Psychoactive Substances Amendment Bill

Thank you very much for letting me have a call on this Committee stage of the Psychoactive Substances Amendment Bill. Clause 7 is the one that I think most people will be focusing on in this debate. There have been a few political volleys fired from both sides of the Chamber tonight, but, in terms of my constituents, they do not care. They just want to make sure that what is being done here tonight is enacted as fast as it can be.

I do want to take this opportunity to thank a number of people who certainly—like in Trevor Mallard’s electorate, in my electorate in Mana, and particularly in Porirua—brought this issue to my attention. Particular thoughts go out to a couple of mothers whose sons were particularly affected, and they shall remain nameless, but the effect that synthetic cannabis has had on their sons has been immense. Again, I will not mention names, but one who approached me was very, very concerned about her son’s use of the product, and then her son went on to assault the shopkeeper of the store that was predominantly selling this stuff in the electorate. So for those people out there who—

💬 Hon Trevor Mallard: After she talked to you?

After she talked to me. So for those people out there who are, I guess, judging why this has come about, whether or not they think this is vote grabbing or just reacting to media coverage, I can tell them right now that that is definitely not the case. I guess this is a win for those of us who have heard the concerns of communities, who have reflected it to our caucuses—and who cares who came first, because this absolutely needed to happen.

In particular, I do want to take the opportunity to thank some people locally: the local police force that brought their concerns to me; the local city council, which was not too happy that this House, I guess it thought, lumbered the responsibility—

💬 Hon Trevor Mallard: Peter Dunne asked for it.

—yes—of a local approved products policy on it. I want to thank some local community workers, and a member of a gang who was also concerned. One morning, in particular, the police let me walk around the canopies in Porirua to see what was going on in the shop and they took me into the shop. Like Trevor Mallard said, there was a very long line in the shop and there was regular patronage. But the thing that got me was some 15-year-olds, who should have been at school but who were not, whom we spoke to. They knew that this product was doing them harm. In fact, I was completely baffled as to why one product that was being sold had on the packet “Not fit for human consumption”. That is just mind-boggling.

As has been said by Trevor Mallard as well, we do regret the fact that some 18 months to 2 years ago the original legislation went through. Although it was a good bill, it did have flaws, and we are here tonight to make sure that we rectify this because the drugs were having an awful effect in communities. To the person who was representing the Star Trust and who was saying that this House is merely reacting to political concern or concern in the media, I say that he is someone who makes money out of other people’s misery, so I am not concerned about what he thinks about what this House is doing, when something had to be done.

Also there are some other people I thank: Jenny Lester from the Porirua Healthy Safer City Trust is someone who brought this to my attention, and the Porirua City Council, which was making positive steps to bring in a local approved products policy anyway. I guess, again it was not overly happy that that responsibility was given to it, but it was taking proactive steps towards that. In a submission that I made to that council, the council asked why this stuff was not banned altogether, and I—as did other members of the Labour caucus—fed all of this feedback into the policy position that we came to a week or so ago.

So this bill is a good thing. It is regretful that we have to come here and make good what we thought 18 months ago was going to be a good move. But, in the end, this stuff is bad news and it should not be sold freely into our communities, and 15-year-olds certainly should not be smoking stuff that says “Not fit for human consumption”.

Thank you for the opportunity to take a short call in the Committee stage of the Psychoactive Substances Amendment Bill. There is no doubt about the specific objectives of the bill, which are to revoke all interim product approvals, to revoke all interim retail and wholesale licences, to require the recall and disposal of all products for which interim product approval has been revoked, and to provide that the results of trials that involve the use of animals cannot be used in the assessment of a psychoactive product.

As I said earlier on, in the electorate that I represent, Hunua, there has been huge concern about how these psychoactive drugs affect families, affect individuals, and devastate the lives of those who are affected. But the point that I really would like to make is that there has been a fair amount of self-righteousness about this bill and how easy these issues are to solve. They are not easy to solve. They are highly complex. For anyone to think that there is a simple solution, they have just got their head in the sand.

