Psychoactive Substances Amendment Bill

on behalf of the Associate Minister of Health: I move, That the Psychoactive Substances Amendment Bill be now read a third time. I would like to thank all members for their contributions to the debate, and particularly thank all those party representatives who have worked so constructively with the Government over the last 48 hours in respect of the bill, such that we have been able to build a broad consensus across the House on the issues in the bill.

This bill, when it comes into force, will remove from the market all psychoactive products with interim approval. The police and the Psychoactive Substances Regulatory Authority have been working closely to prepare for the change. Starting today, police and authority enforcement officers have been visiting retail premises to ensure that affected parties are aware of their obligations. Retailers are being advised that they need to secure all products and return them to the wholesaler. Wholesalers are being advised that they will be required to recall all the products from their customers. Manufacturers will be advised that they will need to recall all products and dispose of them as directed by the authority. All parties will be advised that they can be expected to be visited by the police and the Psychoactive Substances Regulatory Authority enforcement officers, and that any non-compliance may affect their ability to reapply for a licence under the full regime.

The day this legislation commences there will be active enforcement. At 12.01 a.m. on Thursday, 8 May the legislation will come into force and makes it clear that no one may sell, supply, or possess psychoactive substances. Later that day police and enforcement officers will visit all retailers to ensure that products have been removed from public view and are being returned to the wholesaler. As part of the recall notice, retailers and wholesalers will be required to maintain records of what products are returned, when they are returned, and which manufacturers they are returned to. This will be matched against information from manufacturers about what products they received, from whom, and when.

It is also very important for us to consider the people who may be dependent on the products that this bill removes from the market. The Ministry of Health expects that some people will experience serious symptoms from ceasing to use these psychoactive products, and withdrawal from these products can last for 2 weeks or longer. I explained to the House during the Committee stage that the Ministry of Health is working very closely with the sector to monitor these things. I am advised that the addiction treatment sector believes it can manage this demand within existing resources, but the Ministry of Health will continue to monitor that very closely.

On what this legislation does, this Parliament is quite clear. We are removing the interim licences so these products that were previously enjoying an interim licence will no longer have a licence, be licensed, and will not be able to be sold, supplied, or possessed. We are allowing that the individual retailers can maintain their licence for 2 weeks, and the purpose of this is to enable the authorities to have access to the retail premises and ask questions and obtain information from the people with their retail licences.

The Government is indicating that regulations will be passed in the next few months on the testing requirements needed to consider any new applications under this legislation. Parliament is being quite explicit in inserting a principle into the legislation and making it very clear in a provision that we will not accept any information that comes from animal testing in support of any application. Parliament is also being clear that this is notwithstanding new section 12(2), in clause 6, which makes it clear that we will be prepared to consider animal-testing data from overseas only when that data can be used to decline an application under this legislation. Parliament is also being quite clear that there will be no compensation.

The message from this Parliament is very clear. As of 12.01 a.m. on Thursday, these products are no longer legal and it will be an offence to sell, supply, or possess psychoactive substances. I would like to thank all members for their participation in this debate, and give them an assurance that the Ministry of Health will be working very closely with the regulatory authority and the police to ensure that the message is out there: Parliament has changed the rules; those licences are removed.

In accordance with the agreement amongst the parties in the House tonight, I seek leave for the House to sit past 10 p.m. to complete the third reading of the Psychoactive Substances Amendment Bill.

Leave is sought for that purpose. Is there any objection? There is no objection.

Labour supports the Psychoactive Substances Amendment Bill because it removes the transition provisions from the Psychoactive Substances Act, which in effect will remove from the market all the untested drugs that are currently available on the market, and it also removes the provisions that allow for animal testing of psychoactive substances in any tests that are used to prove that a psychoactive substance is of low or no risk. It improves, but does not overturn, the original Psychoactive Substances Act.

I want to remind anybody who thinks that passing the Psychoactive Substances Act was a mistake that before it was passed, we had no regulation over psychoactive substances at all. There was an unknown number of products out there being sold from an unknown number of outlets. When the original Act was passed, we took control. We now know how many products are out there for sale, and more have been removed from the market since the original Act was passed. We now know how many retailers there are out there. We even know who wants to import substances so that they can carry out research on products to perhaps make them one day become approved products. We know a lot more about what is going on in the legal high industry as a result of the passing of the original Act.

