Psychoactive Substances (Increasing Penalty for Supply and Distribution) Amendment Bill

I move, That the Psychoactive Substances (Increasing Penalty for Supply and Distribution) Amendment Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Justice Committee to consider the bill.

It is a pleasure to rise and introduce this important bill to the House. This bill tackles an increasingly important issue in our country. It will address the growing danger and considerable concern in our communities that is caused by synthetic drugs. For many people, there exists a false narrative around synthetic drugs. Such people suggest that these psychoactive substances are innocuous, so that we can find an acceptable place for them in our society and in the lives of our young people. They’re called party pills, natural power, and herbal highs. They’re all horrible euphemisms, designed to lessen public concern and hide the harm that these drugs cause. In truth, they’re far more than a bit of a high on a night out or an occasional pick-me-up.

For far too many, these drugs are the beginning of the end, leading to lives of dependency and addiction. Tragically, more than two dozen people across New Zealand have died from these drugs over the past year. Calum Jones, a 22-year-old father, was one such man. But I think that the most tragic aspect of Jones’ story is that he was going clean. After wrestling for months with addiction, he had finally found help. He’d spent weeks in rehab and was clean, but because of how easy it is to get these drugs, within days of leaving rehab he was dead.

One of the most reprehensible aspects of synthetic drugs is that their potency and toxicity vary so much that it is not possible to know the effect they will have. When you light up, will it mean experiencing a high or will it be the last thing you ever do? It is a gruesome game of Russian roulette, being played out on the streets of cities and towns across New Zealand.

After his death, texts found on Jones’ phone showed that during the three days before he died, he was texted by a drug dealer almost 100 times. He’d been clean for six weeks, but was hounded by someone who had no interest in his health or in the dangers these drugs pose but only in the profit he could make out of Calum’s addiction. He harassed him until he made what would be his final purchase. I cannot imagine the pain Jones’ loved ones feel, knowing that he’d almost escaped from the grasp of these insidious drugs only to be taken away by the bullying of some despicable merchant of death.

I’d like to take a moment to acknowledge Calum’s father, Lewis, who is here in the gallery with us today. Lewis has faced what no father should ever want to face—having his son Calum stolen from him, far too young, by drug dealers who know no compassion. Standing here in this Chamber, I do not even know half the feelings he and his family have felt, but I know that we can do something this afternoon to help ensure that other families don’t have to face what they have faced.

These drugs are causing a tremendous amount of harm. That is why it is necessary for us to address the easy access that so many people have to these substances. Men and women like Jones, who want to be clean, are being pursued by dealers who show no regard for the law and scoff at the penalties that are in place. Synthetic drugs are causing far greater harm than addiction to codeine or cannabis seed, but these substances are classified as class C drugs and carry a maximum penalty of eight years in prison, while dealing synthetics carries only a maximum of two years.

Over the past four years, we have seen the number of convictions for dealing synthetic drugs greatly increase, from 23 in 2013-14 to 145 in 2016-17. But if the most the law can do is put people in prison for a few months, we shouldn’t pretend that this is of any real deterrence. The majority of convictions for supply wouldn’t even come close to receiving the maximum two-year penalty.

The High Court determined in 2015 that in order for someone to be given a sentence of between one and two years, they must be supplying at a commercial scale. This highlights the inconsistency in the way we treat harmful substances in our communities, and must be changed. Changing the penalties in place will address the supply side of this issue and highlight the importance that Parliament places on it. But we must also address the demand and consumption side.

I do not claim that this issue is solely a matter of law and order that can be resolved just by bringing the force of the law against suppliers. That will not fully solve this problem. To address the harm that is presented by these drugs, we must maintain our consistent narrative and impose consistent penalties for those who deal drugs. But we must also provide support, treatment, and care for those who suffer from addiction to these drugs. Those who are addicted need our help.

To fully and comprehensively do our duty to the people of New Zealand, we must also ensure that solutions are found to the health aspects of addiction, not merely law and order. That is why I launched a petition with the Jones family for a parliamentary select committee inquiry into addiction to synthetic drugs and how we can best address the issue from that aspect. This is the two-pronged approach necessary to address both the supply and demand elements of this issue. The need for a multifaceted approach, however, does not negate the need to amend the law to correct the appalling inconsistency in the way these drugs are treated under the law.

The greatest help and support that we can provide to those who are addicted to these substances is to remove the drugs from our streets. Too many people have been told, when seeking help for a loved one plagued by addiction to synthetic drugs, not to worry so much as they are only synthetics. Too many young people have no healthy fear of these substances because they’ve heard, over and over again, that they are just synthetics—drugs that not even Parliament is too concerned about. We have to change the conversation about synthetics.