I must reflect on the day of revelation—yesterday, 5 May—when Trevor Mallard and John Banks said what a great day it was for the rats, the mice, the beagles, and the rabbits of New Zealand. It was almost as though they had taken on the persona of St Francis of Assisi, but again—

💬 Hon Trevor Mallard: More the Pied Piper, in my case.

—indeed—there is complexity here because, on the other hand, we have big issues in New Zealand. We are pouring out 1080, knocking off rats and mice and goodness knows whats in our forests because they get our birds. We have got the duck-shooting season going on right now. We have huge rabbit infestations right throughout the country.

These issues are not simple. However, the Government has responded with clear and concise action. It is reassuring that today enforcement notifications have been made clear throughout the country, and, indeed, on 8 May, no more psychoactive substances will be legal in New Zealand.

Sometimes this House has to do very important, but very complicated and very difficult, things. Tonight is one of those occasions. I join many of my colleagues who come with no joy to find that we are here rectifying something that we got wrong 18 months to 2 years ago when we last debated this issue of psychoactive substances. We debated and we put in place a regime that was the first in the world that was going to allow these drugs on to our market, a regime that was all around the fact that they were tested and shown to be safe. As many speakers have alluded to in the speeches this afternoon and tonight, this was all predicated on there being a regime for testing in place. It is with no pleasure that I say that we cautioned at the time that we were rushing the Psychoactive Substances Bill, for an incredibly complicated piece of legislation. The devil was in the detail, and how it was that we were going to show the safety of these drugs was always going to be an incredibly complicated and difficult path for us to traverse.

It is not just a matter of walking into a laboratory, throwing some substances under a laser light, and saying that this is not safe, or that that is not safe. The way in which we prove the safety or otherwise of many substances and compounds that we consume either as food or as medicines, or, in this case, that were going to be consumed as recreational drugs, is no small or easy path. It takes many years. It starts with people doing things in a laboratory. The traditional path is that it then moves on to animal models and then it moves on to human clinical models. Whether this is something that we are willing to permit for the use of recreational drugs is an important issue for this House to answer. I am very pleased that we are standing here tonight and are going to say no—we are not going to allow the testing of recreational drugs on animals.

For me personally, as a constituency MP, this issue cuts to the heart of why it was that I was elected to represent my electorate of Wigram. I voted with my party, as many members of this House did. In fact, most members of this House voted for a piece of legislation that we thought we were doing the right thing with. We thought we were putting in place a piece of legislation that would actually reduce the harm in our communities around the use of psychoactive chemicals and drugs, but this has not been the case. Like many of my colleagues, I have spent too many hours listening to constituents telling me their stories about what these substances have done to their families. I recall one mother coming in and being absolutely distraught, and I can understand why. Not only was her 14-year-old son no longer going to school; he was stealing from her and neighbours in order to finance his habit, and she had had to call the police the night before because he had physically assaulted both her and the other children in the family.

This is not something that you can stand idly by, as a constituent MP, and say it is OK. The regime we put in place was not working. It was not stopping the harm in our communities. I could not stand by and say to the people of Wigram: “Just taiho, everything’s going to be OK.”, because it was not. We also have some responsibility now, and that is that we as parliamentarians have to ensure that the support is there for the people who are going to be having the addiction issues as these drugs are no longer available. We have to ensure, as my colleague Annette King has suggested in earlier contributions, that we have adequate funding for people to access addiction services and that district health boards are properly resourced to grapple with these issues and to be able to make sure that New Zealanders are getting the best service that they can as they come off these drugs. The regulatory impact statement for this piece of legislation makes it really clear that a lot of the people who are using these drugs are not going to be able to afford the trip to the general practitioner to get the referral to the addiction service. We have to make sure that that support is in place. We are here tonight to fix something that we got wrong 2 years ago, and we need to make sure that we are putting it right and putting the best interests of our community at its heart.