However, it was not enough. It did not satisfy legitimate concerns about untested substances being available on the market and being used by people, particularly young people, without us being fully cognisant of what both the short-term and long-term effects of those products are. The decision to leave on the market the products for which there had been no previous complaints made was made for legitimate reasons by a select committee, the Health Committee, that was under pressure to deliver on a very, very short deadline to meet the Government’s requirements. But it was, it turns out, the wrong decision to make.

Overturning that decision has been an amazing demonstration of people power—the people who have demonstrated in towns and cities around New Zealand, and the people who have lobbied their MPs. I do not think there is probably a single electorate MP or list MP in this House who has not had a very large number of people come and ask that we improve the legislation. Those people have worked tirelessly to ensure that their representatives understand what it is that they want to have done.

I want to particularly acknowledge in my own community the people on the Psychoactive Substances Task Force, which is a self-established group within the city, and which I have been a member of. It has involved the police, it has involved concerned parents, and it has involved health practitioners. It was formed ostensibly to make submissions to our local council to make sure it made the best use of the provisions in the Act to apply a local approved products plan. But also, as time went on, it became a lobbying vehicle. As a member of it, I found I was spending more of my time being lobbied by the people in the group than talking about what we were going to talk about with the council. That was fair enough—that was fair enough.

I hope that everybody in that group and people around the country know tonight that the politicians have listened. We have responded, and I think we have responded in a way that does what people wanted us to do, which is to get rid of these untested drugs without undermining the original intent of the legislation. That is a position that, it seems, a number of parties arrived at independently. We could all see that this bill is the smart way forward, and I do want to acknowledge the Minister of Health, Tony Ryall, for his work in ensuring that we did get cross-party consensus on this legislation.

We want to pass this legislation tonight. I find it slightly ironic that we are rushing to fix up a mistake that was caused by rushing the original legislation, but, nevertheless, the people want these drugs off the market, and that is what Parliament wants to do. We want to do it tonight, so let us get the job done and do what the people want.

Thank you for the opportunity to speak briefly in this third reading of the Psychoactive Substances Amendment Bill. Undoubtedly, for 20 years or so, successive Governments have been grappling with how best to minimise harm from psychoactive substances and their use, and availability in New Zealand has burgeoned over the last few decades. This is a very complex area and, undoubtedly, those who manufacture psychoactive substances are continually trying to invent new substances that detrimentally affect New Zealand families and young people. In fact, nowhere in the world are there clear answers as to how best to deal with this problem.

However, as Iain Lees-Galloway has said, prior to the Psychoactive Substances Act, which we are amending, coming in, we did not have a regulatory regime, and there is little doubt in my mind that the Act remains the best way we know of dealing with emerging psychoactive substances. This amendment bill revokes all interim approvals for psychoactive substances. It has emerged from an outpouring throughout New Zealand of the concerns of ordinary people about these substances, and the Government has acted very decisively. Many speakers have indicated that perhaps there are simple solutions. They are wrong. Many people have indicated that the science around ensuring there is minimal risk is easy. They are wrong. It is not easy, nor is the science around animal testing.

There is no doubt that the National Government is constantly monitoring world literature to do everything possible to ensure that we exercise best practice in this country. I do find it absurd that the Green Party is abstaining, but, nevertheless, the rest of Parliament is in agreement that the best thing we can do is send clear messages at this stage and then progress on and use best practice science and evidence to ensure we do everything possible to minimise harm and protect the health of New Zealanders.

Kia ora, Mr Assistant Speaker. Thank you very much for this opportunity to speak in the third reading of the Psychoactive Substances Amendment Bill. As a member of the Health Committee, which heard the primary piece of legislation, I want to reiterate the sentiments shared across the House that the context that the country was facing was one where these products were out there. We needed a regime that regulated them, but what we have seen is that regime fall short of creating the appropriate framework for us to determine what safe substances are. In fact, what we have seen is that the substances that are currently available have been incredibly detrimental to the health and well-being of our communities right across the country. It was an honest attempt by the select committee within the context of a bill that needed to be rushed through by 1 August, because the Associate Minister of Health, the Hon Peter Dunne, had temporary class drug notices for 30 substances and 50 products that would have expired.