As a Parliament, we need to send a very clear message that to supply these drugs to another person is a serious crime, one of callous indifference to another person’s life and health. Increasing the sentences not only sends a message but also helps make the community safer by taking those convicted off our streets. Some people recoil when they hear about tougher sentencing for drug supplying. They argue that such legislation advances the so-called war on drugs, and does nothing to actually help those who suffer from addiction to synthetics.

Simply put, these suggestions are patently wrong. This amendment bill and the petition that I’ve launched are necessary and measured responses to the growing drug problem New Zealand faces. Together they address both sides of the issue, considering both the criminal and the medical facets.

This is not a bill which targets the victims of drug addiction and mental illness. Maximum sentences are there for maximum offenders. Judges will use their discretion when handing down sentences, taking into account the seriousness of the offence, but, without a maximum sentence of eight years, judges are constrained in how they can deal with those who are profiting from the misery of others.

Having made this clear, I am optimistic that no MP will oppose this bill on the grounds that it is not appropriately holistic in its approach. That being the case, I call on the Greens in particular to support this bill to the select committee. Please let the public express their views and tell their stories, so that MPs can hear what people are saying in the communities up and down our country.

The people of New Zealand don’t want a Government and a Parliament to be soft on crime or soft on these dangerous drugs. This bill is on their side. This is a targeted amendment that will make significant and desperately needed changes to important legislation and to the lives of many New Zealanders. The tragic loss of Calum Jones, Kahu Harawira, Marilyn Makikiriti, and too many others like them demands that we take this step to restrict access to these drugs.

At the moment, the penalties that are in place are completely inconsistent with the harm that is being done. I call on all members to vote for this bill so that Parliament can take action against the supply of these drugs and to help create a safer community for all New Zealanders. I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you very much, Madam Assistant Speaker. Like the last speaker, Simeon Brown, I believe that the death of someone like Calum Jones and everyone who has died from using synthetic drugs is an absolute tragedy and is needless. I can’t imagine, to be honest—as a father of four children, I cannot imagine what it would be like to lose a son or a daughter to a drug overdose. I suppose unless you’ve been there, you just do not know what it’s like.

But, first and foremost, we are opposing this bill, not because we don’t think there needs to be changes, but we don’t think that just changing one line in a bill is the right response when this needs a much bigger response. What I would say to that last speaker is: please don’t use the language around “soft on crime”. Please don’t come out and say the only way to stop this is to lock people up, because that is the language of the last generation. That is the language of a community and a society that has lost its compassion.

Let me give you a couple of statistics: 62 percent of everyone in jail—who walks through a prison door—has a current mental health and/or addiction issue; 91 percent of people who are in jail will end up, at some point in time, having a mental health and addiction issue. But what we’ve got to stop doing is seeing everything as a law and order issue—saying the only solution for this is locking them up and forgetting about it.

What we do know in corrections is what’s happening at the moment is people are being locked up and we’re throwing away the key, and then when we find that key in six, 12, or 24 months’ time and let them out, we say, “Oh, see you later.”

💬 Simon O’Connor: What a load of rubbish.

You know what’s happening? We are seeing them later—we absolutely are. We just do not have the systems in place to deal with the mental health and addiction problem we have in our society at the moment. And if that member, who was a former chair of the Health Committee, rejects that, then he just needs to look at the evidence—he just needs to have a look at the evidence.

We are investing, as a Government, $8 billion over the next four years in terms of mental health and addiction. What we are also undertaking is a mental health and addiction inquiry to see where we have fallen down. I remember in Napier—I run these full-page ads in the community weekly, and I said, “I’m going to put something in this paper about the scourge that is mental health in our community.” I was told, “Don’t do that. People don’t want to hear about this. We don’t want to know about this. That’s the sort of thing that’s hidden under the carpet.” I said, “Absolutely, it is time to get it out into the open, because it is a real problem in our communities.”, and anyone who denies that has got their head in the sand, or somewhere else that’s reasonably dark.

💬 Hon Phil Twyford: In the cupboard.

Yeah, in a cupboard—in the cupboard. This is not the answer to the problem we’re facing at the moment. I talked to the police commissioner about this and said, “How do the police view this?” What they said is they actually back higher, harsher penalties for supplying synthetics. But what we need to do is have a look at a whole solution. You can’t just take one line out of a bill and say that solves the problem, because it doesn’t solve the problem. What we need to do is a complete rethink about how we deal with this as a community and how we deal with this as a society, because this is not the way—this is not the way.