I spoke earlier at the first reading of this bill, the Psychoactive Substances Amendment Bill, of my belief that the U-turn that has been taken by the Government on prohibiting the use of information from animal testing to approve applications for the use of psychoactive substances is in essence the same as the amendment that I put forward on the Psychoactive Substances Bill a year ago. I would like to take the opportunity to just thank all the parties that voted in support of that amendment, which included the Labour Party—in particular, Trevor Mallard’s hard work on that—John Banks, Mana, and the Māori Party. I also spoke about the shocking process that the bill went through, whereby all the voices of the animal welfare organisations and people speaking out against the use of animal testing to approve these drugs were rejected by the chair of the Health Committee.

What I would like to do is to actually go through the report that we produced as a result of the hearings that we held. We held our own alternative hearings to hear these submitters who were excluded from having the right to their democratic say. There were a number of major organisations that spoke and presented their submissions. These included Save Animals from Exploitation, the SPCA, Helping You Help Animals, the New Zealand Anti-Vivisection Society, as well as a number of individuals. The first thing that most of the submitters actually said was to acknowledge the need for strong regulation of psychoactive substances. They accepted that the situation that existed at that time was not working and they were welcoming the intent of the bill. Some of them even talked about their private lives and people whom they knew who had been turned upside down by some of these drugs. A lot of them talked about their utter dismay that democratic process had not been followed, that they had made their submissions and done their research in good faith that their concerns around animal testing would be heard by the Health Committee, and they had done so under the recommendation of the Minister at the time and the health officials. To then be rejected was, for them, a deep betrayal of democratic process.

What there was also was a fairly detailed submission from the Anti-Vivisection Society. You see, what had happened was that right back 6 months previously it had, under the Official Information Act, got hold of a report that had been produced by the Ministry of Health that outlined a proposed testing regime for these drugs. At that point in time, the testing regime was to involve a number of stages. There were the preclinical toxicological trials and then the human clinical trials, as well as the post-registration surveillance. It is quite important to understand that a testing regime is composed of all these three elements. It was never proposed that a clinical trial would be able to prove safety to the point that the substance goes straight to being used by the general population. There were always going to be human clinical trials involved. This is something that the public often do not realise when they say that they do not want animal testing, so let us go straight to testing them on drug addicts and so on. Actually, we need controlled studies, and they were always going to be part of the process with human volunteers. They start with micro-dosing and monitoring very carefully for the clinical signs of reactions and so on. So whatever tests they use for the preclinical trials are designed to weed out the most toxic substances, the most likely to have extreme dangerous reactions.

The original Ministry of Health standard for safety—actually, “safety” is not the right word to talk about the whole testing regime. It is about low risk because, actually, we cannot prove that any recreational drug is safe. Alcohol is not safe and tobacco is not safe, and yet we use them and we accept the risks that come with their use. So it is always going to be about trying to screen out the most damaging of these drugs and then focusing on the low-risk drugs and educating the public about their use. The reality is that the Ministry of Health’s initial proposed testing regime included four types of testing—for acute toxicity, for repeated-dose toxicity, for toxicokinetic investigation, and for genotoxicity. For all four of these there are validated alternatives to animal testing—not just one or two, but three or four or more—and all of them have been validated. That means that they have been demonstrated to give as good, if not better, results than those of the equivalent animal trials. So I utterly reject the claim by Paul Hutchison that we are being somehow kind of unscientific or airy-fairy, or what have you. That is not the case. There are established international studies on these areas.

The reality is that report was commissioned by the Anti-Vivisection Society using an overseas expert because we do not have the expertise in New Zealand. That is the problem. New Zealand is small. It is a country of only a few million people. We are not experts in alternatives to animal testing. The experts are overseas. We have to rely on overseas input in this area to achieve the goal of having low-risk products that have been tested using non-animal tests. We can do it, but we must look overseas for the expertise and the tests involved. Thank you.