We had to react and create a regime that now has enabled us as a society, a community, to regulate these products, and I guess the next test for the Minister of Health is, in fact, the development of the psychoactive product approval process. I know that that consultation process concluded at the end of March. It is part of a work programme that could eventually see some types of products be available for our communities. It is within that context that I want to highlight, from the primary legislation, the local approved products policy. As a select committee we were really clear that local communities, local government, should be empowered with tools to then be able to say where these products should be sold.

I want to congratulate our local government representatives around the country on passing the ball back to Parliament so that we could create this framework to enable safe substances to be sold. I want to highlight that the ball is in their court about where those products can be sold, so all of them should continue with their consultations, and with their development of these local approved products policies in anticipation that, eventually, there may be some products that will be available.

I think it is worth highlighting that, because we were also really clear through this process that prohibition was not the answer. I know that my colleague Kevin Hague had some particular perspectives around that, given that the most damaging drug in our country is alcohol, and many New Zealanders die through the consumption of alcohol coupled with tobacco. As a mature nation, we had to have, I guess, a grown-up conversation about where these psychoactive substances fit within the context of us regulating those substances.

I am not going to talk for much longer, but I do want to highlight that there have been incredible activists in our community. There is a woman called Julie King who lives in Tokoroa. She is part of a group called Love Soup. I have never been there, but I have seen her Facebook posts. She is an ordinary, passionate woman living in our community. She loves her community and she was really concerned about what these products were doing not only to the young people but to the people within that Tokoroa community. She took it upon herself, with other people within that community, to make a stand.

I want to acknowledge that engagement, because I think that what we have seen in this process is that democracy does work, that people actually do have power, and that when they develop a critical mass, they will get reactions from political parties and people in power. So we do have to commend the Government for doing something. At the end of the day it does not matter who did what because we are all here tonight and our votes will be recorded. There is some consensus about the passing of this bill.

Finally, I want to thank a local group called group called the Warriors of Change. They are young people based in Manurewa. On 11 May 2013 they organised a rally. We had a shop right in the middle of the Manurewa township, and the young people decided that they did not want these products sold in their community. I want to commend them for their activism and for their motivation to show that as a community they did not want the shop where it was and they did not want these products sold. I want to credit them, the local board members, and local bodies right around the country for the work that they have done. As we have seen, through collective action pieces of legislation like this one can be passed, and they are actually going to benefit the people of our communities in New Zealand. Kia ora. Thank you.

I want to begin by, as others have done, thanking the Minister of Health for consulting the Green Party on his draft bill, the Psychoactive Substances Amendment Bill, last night. Again I record that the Green Party will be abstaining on this bill. I know that others have been puzzled by that, but the simple fact is this. This bill does two things. One of those things we strongly support and the other we strongly oppose. It leaves us with no other respectable position.

I want to continue from where I left off with my second reading speech. In the second reading I spoke about some of the reasons that lay behind the widespread community concerns about the availability of these substances and how those were based on incorrect understandings of the law and of the situation around this wide range of substances, and my concern about the failure of the Government to respond to that misinformation with leadership and proper information. In this speech I want to focus not so much on that issue as on the response of the Government to the current situation.

This bill reimposes prohibition. The Law Commission, the Ministry of Health, the New Zealand Drug Foundation, the vast majority of submitters on the original bill, the Health Committee, the Minister of Health, and this Parliament were all right—prohibition does not work. It seems bizarre to me that I need to be making the argument for that case, since so many members of the House in fact made that point and made those arguments in the various debates that we held in the House on the original bill. I will not quote members tonight. But the fact is that that is the approach that the Government is now imposing in the interim.

I am just going to run through some of those arguments. The thing about prohibition is that it does not suppress demand. It may reduce it very slightly, but the fact is that demand still exists and the market will still respond to that demand with supply. In a couple of months’ time, if the Campbell Live programme takes its camera crews out to Naenae, maybe from about 10 o’clock at night through to maybe 1 o’clock or 2 o’clock in the morning, and instead of going to the shop it goes to the alley behind the shop, it is going to find demand being met by supply.