Synthetics are terrible. In Napier, we have an area called Clive Square. It’s a beautiful, park-lined area. Down the northern end of Clive Square, you have professional dentists and other bodies—Lawrence Yule knows it well. It’s where people go with their kids, to sit underneath the trees, there’s a fountain there, there’s chimes—it’s a fantastic place. You know what’s happened recently? A whole lot of men and women on synthetics have started hanging out there, and it has become unsafe. It’s become unsafe to the point where people are coming into my office and saying, “My clients and my staff are unsafe, let alone the people who are walking through this area.” We need to do something about it, but if we think the answer to this is locking people up, then we’re completely missing the point.

To the parents of Calum Jones, I know you’re in the gallery tonight—I know you’re in the gallery—and, like I say, I cannot imagine the pain that you’ve had to go through, to have a son in this state that’s hooked on these terrible, terrible things.

💬 Matt King: He’s up there.

Well, sir, I can’t see you, but what I would say is you have my deepest sympathy. But what we need for people like Calum Jones—and, actually, thousands of other Kiwis who are not just hooked on synthetics but are hooked on P and other drugs—is the mental health and addiction services that they can access, to the point where they’re ready to leave and go out and become productive citizens.

I remember reading about this case in the paper—I remember reading about this case in the paper—and this poor chap kept being texted by his dealer a whole lot of times, saying, “I’ve got some stuff for you. I’ve got some stuff for you.” He sent texts back saying “No, I don’t want it. I don’t want it.”, and the guy turned up on his doorstep—if I remember the right case, and I apologise if I’ve got it wrong.

But this is terrible, and we need to support people like Calum Jones in a way that we’re just not doing at the moment. There should be no politics around this. But what I will say is that mental health and addiction services have got to the point where they are so run down that we are just not delivering in a way that meets our community’s expectations around this. It’s got to change—it really does. As a Minister of Police, I hear it the whole time from police. They turn up to mental health callouts—there’s about 120,000 a year—and, you know what? They call up the mental health trauma unit, and they’re just not there. So our police are dealing with issues that they’re just not equipped to deal with—they’re just not equipped to deal with.

So there are two paths we can take as a Government and as a community. We can take the punitive approach, and the punitive approach is where we say, “We’re just going to lock these buggers up—just put them in jail, and we’ll ask questions later.” Or we can take the compassionate approach, and the compassionate approach is saying, “OK, what is going on here? How can we deal with this in a way that involves the community?” I’ll be honest: it is an expensive approach, it really is, because it’s a whole-of-Government approach. But I would argue that it’s actually a cheaper approach than the punitive one, because every time we put a man or woman in jail for a year, there’s $100,000—there’s $100,000. In fact, corrections’ operational budget has increased by about $800,000 between 2005 and 2017—sorry, did I say $800,000? It’s $800 million. You’ve got to wonder: if we’d spent that $800 million on community housing, on community policing, on mental health and addiction services, on education, then perhaps we wouldn’t have needed to lock so many people away.

This is the thing that the justice Ministers—myself, Andrew Little, and Kelvin Davis—are grappling with: how do we take the compassionate approach and invest in our communities in a way that’s going to make a difference and turn these people away from a life of crime? One thing I’ve heard, and I’ve read—I’ve heard the stories—and I know about a lot of these people is they’re not bad people. I’m not talking about the suppliers and the dealers; I’m talking about the people who’ve got hooked. They’re not bad people, but they’ve ended up in a really, really bad space, and often, to feed that habit, they’re engaging in petty criminal behaviour. What the police used to do—and the police fully admit this—is they would round them up and they’d put them in the paddy wagon and put them in front of a judge and let the judge sort them out. Now, what they’re doing is they’re rounding them up and they’re giving their names to social services.

Dr Shane Reti knows that in Whangarei, the police and the district health board are doing a brilliant job on working together to implement this compassionate approach, and what they have done in terms of P is they’ve got—I think it’s about 36—former P addicts into jobs. They’ve given them an opportunity, they’ve given them a chance to be productive citizens, and this is how we’ve got to view the situation we find ourselves in in our country at the moment.

There’s something worse coming—there’s something called Fentanyl. In the States last year, 64,000 Americans died an opiate death—died, let alone using. It will come here. The Drug Enforcement Agency and Department of Homeland Security say it’s not a matter of if; it’s just a matter of when it comes here, and we’ve got to be ready, because if we aren’t, more Kiwis will die.

I would like to say that the intent of the member’s bill is right—we do need to deal with this. This is just not the right way to do it. No one is arguing that this isn’t an issue. No one is arguing that we haven’t got a problem in our communities with drugs in a way that we need to sort out.

