going to ingest or take. I do not know—they might smoke it, but most of them probably pop pills in the same way that we eat food.

In the Food Bill it has the “Meaning of safety and suitability”. So if it is not safe and it is not suitable in the Food Bill, you cannot sell it. Clause 11(1) states: “In this Act, unless the context otherwise requires, safety and suitability, in relation to food, have the meanings set out in subsections (2) and (3) …”. Clause 11(2) states that safety (a) “means a condition in which food, in terms of its intended use, is unlikely to cause or lead to illness or injury to human life or public health; and (b) includes a condition in which hazards are identified, controlled, managed, eliminated, or minimised.” The point being is that if you sell a banana that has decomposed or has got a bit old, that is illegal, but if you sell a substance that is likely to deliver psychoactive results to someone, it is going to be legal. The contradictions astound me.

The point is that it is probably a bit late in the process to be pointing out that contradiction there—I appreciate that. We are supporting the bill, but I think we have to get serious here about what we are doing. There are those people who are not supporting the bill for whatever reason—some of them because of possible human testing. It is simply ludicrous in my view, because if we know that we need this kind of legislation in the Food Bill to protect people from unsafe food, then how is it that we need a small piece of legislation to protect them from what are dangerous products? There is no debate about that. So perhaps as a Parliament we should be a bit more consistent, or perhaps the Government should be a bit more consistent. The only excuse it has got is that it has taken the Food Bill a hell of a lot longer to make progress in this House than the Psychoactive Substances Bill has taken, so I guess the Government is moving on it somewhat slowly.

Can I just say that it is really important that we do get this right. Part 2 of the Psychoactive Substances Bill specifies a whole lot of technical issues relating to products and I hope that the Minister in the chair, the Associate Minister of Health, can maybe take a call and give us some assurance on this. Clause 35(b) states: “the degree of harm that the product poses to individuals using the product is no more than a low risk of harm.” I do not think there is anywhere in the Food Bill that we have accepted a low risk of harm. Maybe the Minister can come back and clarify that. If there is harm identified, we are simply not allowed to sell food. But if there is harm identified in a psychoactive substance, then it is OK. And although I guess it does in some way relate to alcohol, or perhaps caffeine—who knows what might be down the track—the bottom line is that we are currently selling products that are dangerous and there is no way in the world that they would get anywhere near the shelves under the Food Bill, but we are having to bring in a separate piece of legislation to deal with them here. So I welcome the legislation, but think we should refer back to the Food Bill when we need to. [Bell rung]

Thank you very much. I will not take the full call, but thank you very much, Mr Chairman. I think that we as a nation, of course, understand that our reputation for food production is one of the critical things for our future. But so too should be the management of the social ills and some of the problems within our society. So although we are making good progress on this the questions, of course, always come back to: why so long? Why so reluctant? It is perhaps an admission by the Government, finally, that the market was not going to address this. In fact, attempts to make one product illegal just resulted in the development of a whole lot of other products that, as I say, under the Food Bill, of course, would not be allowed to be sold.

I think there was, I guess, glib reference to the food police. These would be people who go around stopping people having barbecues and the such like. So if you do not have your gloves on and go through the proper process, you are not allowed to go—

💬 Hon Dr Jonathan Coleman: Like a Phil Goff barbecue. You want to stop that.

Yes, it was a good barbecue way back then. Can I say that there was this bizarre situation where there was potential for food police, yet we have been allowing this to continue.

The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy): Part 2. Please go to Part 2

I know. I will get back to Part 2. Part 2 of the bill goes to a product of no more than a low risk of harm able to be sold here. I would say that a sausage on a barbeque is a far lesser risk, yet under the Food Bill—and I acknowledge the Government is actually going to make some changes to allow the barbecue food to proceed—we would have, without the changes, ended up with a bizarre situation that barbecues were out because there was low risk but psychoactive substances were in. I will just say that it is good that we are making progress. Let us be consistent in this. Let us make sure that the legislation that we do finally pass here does provide the measure of protection that we need. Kia ora.