Prohibition takes supply out of the hands of regulated, controlled retailers and instead puts that supply into the hands of criminal gangs or other illicit suppliers. Unfortunately, what that means is that the drug dealer on the street in the alleyway behind the shop at Naenae and the drug dealer in the tinny house are not subject to those same controls. Those people supplying the demand that will not go away as a result of this bill tonight will not be checking people for their ID or for proof of age. We should expect that supply to people under age will increase as a result of this bill. Those people will not be making a distinction between those products that are low risk and those products that are high risk.

We should expect that the supply of products that are high risk will increase as a result of this bill. Those people, those illicit drug dealers, will, in addition to having a range of psychoactive substances—those currently legal and those currently illegal—have, in another pocket, other drugs like methamphetamine. So the product of this bill will be that the demand, which will not go away as a result of this bill, will also be met by the increased supply of currently illicit drugs. We are going to be seeing a significant increase in harm.

As the prohibition on cannabis has proven, demand is not suppressed by prohibition. Cannabis is absolutely prohibited, and yet most adult New Zealanders have smoked cannabis. It has not suppressed the demand. Further, this bill, which is going to be passed tonight—and I respect the fact that the Green Party speaks in a minority on this bill—undermines the very Act that it amends, because what will happen as this bill is passed is that it will set the platform for illicit chains of supply for psychoactive substances, and those chains of supply will still exist when the bill takes full effect. So rather than a managed transition in which we move from having a completely unregulated market through to having a regulated market, we do our best in the passage of this bill to undermine the regime that we are trying to impose.

Others have spoken about the need for treatment services to be put in place, because one of the consequences of this bill for any people who do have some degree of dependence on any of the substances that currently exist is that they will find that they suddenly have no access to a legal supply of the substance on which they are dependent. So that is one of the problems around supply. I welcome Mr Ryall’s comments about the preparations he has made, but I note that none of that actually increases the supply of treatment services. None of that actually deals with the withdrawal that we fully anticipate—which Dr Leo Shep has spoken about—with this bill.

There is another matter related to access to treatment services. With the passage of this bill, those people who wish to access treatment services, or who have a need to access treatment services, will find those treatment services harder to access, and that is for a couple of reasons. The first is that there will no longer be information at the point of sale or on the products about how to access treatment services. So that is one of the reasons. The other reason is that in order for people to be able to access treatment services once this bill is passed, they will need to admit to criminal offending. That will be a significant barrier for many, as it is for those who require treatment for dependence on other currently illicit substances.

Finally, I want to speak about stockpiling, and there has been some reference to stockpiling in this debate tonight. One of the consequences of this bill and of the Government’s approach to this bill is that there will be stockpiling—there has already been stockpiling—and the consequence of that is twofold. On one hand, it actually increases the supply of these substances to fuel the illicit trade that we should fully anticipate will take effect from tomorrow night, and, on the other hand, it also means that individuals will have much larger quantities of these substances that will become illicit. That means that they will be more subject to crime. Also, that larger supply of these substances is inherently more dangerous. So I am very disappointed that rationality and evidence-based policy are the casualties of this bill tonight.

I was proud of the quality of the debate, of the maturity of the debate, that we had around the original bill, the Psychoactive Substances Bill, and I think it is unfortunate that probably most members of this House understand that the bill that we are passing tonight will make the harm from these substances worse and not better. The Green Party will be abstaining on this bill.

On behalf of New Zealand First, I would like to rise to support the third reading of the Psychoactive Substances Amendment Bill. We are pleased that prompt action has been taken by the Minister of Health, Minister Ryall, so we would like to commend him for that action. We are pleased too with the participation of all parties in this House and their desire to ensure that this legislation is passed as quickly as possible. There has been huge concern in our communities about psychoactive substances, and there is no simple solution to the issue of taking these psychoactive substances. Whether they are legal or illegal, we are pleased that the psychoactive substances that are being sold in shops throughout New Zealand will not be available on Thursday.