💬 Hon Maggie Barry: Do something about it.

We are, Maggie Barry. We absolutely are doing something about it, and it’s more than just putting people in jail, believe me. We’re investing in a way that your Government didn’t even come close to, so don’t say we’re not doing anything about it. Don’t say we’re not doing anything about it, because we have made a choice—we have made a choice—to take the compassionate route and not the punitive route. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Madam Assistant Speaker. It’s a real pleasure to speak to this bill, and I’d like to congratulate the member for the hard work he’s done in getting it here and for having this drawn. This is very thoughtful and very thorough. We’ve all heard the intent that we all share around the House—it’s just how we operationalise that and actually do something with it.

I’ll speak to three statements. The first statement is: increasing drug penalties acts as a deterrent. Secondly: this bill increases penalties for psychoactive drugs. And, thirdly—in complete agreement with my colleague Stuart Nash’s last statements here—undoubtedly, education support and specialist rehabilitation is the complete package around drug support. This is indeed what we’re seeing with Te Ara Oranga in Whangarei and their methamphetamine project.

Effectively, this bill quadruples the class C penalties that we currently have. I want to briefly talk to that classification system. I then want to talk to the tools we have to manage psychoactive drugs. I’d then, finally, like to come to the clinical consequences of psychotropics and maybe even the New Zealand Drug Harm Index, if time allows.

As I’ve mentioned, this bill quadruples the current penalties under the Misuse of Drugs Act for class C medicines. If we can consider that—sometimes we can get them mixed up: classes and schedules. The class system actually developed in 1961. It came out of the UK and the UN. It came here to New Zealand, and we ratified the UN Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs. Now, the problem with that was that it was primarily around coca, opium, and morphine, and, as time moved on—certainly as we’ve moved into the late 1960s, the early 1970s; the time of free expression, if you like—that UN convention was no longer applicable in New Zealand. So in the late 1960s and early 1970s, the Deputy Director-General of Health, Geoffrey Blake-Palmer, was put in charge of a parliamentary commission looking at how we might deal with new drugs that were coming into the environment.

What they found was that in 1955 to 1963, there were only 40 people per year who’d been charged with drug offences, but in 1972 alone, there were 700 people who were charged with offences. It was the Blake-Palmer committee that recommended a harms-based classification schedule. We call it classes A, B, and C, but it’s also schedules 1, 2, and 3, which you see in the back, that actually define all the medicines—a harm-based classification system.

The psychoactives appeared in the early 2000s in the Misuse of Drugs Act, the 1975 Act that installed that classification system. It didn’t really deal to that for one prime reason: because all of these synthetics are chemically unique and could not be considered as controlled analogues. I say again, the Psychoactive Substances Act 2013 was initiated once we’d sort of fallen out of our decisions around 2007-08 around how we might manage these ever-changing psychoactives.

Let’s then come to the current regulatory environment—what tools we have for psychoactive substances. New Zealand’s ratified three UN conventions on psychoactive substances. I won’t go over them individually, but they’re the 1961, 1971, and 1988 conventions. The Expert Advisory Committee on Drugs, which is the statutory body that decides what classification psychotropics go into—interestingly, the Smoke-free Environments Act also prohibits the sale of herbal smoking products such as synthetic cannabimimetic substances. There’s also temporary class drug notices that can be introduced for misuse—so these are the tools we’ve got, but they’re clearly not enough. They’re clearly not enough, because, as we’re all aware, we’ve got synthetic cannabinoids, which have caused and are causing significant harm. How much more harm can you have than a death—20 of them, at least, prior to the end of the year. We have this class of drugs, of which there are seven major categories, these synthetic cannabinoids acting on CB1 and CB2 receptors—so similar to where THC acts, but much more dangerous than we ever considered in, certainly, 1975 and in the 2013 Psychoactive Substances Act. We need more. Clearly we need more. I have seen many patients and many families who have had the consequences of psychoactives. It is not an easy challenge.

I think if we were to frame the nature of the consequences, the New Zealand Drug Harm Index—and I want to give attribution to Peter Dunne for propelling this, lifting it back up and giving it some momentum—broke down the drug harms into economic consequences, social consequences, and, for the very first time, measured community consequences. It’s a fascinating story when you say to someone, “How much would you pay to rehabilitate your brother if they were on drugs?” and actually giving it a dollar sum. It’s well worth looking at the New Zealand Drug Harm Index.

Anyway, I’ve seen a lot of harm done from drugs in my clinical life. I do believe that increasing penalties will decrease the chances or the incidence of dealing and use of psychoactive substances. I do believe it’s a deterrent, and I think it needs to wrap around other mechanisms. Thank you.