I rise on behalf of New Zealand First as we welcome this bill, the Psychoactive Substances Amendment Bill, to, essentially, ban legal highs and because we think that it is absolutely disgraceful that families and communities had to suffer for such a long time before we as parliamentarians thought it was necessary to correct the mistakes that were made in the original legislation. Indeed, it was an embarrassing, shameful, and humiliating situation where 41 legal high products remained on the shelves. Those 41 products were actually sold in bulk through the Papatoetoe Heaven and Dreams shop. I think clause 7 in this new amendment bill will address most of the issues that have been raised by some of our local residents. I am sure that Pat Taylor and a few residents of Papatoetoe will now be very happy to know that the Government is actually doing something about this. Mr Paul Hutchison was saying that these situations are not easy to solve. I have a very strong message for you at this stage. It can be solved. The only reason it cannot be solved is that we are incapable of making it easy to be solved.

On the Campbell Live show we could all see that Mr Dunne was completely out of touch. A situation that was also hurting a lot of families is that there was no clear acceptance from Mr Dunne at the time to understand the issues that have been raised as a result of legal highs. It is a national issue, and it is one that is, tragically, affecting regional towns and low socio-economic areas the most. That is why we should have been more proactive earlier, and that is the reason why instead of waiting for local councils, this amendment bill should have been introduced a lot sooner.

The side effects of legal highs include agitation, confusion, paranoia, seizures, violent behaviour, haemoptysis, and psychosis. I am sure that everyone is now an expert on the side effects of these particular drugs. I have seen frightening evidence of the major health problems they cause and their direct influence on domestic and family violence, and that is the sad part about it. It is that there have had to be deaths and there have had to be suicides before we could even respond. It is becoming the norm for New Zealand parliamentarians that we have to wait for a major incident to happen before we can actually fix the problem. Hundreds of people are reported to have experienced harm in one form or another from legal highs, but this is only the tip of the iceberg. Beyond the hundreds of sad cases involving injury and death, there has been a failure to eliminate a threat posed by legal highs, and it has boosted an unhealthy culture of drug taking in New Zealand.

We now have an image as a country that is receptive to taking drugs. Mr Dunne sat on his hands while a culture of synthetic drugs was taking place. I even spoke to Mr Todd McClay quite a number of times. I told him that something needed to be done. His response was that the bill that was passed last year was the best option that this country could take. The reality is that 147 legal high shops remained, with 50 of them in the Auckland area. Although the number of legal high outlets is lower, you can still be sure that the number of people taking drugs did not come down. That is the reason why there were long queues in places like Tauranga and Te Awamutu and some of the outlets throughout the country. You can find the majority of these outlets in places like Dargaville, Karikari, and Edgecombe. About 82 are specialist drug shops, judging by their names, such as Heaven and Dreams and Cosmic Corner, and they are sold in tobacconists, video stores, sex shops, tattooists, and body piercers. With fewer outlets, as proudly announced by Mr Dunne, it definitely does not mean that there are fewer people taking drugs.

A new generation of young people are getting the wrong message. They are getting the wrong message about synthetic drugs, and it is not the message that we should be portraying or putting in place for the future generations of this country. This drug-taking culture is affecting everyone in New Zealand. During the Polyfest festival, secondary school students were actually waiting outside the Heaven and Dreams drug store because they wanted to pick up some of their drugs before going to the festival. The actual owner was giving it to them from the side door of his shop. These are some of the things that we ought to be looking at and we are supposed to be protecting our young generations from.

Many of these legal high shops are willing to sell to anyone. They will not be willing to admit that they are selling to the wrong age. Legal highs are an unnecessary temptation for teenagers and there was not enough accountability for these retailers. The number of people using legal highs is now vast, and families, communities, police, and hospitals must now deal with a new stream of addicted users. The serious threat to the health of New Zealand families and communities was palpable.

Since the initial Psychoactive Substances Act was passed, New Zealand First has been advocating on behalf of concerned local residents to do something or to reverse the position we had. Tonight I am actually very happy that we are looking at a complete ban on these items. We became aware that the decision to support the Psychoactive Substances Act was a mistake, but it was based on the information that was made available to us at the time. The call for action on legal highs was nationwide. Over 30,000 people have actually joined a Facebook group, and those who took to the streets for a march against legal highs ought to be taken notice of and ought to be considered seriously. New Zealand First was there. It was a country-wide protest, including over 20 towns from Whangarei to Invercargill. These were people who had experienced firsthand the damage legal highs were capable of inflicting on individuals and society. What I saw was a community standing up for itself because the Government was not standing up for the community. It was a mistake in the first place, and communities and families were made to suffer before the Government could actually respond.