We are pleased too to support the new testing regime regarding animals. We know that Parliament wanted to reduce the harm of these psychoactive substances, yet the bottom line was that the legislation had to be right, and it was difficult to get it right. On this occasion we did not get it right. We did not do enough, but tonight we have put it right.

We wanted to reduce the harm that these substances were having right around New Zealand. We have to thank the people who came into our offices with the very sad stories about their youngsters who had taken these particular substances and who were continuing to take these substances. We understand that the information is not available as to how many people are going to actually seek help regarding the substance-taking. We know it is far harder to get off these chemical highs than it is to get off the natural products, so we are told. So I was pleased to hear the assurance from the Minister that there will be resources available for all of those who seek help in this particular instance.

It is ironic that the profit margin for the product owners, manufacturers, and sellers of these particular synthetic drugs is large. I was interested to read that the annual retail sales in New Zealand total around $140 million, so it is little wonder that the dairy owners were not happy when the legislation changed.

I must acknowledge the efforts too of Julie King, who organised the recent marches right throughout New Zealand. It was a credit to her. It is no little thing to do that, so thank you, Julie.

Tonight in New Zealand First we are very happy to support this bill. These products will never be safe. We are pleased that the products are going to be withdrawn from shops in our communities. There was not anything positive to come from these synthetic drugs, only misery.

I am pleased to take the last call on this Psychoactive Substances Amendment Bill. I just want to acknowledge Minister Ryall for the work that he has done behind the scenes. This is a very, very difficult piece of legislation because it is a very, very difficult area of drug law because of the challenges that these chemicals present, which the drug manufacturers and the drug pedlars have exploited for many years now—since the late 1990s, in fact.

I am a little shocked, but we expect what we expect from the Green Party. To abstain on something like this because Green Party members have strong views for and strong views against, when the New Zealand public are struggling desperately with this subject—this whole Parliament has been—shows us really how unprepared that party is for ever being on the Government benches, because every day a Government deals with matters that it has to make tough calls on. We cannot please all of the people all of the time. That party seems to think that if it cannot fall on one side or the other, it will just sit squarely in the middle. Actually, the New Zealand public expect greater of them—

💬 Kevin Hague: Split the bill then.

—and although I have the greatest respect for Kevin Hague, I do not actually believe he has done his party any service today. Green Party members have demonstrated why they should never get anywhere near these Government benches. The public deserve better from them than abstaining on something that is very, very important.

What this legislation does is it removes the 41 products that were on the shelves as part of the transitional regime. With the benefit of 20:20 hindsight, one could suggest that these products would have been harmful. They are made up of compounds and chemicals largely unknown to science that really serve only one purpose, in my view, and that is to make the drug pedlars money through the misery of addiction. These substances lock very quickly into the neurotransmitting parts of the brain and very quickly cause addiction and goodness knows what other psychological disorders. So this legislation gets rid of those 41 products and says that they will also have to prove that they are of low harm. I have expressed to this Parliament that low harm means that they cannot have a possibility of causing addiction—which is harmful—so I will be watching on with interest as to how this issue is traversed.

It also removes the animal testing provision. I have absolutely no problem with that. What we are dealing with here is that if we have to raise the bar and say to those people that the standard for them as a drug manufacturer needs to be higher, because if it is going to be used by humans we do not believe that animals should be subject to that, well, that is fair enough. Actually, I do not think we should lose too much sleep if the onus going on drug manufacturers is that little bit tougher. So if they need to spend more millions and it takes them longer to be able to get their product to a position where it is available to go back on the shelves, then so be it. I actually hope that what this legislation does is to put out of business drug pedlars, drug manufacturers, and those who would create addictive substances to create misery through addiction in order to make money.

I want to commend the Minister of Health for what he has done. I want to commend colleagues across the House for supporting this legislation. It is a tough piece of legislation. It is pioneering stuff. Today this Parliament has sent a very clear message about accepting the harms that are created by psychoactive substances. Could I ask the New Zealand public to please also accept that we all have a choice to make when it comes to ingesting things like these or other substances. The legal status of a drug is never going to alter the chemical nature of that drug and we should all remember that.

I commend this bill. I think it has been necessary, but at least we have got on and done what needs to be done. I commend it to the House.