Kia orana. Firstly, I’d like to congratulate the member on his first member’s bill, the Psychoactive Substances (Increasing Penalty for Supply and Distribution) Amendment Bill. I also want to pay respect to the memories of those who have lost their lives through drug use and acknowledge the hurt of their family and friends. However, Labour does not support this bill. From the onset, while we take the subject of illicit drug supply and abuse very seriously, New Zealand does not need another measure—which I will extrapolate later on—in terms of penalty.

Can I remind the House of the purpose of this bill. The purpose of this bill is to amend the Psychoactive Substances Act 2013 to increase the penalty for selling or supplying psychoactive substances from two years to eight years. The purpose of the primary act, which is the Psychoactive Substances Act 2013, is to regulate the availability of psychoactive substances in New Zealand to protect the health of, and minimise harm to, individuals who use psychoactive substances.

I want to acknowledge the last speaker, Dr Shane Reti. He spoke about the response being a complete package—that this bill addresses a complete package—but I didn’t hear that in terms of most of what he said.

I also want to remind the House that this amendment bill seeks to amend section 70 of the Psychoactive Substances Act 2013. If I could just bring it back, in terms of what section 70 is, just to remind members of the House and those listening actually what that section is. So in section 70, “Offences relating to psychoactive substance that is not approved product”, subsection (1) states, “A person commits an offence if the person, without reasonable excuse,—(a) sells or supplies a psychoactive substance …” It then goes on to “(b) offers to sell or supply …”, and then it goes on to “(c) possesses a psychoactive substance that is not an approved product with the intent to sell or supply …” Then it continues on to subsection (2) and talks about the penalties in terms of subsection (3). Section 70(3) states, “A person who commits an offence against subsection (1) is liable on conviction,—(a) in the case of an individual, to a term of imprisonment not exceeding 2 years: [and], (b) in the case of a body corporate, to a fine not exceeding $500,000.”

So at the moment, what we’ve heard is there is no convincing evidence that increasing penalties will reduce drug-related harm. As the Minister has alerted us to, 62 percent of prisoners in New Zealand have either a mental health disorder or a substance use disorder. Extending sentences is not an acceptable response to the drug use issue. What we do know—we’ve heard it today—is that synthetic drugs can be highly addictive for those who use them and greatly difficult in stopping. For the fourth year running, the Global Drug Survey identified that the risk of seeking emergency medical treatment was higher following the use of synthetic cannabinoid products than any other drug. It is therefore important for this Government to take a preventative first approach to crime, which will tackle the root of crimes to reduce offending and make communities safer. For the variety of costs involved, this measure will significantly benefit communities.

What I’m trying to say is that my interpretation of this bill is focused on the drug user. What this Government intends to do in terms of the review, and what the Minister alluded to, is we’re investing $6 billion—was it $6 billion?—in terms of the review of—I’ve lost my place. What I’m saying is that the Government is taking an approach on a complete package in terms of this review. This bill only addresses the offender, and I think it’s unfair that we forward this bill in terms of just looking at the penalty.

The last thing that we just heard from the last member that sat down, Anahila Kanongata’a-Suisuiki, was actually quite true: this legislation is isolating and focusing on the drug dealer, the offender, and not on the innocent user or the user of the drug. That’s quite true. And in no way do I believe that the author of this bill has in any way pretended, or said in this House in his opening speech, that this bill is all-encompassing and deals with all of the issues around drugs in our society and the abuses and the harms that they do to the individuals that use them. It’s not perfect, and I’ll get into those bits in a second, but what this bill intends to do and what it does is increase—and focus deliberately and specifically on the drug dealers and the drug manufacturers. If we look at that in its isolation, which we should, then every member of this House and every party in this House should be supporting this bill.

New Zealand First will be supporting this bill through to the select committee phase. That is no guarantee that we’ll be going past that because we do have some issues with what’s in it, but let me first say that I can’t actually fathom why any party wouldn’t be supporting this bill. There is a huge difference, and there has been ambiguity with the speeches from the Labour Party so far, between identifying the drug dealers and the drug users. Of course this is not a silver bullet, but it’s common sense to target those suppliers, to target those dealers, and to hold them to account, and that’s what this legislation does. Unfortunately, the Minister of Police, Mr Nash, said in part of his speech that these weren’t bad people. What he was talking about were the people that were using the drug and being addicted to it, and he’s quite right—they’re not bad people. He also said that the suppliers are bad people, so why are we not supporting this legislation through to select committee, to iron it out and to have a look at the positives of what this legislation can bring?