This new legislation proposes to ban all synthetic drugs until they are proven. We would prefer an outright ban because that is what much of the community has asked for. We have seen living proof that the notion of reducing harm—and I think there has been talk about low risk. The right translation or interpretation of “low risk” is that there is some risk. When there is some risk, whether it is low risk or high risk, that means there is still risk. Those are the things that we need to pay attention to. Attitudes like those held by those who said that there is low risk must also be eliminated. Those are the attitudes that should not be welcome in the debate on legal highs.

If appropriate measures were taken and proper regulations put in place when the initial Psychoactive Substances Act was passed, we would not have seen some of the attempted suicides in Manurewa, we would not have seen some of the domestic violence that we have actually witnessed in Ōtara, and the people in Papatoetoe would have been able to go to bed at night without the fear of some badly behaved local residents who were actually desperate for their synthetic drugs. Many other countries have applied a law that invokes a straight ban by using broad terms to encompass all types of synthetic cannabis. New Zealand is the only country in the world to adopt a free-market, clinical-trial regime for recreational drugs. The Government is now taking the right action, and the term “low risk” should be eliminated from the debate altogether.

We should not be able to look for approval of any low-risk products in the future. We should be looking for products that are completely safe and have no risk at all. Two clear requirements must be present in the law on recreational synthetic drugs: first, to prove the product is safe before it can be sold, and, second, to notify authorities if there are changes to its composition. That should be part of the Psychoactive Substances Amendment Bill. That should be what we are supporting, and that is what we should be focusing on in order for the people of New Zealand to be satisfied with what we have actually introduced here tonight.

It is important to specify that safety measures have been put in place and that everyone is in support of those safety measures. That is what New Zealand First would like to see happen, and we are pleased to know that this week we will be able to turn round and tell those legal high shops that they can no longer operate in the way that they have been.

I would like to do something unusual here tonight, and that is to actually thank John Banks for his contribution to this debate on the Psychoactive Substances Amendment Bill—not only tonight. Actually, I have to admit that I was wrong in criticising him when he spoke against the original legislation in August last year and for the reasons he spoke against it. I would also like to acknowledge Mojo Mathers for her passionate, consistent defence of the no animal testing regime, and also Trevor Mallard for the work he has done on this. I have to say that this unlikely trio has probably sparked something new in 2014. I sense that we are actually opening up a new debate on animal testing in this country and the reasons for it. I think that is an important thing.

I also, unusually, want to thank the Minister in the chair tonight for being here as the Minister of Health and, by his presence, signalling that this is a significant and important issue. I am going to ask the Minister respectfully whether he can answer a couple of questions tonight, if not in the chair then in the third reading, because I think that the people listening to this debate tonight throughout New Zealand have got a couple of questions still in their minds that do need answers from the Government around the implementation of this bill and around the resourcing of the care of people who are badly affected by these terrible drugs. And they are not just drugs; they are actually poisons.

I also, unfortunately, would like to take issue with what one of the Green members, Kevin Hague, said tonight about the impact of the Psychoactive Substances Act since it has been enacted. I suppose I cannot blame him, because he relied on the regulatory impact statement, which I know was prepared in some haste and actually does not reflect the full facts. I do want to put on the record again that there has been a recorded increase in the number of contacts with the National Poisons Centre. This is not just because there is an 0800 number on the drugs as they are being sold; this is because there are stronger adverse effects. Although the number of drugs that are actually for sale has lessened in the actual physical number, moving down from 300-odd to 40-something, some of them are extremely toxic. There are more and more toxic adverse reactions presenting at emergency departments and being reported through the National Poisons Centre. Again—and I am going to table this at the end of my speech tonight—this here is the latest report, the April report, from the National Poisons Centre, which I do hope the Minister has had access to. I know that it was sent to the Associate Minister of Health Peter Dunne. The graph shows in red the line where those numbers of calls about adverse reactions have gone up, and they are going up every month. This is a significant issue.