I would just like to take a short call on this Part 2 of the Psychoactive Substances Bill. It again touches on the animal testing and when someone is going for their licence for a particular substance. Again, I would just like to reiterate some of the aspects around that, and the fact that some producers and manufacturers will still push for animal testing. One person was quoted $10,000 for testing a product on rats, compared with a $30,000 cost for in vitro testing. Clearly, there is going to be that level of pressure when they are going for their licence for a particular drug to do it on rats. I would say that because of the nature of these products, if it is that big a difference, if it is $20,000, then that is too bad, because I am sure, with the nature of these drugs, that they will make that up very quick—pronto, as such.

One other thing that came up during the submissions that I heard with Mojo Mathers was that the National Animal Welfare Advisory Committee, and the chair of that, in fact, in this country, and her equivalent in the United Kingdom, showed that the UK was banning animal testing also on psychoactive substances, because they were already banning it on cosmetics. So it is not, in a way, that we would be frontrunners, but that other places are already taking the lead in that sense. What would be world leading would be this total combination of what we are doing around psychoactive substances, and the fact that we would also have that high level of animal welfare at the same time.

The New Zealand Anti-Vivisection Society brought very expert evidence as to what would be being used in the testing to get the licences through. It went through a whole number of things. It used different products that are already being used in pharmaceuticals, and it showed how they were being done, using different viable human cells to achieve it. The society went through it with oral toxicity if it is going to be swallowed, it did it with inhalation if it is going to be a smoked product, and I think there were some dermatologicals, as well. It went into the geno-toxicity and the carcinogenicity. We really should have had that almost word for word in front of the Health Committee, so that when we look at this stuff, we are looking to see how that is going to be managed, and that it would be fully, fully considered. I am hoping that there have been some changes in the Committee and I am hoping that there will be support for Mojo Mather’s Supplementary Order Paper 260 as we go through this.

One other point, and my colleague mentioned it just before, is that it is very, very important that this bill is not a Trojan Horse for prohibition. I was well aware in my youth, in my 20s, of what the black market around drugs was about. I saw the hideous stuff when heroin was very available, when a number of other substances were very available, but they were on the black market, and there was a lack of information out there around those and the way that whole issue was worked. This actually gives a chance to manage substances in what we call a more responsible way. It is probably not the be-all and end-all of how that is done, but at least it is a step in the right direction.

I will leave it at that. Again, as I say, I support the Associate Minister of Health’s move in the statement earlier that animal testing will not be used where there are alternatives. Those alternatives will be thrust under your nose, I am quite sure, frequently from now on. Thank you very much.

We will deal with the questions, and the first is the Minister’s amendments on Supplementary Order Paper 268.

I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. When we came to the voting on Part 1, the Minister very graciously agreed to take the vote on Mojo Mathers’ Supplementary Order Paper first because the Minister’s Supplementary Order Paper 268, in fact, if passed will cause to be ruled out of order some of Mojo Mathers’ Supplementary Order Paper. So if it is possible it would be good to be able to take—

I hear the member, and I am aware of what happened, but the consequential impact of passing the Minister’s amendments in Part 1 as related to the amendment on clause 11A, even though it is in Part 2, still applies. The Mojo Mathers amendment to clause 11A is consequentially ruled out. So we cannot actually put it at any stage.

I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. No, no—Mojo Mathers’ Supplementary Order Paper is very substantially about Part 2.

Right. So the member is seeking—have we sought leave to do that?

💬 Kevin Hague: I am seeking the Minister’s—

The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy): The Minister agreed, so let us do it. Thank you.

The question was put that the amendments set out on Supplementary Order Paper 260 in the name of Mojo Mathers to clauses 12 and 15 be agreed to.

As I related earlier, the amendments in the name of Mojo Mathers to clauses 31 and 35 are inconsistent with the previous decision. So we now move to the Minister’s amendments to Supplementary Order Paper 268 set out on Supplementary Order Paper 277.

The question was put that the amendments set out on Supplementary Order Paper 277 in the name of the Hon Todd McClay to the proposed amendments set out on Supplementary Order Paper 268 in his name be agreed to.

Amendments to the amendments agreed to.

The question was put that the amendments as amended set out on Supplementary Order Paper 268 in the name of the Hon Todd McClay to Part 2 be agreed to.

Amendments as amended agreed to.

I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. Is it possible for me to record the ACT Party’s opposition to both of those?

The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy): Well, you will now need leave to do that—

I was asking whether there was a way of doing that. I will not seek leave.

OK. Once we have passed the point of declaring the vote, leave is required.

Part 2 as amended agreed to.

Part 3 Control of approved products and other matters