One of the stats that Mr Brown used was the number of convictions, which had increased from 2013 to 2017, and he used the numbers 23 to 145. That’s a 600 percent increase in three or four years. Now, if that’s not an epidemic such that we must look into every single avenue that we can to deal with these drugs and the abuse of these drugs, then I don’t know what is. New Zealand First is not willing to do nothing about it. There is a piece of legislation that is in front of this House that has the potential at this stage to do some good, to hold these people to account, and that’s why we will be supporting this bill.

I’d just very quickly like to run through a couple of the very latest convictions for the supply of these drugs. A man who sold synthetic cannabis in Rotorua was in jail for 4½ months after previously pleading guilty to two charges of the same. In one of the first prosecutions of its kind, two men have been sentenced to home detention for importing deadly psychoactive chemicals. A woman caught peddling a so-called zombie drug has been told she could be off to prison for all of this. It needs to be kept in mind, when talking about this bill and talking about what this bill intends to do, from two years to eight years for the maximum sentence, that this is the maximum sentence, for the worst of the worst—the worst of the worst. So when we stand up and speak in this House and address this bill, we can only be talking about the worst of the worst drug dealers and manufacturers, not about the people—the victims—of this deadly drug.

New Zealand First will be supporting this, like I said. We do have some issues with it—for instance, one of the main ones is why the member has chosen eight years. Why has the member chosen the class C drug level of punishment? If you look at the class C drugs, you’re talking about cannabis oil and cannabis seed, and we’re dealing with something much, much greater. I’d like to see the logic behind why it’s gone from two to eight years, but New Zealand First will be supporting it from this point.

Thank you very much, Madam Assistant Speaker. It’s a pleasure to rise in support of this bill. Fantastic to hear the support of New Zealand First that will allow this bill to be passed tonight in its first reading and go to select committee.

I just want to follow on where Darroch Ball left off, and I agree with him—where does eight years come from? But, in fact, that speaks of the process this bill will now go through—the legislative process of going to a select committee, hearing evidence from the public and the experts, maybe looking at experiences overseas, and understanding what the best penalty is, because what we had today was Stuart Nash from Labour defending a line that, let’s be honest, he struggled to defend. Every point he raised was, basically, a reason why Labour should be supporting the bill.

Stuart Nash said he agreed with the intent of the bill. Well, what’s the point of a first reading? For parties to debate the intent of the bill. If you agree with the intent, send it to select committee, work out the detail, and then, if you don’t like it, you don’t need to vote for it further down the legislative process.

Look, I can accept that rhetoric from the hand-wringing, liberal-left Green Party, but to hear it from someone like Stuart Nash and the Labour Party—I mean, you can’t fall into this dichotomy that it’s either rehabilitation or punitive approaches. In fact, if you look at drug treatment, it’s both. Both are levers for changing behaviour, and that is why this is one lever the MP Simeon Brown, sponsoring this bill—and I must say, what a start to this guy’s political career, because what this bill represents is a member of Parliament who’s engaging his community and listening to the issues that are affecting them.

What’s he done? Well, he’s made a bill, put it in the ballot, and it got pulled out, and it will go through and make a real difference in the community he serves. What’s the point of being a member of Parliament if you’re not listening to your community and passing bills that will make a difference in the community you serve? Not only that, but he’s started a petition, so he’s gathering support wider than his electorate, across the country, and I’m looking forward to hearing more from Simeon Brown about this bill and other issues that he will bring to the House.

Coming back to my point, it’s not all about rehabilitation at one side of the continuum and punitive approaches. It’s both, and how do we give people and the Government agencies the levers to ultimately break the cycle? But let’s not forget—because you’re going to hear arguments from other parties, right, when I sit down, who are going to talk about concepts of harm reduction—harm reduction does not make drugs safe. It reduces the risks of drugs—a clear difference. It reduces the risk of drugs. It does not make drug taking safe.

But, in fact, that’s a red herring, because this bill is not about drug takers. This bill is about drug dealers, who prey on people, and we’re probably here not even talking about recreational users, because, yep, the evidence will show a lot of young people will try things in that risk-taking period of their life—teenage years, young adults—and they move on quite successfully. Unfortunately for some people, they get caught in that lifestyle, and it’s an addiction. These are drug dealers, and Stuart Nash tried to propose, “Well, it’s all about services for mental health and drug addicts.” Well, what’s the evidence? I would say a lot of these drug dealers probably don’t even use the drugs themselves, but they’re happy to peddle it on to people who are addicted themselves.