I also want to draw attention to a couple of other things, and I know that the Hon Annette King also drew attention to these, and they are the estimation that has been made of the number of people being badly affected who have developed dependency, and the inadequacy of the research and work that is being done within the Ministry of Health. This is not to criticise individual people; this is basically to say that the resources are not in place to do this work. Estimating that 100 to 150 people might be dependent on these drugs throughout the country is woefully inadequate. It would be my contention that there may even be that number of people who have a dependency on the drugs in Dunedin alone—perhaps even more. I am sure that many of my colleagues around the Chamber tonight would get up and say that they know of dozens and dozens of cases of people who have a terrible dependency on these drugs, and of the impact that it is having on their families and their communities.

I ask the Minister to please tell the Committee what plans are in place for increasing the resources that are available through the Ministry of Health—

Just to touch on a couple of the questions that members have raised, implementation of the Psychoactive Substances Amendment Bill is going to be a priority for the Ministry of Health. A considerable amount of work and effort has gone into it. If I look at the drafting of this bill, it has involved Crown Law, health, legal, outside Queen’s Counsel, and the Parliamentary Counsel Office. So we have had lawyers for Africa helping us with this bill, and the ministry is very focused on the implementation. In fact, I have been advised that even today the police and the Psychoactive Substances Regulatory Authority have been working together in respect of visiting a number of retail premises to ensure they are aware of their obligations. I will talk about those later.

The Ministry of Health is in very close contact with addiction treatment providers across New Zealand, and it is going to continue to liaise with them and to conference at least weekly in order to gauge what is happening around the country. A recent national teleconference shows that all services, as the member Clare Curran has noted, have noticed a particular increase in inquiries and the seeking of treatment. In respect of the recent announcement of this bill, even that has encouraged some of that increase. Preparations are under way to make sure that services can meet this level of support. The ministry has material and information that is available. The Alcohol Drug Helpline has agreed to extend its services during weekdays with an extended period of time.

Emergency department physicians have also met. They are not expecting any major disruptions, but the emergency department leaders will maintain surveillance and support, and advice will be fed through to the Ministry of Health. I have had discussions with a number of district health board chief executives, who advise that their district health boards are ready and able and that they do expect to be able to have the resources to meet community demand. The Government will be keeping a very close eye on this because we all share the concerns the member has.

Tēnā koe, Mr Chair. Tēnā tātou katoa. I rise, with all members of this Committee, to lend my support to the Psychoactive Substances Amendment Bill. All I can say, to be succinct, is thank goodness. Thank goodness for the communities up and down this country who rallied and who marched to get these terrible drugs out of our communities.

💬 Hon Trevor Mallard: Meka, can you say thank you to Billy Graham. I forgot to, in my speech, for the work he did.

Yes, I was going to mention him, Mr Mallard. Many of the members on this side of the Chamber and other members who care passionately about their communities have been invited to, got involved with, or been part of a lot of the rallies that occurred up and down the country. I for one was fortunate to join in the rally down in Naenae with Billy Graham, who called it down there. He is a wonderful person, who is passionate about the community of Naenae. I was attending with my colleague the Hon Trevor Mallard; the Mayor of Hutt City, Ray Wallace; councillors; and community workers. Clearly, the meeting that was held in Naenae was a reflection of the community’s absolute disdain for these drugs—their absolute disdain for these drugs—and their desire to get rid of them. So in Naenae the message was clear, and both Trevor and I as parliamentarians representing areas of the Hutt were charged with bringing this message to Parliament to say that people in Naenae wanted them banned completely.

From Naenae, I was fortunate enough to attend another rally. That was called by councillors of the Hastings District Council, again to say that people do not want these substances regulated; they actually want them banned. So, again, attending that rally, that message was clear to those who were there. The local paper, Hawke’s Bay Today, watched the people who went in an outlet that was selling them, and the front page of the paper showed people going in over the space of 6 minutes. It was enough for me to say that people in Hastings do not want these drugs and want them banned. So that was community meeting No. 2.