So it’s one lever. It’s one lever to support this field. When you look at it, the increased risk of synthetic drugs—their growing intensity and severity has killed 20 people in 12 months, and the penalty is up to two years. A drug that is actively killing 20 people every 12 months, and the penalty is two years. This bill will make it up to eight years—

I apologise to the member. Your time has expired.

I rise today to speak to this bill with a heavy heart, in the memory of all those families, all those victims, affected by drug offending and by drug addiction, in terms not just of psychoactive drugs but of all manner of drugs here in New Zealand, and the rates are high—they are rising. It is in the memory of those victims that I say, with great disappointment, that this bill represents an archaic approach to drug offending, an approach that has failed here—that has failed repeatedly all over the world. Promising victim communities that higher prison sentences will put an end to drug offending or addiction is sadly irresponsible.

This bill seeks to amend the Psychoactive Substances Act to bring prison sentences in line with class C - type drug offending, to eight years from two years. There is no doubt that these substances are dangerous. They are devastating. In fact, they’re far more physically harmful to users than natural cannabis, which is a class C drug. There is no doubt that we need to take this seriously in our approaches to controlling these drugs. But I remember from the front lines of our criminal justice system when we did this with respect to pseudoephedrine, when we made that controlled drug a class C - type drug and we upped those sentences, the manufacture, supply, and import of pseudoephedrine has gone up exponentially every single year from that year. This approach has failed. The other grave, devastating example of that in our own system is that methamphetamine, at this moment, this year, is now as prevalent in our criminal justice system on the streets of New Zealand as cannabis.

The exponential growth of methamphetamine can be linked directly to the very year that we made that drug a class A - type drug. We increased the maximum sentence to life imprisonment. I’ve watched in courtrooms all over New Zealand as our courts impose the only remedy they have. We watched the prevalence of methamphetamine devastate our communities, and we just imposed higher and higher sentences—18 years, 20 years, or life is common here now for methamphetamine, and it’s about to overtake cannabis. There are as many P operations now on our streets as there are cannabis plants. It has failed. The war on drugs—this approach of upping prison sentences in reaction to drug addiction and drug offending—dates back to Richard Nixon’s time, the 1960s in the United States. We know that that approach is widely accepted now in that country to have failed. It has had devastating effects on communities.

But this bill asks us to adopt that same failed approach here again. It asks us to ignore the evidence. In light of how serious the effect of this type of drug is on the user and on our communities, how can we ignore the evidence? How can we be too proud to let go of a failed policy? How can we ignore that drug offending is, in fact, caused by social dislocation, by the types of social ills—homelessness, lack of mental health services, lack of actual health services—that the party that now asks us to adopt this bill brought about in New Zealand? How can we ignore that inequality was at record highs over the past nine years—that that is what causes addiction? But we are asked again to ignore that evidence. I don’t think we can afford to do that. Upping prison sentences is an embarrassingly impotent policy in terms of combating drugs.

When did vengeance become a greater virtue than compassion? When did punishment become more an aim of the criminal justice system than stopping crime? Well, it isn’t for this Government. This Government wants to actually stop crime. That’s why we’re going to invest in the types of things that stop the causes of criminal offending. We’re going to invest in people, in our communities, in our health system, and in our housing and mental health services. That is why the Green Party will not be supporting this bill. We will not be supporting another policy that fills our prisons at the expense of investing in people.

Kia orana e Te Māngai o Te Whare. Firstly, I’d like to congratulate Simeon Brown. He’s been working on this kaupapa since 2013, when he was a member of the Manurewa Local Board, and with our Manurewa Youth Council and our Warriors of Change, when the Psychoactive Substances Act 2013 was passed, and I just want to remind us all what that bill allowed. It was to regulate otherwise unregulated psychoactive substances, such as party pills and other legal highs in New Zealand.

So as a country we legalised psychoactive substances, and at that point in time, when that legislation went through, there were 20 untestable brands of synthetic cannabis that were legally on sale in New Zealand. Some of them were called Anarchy, Voodoo, and White Rhino. In 2015, there was amendment legislation and we ended the interim product approval—so everyone had to go through an approval process. At that time, Simeon, like myself, fought against the High Zone store in the middle of Manurewa. He wanted to create a 1-kilometre buffer zone so that schools were protected, places of worship were protected, and community halls and facilities were protected. I want to quote from Simeon at that time. He said, “I do not believe any of these products, even if they are proven to be safe, should be marketed to our young people because they are still drugs, that is [in] essence, these are still drugs.”

We as a Parliament and as a country have to think back to a time when legal highs were something that we thought, “We should actually approve and they should be available just like alcohol.”—so lest we forget where we’ve come from.