Following on from the steps of that meeting, I met with the Gisborne District Council and the Mayor of Gisborne, Meng Foon, who, again, asked what this Government is doing about these substances because they want them banned. Across the river, the one outlet there has people coming in. The feedback from concerned people in Gisborne was asking what we are doing in Parliament and saying we need to take the message to this Government yet again because regulation is not meeting what they want as community leaders and community workers. They want them completely banned. Following that, there were two more rallies, one in Napier and, again, one in Hastings.

My point is about the passion and the drive of our communities to say that these are bad substances that are in our communities and are infecting our whānau, and we need to get rid of them. I again want to support not just the people who were mentioned in bringing the amendment—clearly, the Government has had an about-turn from all the feedback it has received. But the original Act, the Psychoactive Substances Act, is one of those where you wonder how it actually got in. I need to acknowledge that I was not in the House at the time, but I definitely—

💬 Hon Trevor Mallard: Oh! Blame us.

Yes. Yes, that is right—I was not in the House. But, look, it is like collective responsibility. If you are a parliamentarian, you have to defend that this was passed. But, like I have said, I am happy to stand here and say that we have amended that Act. The substances are going to be banned. I know that the people of places like Maraenui, like Flaxmere, like Kaiti, like Elgin, and like all the small communities that I stand here proudly to represent will be absolutely pleased that we are making this move to completely ban these substances. So that is my small contribution to what I consider is a very important bill and something for which all our communities have rallied to say enough is enough. So I support this bill. Kia ora.

I am going to take just a short call on the Psychoactive Substances Amendment Bill. I am not on the Health Committee, which will review this particular bill. I have attempted to look quickly through it prior to it coming here. I think we should welcome the decision that the Government has taken. Although, of course, Labour claims some responsibility for that, I think it is also kudos to the wider community out there who demanded of this House that the way forward for us was to change the legislation that we initially passed.

One of the groups that was quite vocal—and rightly so—against the previous legislation was local government throughout New Zealand. I wonder whether the Minister in the chair, the Minister of Health, would be able to crystallise information for local government in New Zealand, in particular, on just how this new legislation will impact on the role of local government. As I said, just quickly scanning the legislation, there is no reference to it there other than reference to the Psychoactive Substances Expert Advisory Committee. The Minister should know that with the previous legislation local authorities up and down this country were quite vocal about the responsibility that the previous legislation imposed on them without giving them the appropriate protection in how to advocate strongly for the views of their particular communities. I suspect that local government would be happy that we have essentially followed the advice that it has given this Government by banning the availability of many, if not all, of the legal highs that were available.

There is another concern, I believe, which was one of the reasons why I was supportive of the previous legislation, and that is the concern about what happens if when we are banning these legal highs that then makes them available for the underground market. I think that although we welcome the U-turn of this Government in this legislation and although we welcome its U-turn on testing these substances on animals, there are those two particular issues that I wonder whether the Minister would be able to shed some light on—first, the role that local government plays in the new legislation, and, second, the efforts that need to be made to prevent the black market.

As everybody else in this Chamber has said, these products are a scourge in our community. I suspect that no one here in this Chamber who is a parent would like to see their children picking one of these things up and consuming it. Not too long ago there was an email that was circulated within the emails of Government departments where somebody suggested that there was a legal product being produced that would taste like a strawberry and look like a strawberry. I think the police identified that it was a scam, but these are the potential dangers that I think still lie unanswered.

I remember that in 2001 the community in Ōtara and the Ōtara Music Arts Centre brought down a group called the Boo-Yaa T.R.I.B.E, who were Samoan rap dancers. They were hard-core rappers who came down to talk to the young people here about their experiences living in Los Angeles. The issue, obviously, got on to drugs. What I recall from that conversation was that they said that New Zealand had not yet experienced the full force of the kinds of bad drugs that they saw on their particular streets. The fact that we have allowed some of this stuff to be on sale for a while now is still cause for concern.

So, yes, I welcome the legislation, but I wonder whether the Minister is able to just shed some light. It is not clear to me from the legislation before the Committee what role local government plays and what the transition process is. Although I suspect that local government will welcome the banning of these substances, there is a strong mood within local government throughout New Zealand at the moment that this Government tends to impose legislation on local government and then let local government pay for it. I think it has every right to do so, but I think that shedding some light on what that responsibility is would be very, very helpful.

Finally, also, how do we then address the black market? If we are banning these substances and we are going to make it difficult for some of these things to be produced and sold to our young people—and I agree with the banning and I agree to our making it difficult—how do we make sure that they are not readily available in other markets? Thank you.

When we rush legislation, there are frequently poor outcomes. That has been acknowledged by a number of members in the House. I want to make a short contribution, covering one of the background informers about this situation that is lesser known and not so much in the public eye. Certainly, in my area, I want to draw attention to the work that Clare Curran did in Dunedin to raise awareness and an appetite for action. We together visited an outlet in South Dunedin recently, close to a community mental health facility. It was pretty shocking to see the fly-by-night nature, the lack of any investment. There was a real awareness that this was a dangerous business to be in, just from walking into the shop itself.

But I wanted to speak a little bit more about the poisons line—the National Poisons Centre in Dunedin—which has advised on the Psychoactive Substances Amendment Bill. I know that the centre supported the Government’s decision-making in the original Psychoactive Substances Act and that it has provided a huge amount of support to those wrestling with addiction in recent times. If viewers at home can pause for a minute and imagine that their child, perhaps an 18-month-old, has swallowed a range of unidentified pills or maybe even some leftover synthetic cannabinoids, and they are then in the situation where the child is frothing at the mouth or unconscious, currently we have the ability to ring an 0800 helpline: 0800 POISON. It is written on most toxic products in New Zealand. But what many people at home may not appreciate is that currently the Government has a proposal that it is consulting on that would roll Healthline, Quitline, the Alcohol Drug Helpline, the National Depression Initiative, problem gambling support, and the 0800 POISON number into one service. I want to suggest that this raises a number of serious questions that I would like the Minister of Health to address, either now or in his third reading speech, because this is raising concerns in our communities. Where these poisons exist, a need exists for a service that is supported by professionals and that is able to respond immediately.

This proposal to roll these services into one service, one helpline, has been parodied on TV. I am aware of a parody that literally imagines a scenario where the line is called and it says: “If you would like to speak to Healthline, press 1. If you would like to speak to Quitline, press 2. If you would like to speak to the Alcohol Drug Helpline, press 3. If you would like to speak to the National Depression Initiative, press 4. If you would like to speak to problem gambling support, press 5. And if your child is frothing at the mouth and unconscious, press 6 and please hold for the operator.” This is an abominable thought. It is truly unacceptable that we would get to that point, where people were waiting for such a service, where people were not able to immediately access the service. This service, which supported the legislation that the Government consulted on—this particular service that the Government consulted in the formation of the Psychoactive Substances Act and in the legislation we are passing through the House now—and which the users of these substances have regularly used, is under threat. Its funding is only $1.5 million a year from the Government, and yet it maintains a database that, together with the service, costs around $2.8 million a year. The data is constantly being updated.

This service is under threat. I would urge members of the public watching this debate who are concerned about the 0800 POISON service going—for all of the advice that is provided post-9/11 on chemical threats, for all of the advice it provides every day for addicts and for those people who have swallowed unidentified items—to contact the Minister of Health to express their concern. The current process that is being engaged in is called a constructive dialogue. At the start when this proposal was launched, there was going to be a competitive tender process. That has since been shifted into what is called a constructive dialogue. That smells and looks a lot like a process that is opaque. That is worrying. We do not need cronyism in this aspect of our reform. There may well be some economies of scale to be gained by rolling many of these services together, but it seems highly unlikely that rolling in the 0800 POISON service makes sense.

Clause 1 agreed to.

Clause 2 agreed to.

Clause 3 agreed to.

Clause 4 agreed to.

Clause 5 agreed to.

Clause 6 agreed to.

Clause 7 agreed to.

Clause 8 agreed to.

Schedule agreed to.

Bill reported without amendment.

Report adopted.

Third Reading