What I want to highlight in this bill—and it is about the selling or supplying of psychoactive substances, and I want to bring us back to a community that’s incredibly affected by psychoactive substances, and it is our homeless community. Of the 20 deaths that we have talked about—and I do want to acknowledge any whānau in the Whare today who have lost any of their loved ones through the consumption of psychoactive substances—we lost two homeless people in Manurewa last year, who took psychoactive substances. Those vulnerable people actually are being exploited. Those vulnerable people will be captured by this legislation, because it does say, “selling or supplying psychoactive substances”.

I think the community that’s going to be the most targeted by this piece of legislation are, in fact, those that the petition that was lodged in the Parliament today was about. There will be an inquiry into addictions into psychoactive substances that the member—it was like an appendix to his particular legislation. It actually is incredibly valid. I want to quote from a woman called Julie Nelson, who’s the Housing First Auckland project leader. She said this about homelessness: “It is very important that we all work together to develop a Government-led housing strategy for New Zealand that incorporates policy, funding, and practice so we … understand how to collectively end homelessness, and so organisations can work to their strengths as part of that strategy.”

What does that actually mean? We need to house homeless people first, and then we need to help them with their addictions. I know that the previous Government actually invested $3.7 million in that initiative, and Auckland Council contributed $1 million, so there are active programmes under way to support our homeless people. But lest we forget the Substance Addiction (Compulsory Assessment and Treatment) Act—again, another piece of legislation that the Hon Peter Dunne was responsible for this House approving, and that’s to ensure that individuals who are considered to have a severe substance addiction and who do not have the capacity to participate in treatment actually get the treatment that they deserve. Our Health Committee is waiting to hear from the Ministry of Health about the enactment of that Act.

In fact, that is the solution: providing people who have addictions, who are vulnerable, who are being used by the people who manufacture these drugs—they need the help, firstly, to get into a home but, secondly, from the base of a secure home, to have the treatment support that they require.

I think that there are too many loopholes in this piece of legislation, and I am clear, as are my colleagues, that this isn’t the solution for the question that’s being asked. Kia ora tātou.

Thank you, Madam Assistant Speaker. I rise with true conviction to speak to the Psychoactive Substances (Increasing Penalty for Supply and Distribution) Amendment Bill at its first reading. I support this bill. I congratulate the member Simeon Brown on the enormous amount of work that he has put into this. I acknowledge the previous speaker, Louisa Wall, for going back over the history and the background of this, and, for one moment, I thought you were going to vote for this bill, because you seemed so persuaded by it.

Anyway, there does seem to me to be a real need to take a multifaceted approach, and this approach that this bill does actually does allow for the people who are pushing this stuff and who are supplying it—to bring the penalties for them into a consistent level with the other drugs and the other suppliers. Although it is a small bill—a mere page—I think it is a very important part of this war against drugs, and that’s what it is. Going soft on the people that supply it, sending them messages that psychoactive substances aren’t as bad as other substances—whatever. The inconsistencies are cleared up by this bill, and I think, as a class C drug under section 6(2)(c) of the Misuse of Drugs Act, it is absolutely appropriate to do it.

So why is it that this inconsistency has occurred? Some of the other members who have taking calls today have pointed out the history and the way that we have gradually discovered the extreme toxicity of these drugs once readily available at the corner dairy. I know of people who were caught up in them, parents of young children who were unable to persuade or use their parental authority on their kids because they was so readily available, there was no harm to them. The reality is they are highly toxic, and that toxicity is not visible.

I commend the courage of the people who have lost family members in this terrible situation. I think it takes huge courage to come forward, and I commend you all for not only your personal loss but because you have done so much to help other people and to bring this to our awareness and to make it a point of discussion. Dependency and addiction are things that transcend all boundaries, and when a drug has people in its grasp, they need to have what part two of what Simeon Brown has been doing has offered, and that is this holistic approach.

So not only do we have a piece of legislation, or an amendment to it, that will beef up the penalties, show how serious we are as a Government, as a country, and as a Parliament about this, but also not only doing the supply thing but also the demand, to help the people who are addicted, to make it possible for those people to get ready help and access to that help—so, that holistic approach. The petition that requests that the House pass the amendment bill to increase the penalty further requests a select committee inquiry into addiction to psychoactive substances, and I would hope that the Health Committee and the Government would look favourably upon that. I think it is a really important part of dealing with people, particularly young and vulnerable people, those that are clearly predated on—as we saw in the Jones case—by drug dealers who are highly motivated perhaps by their own addictions or perhaps by their dark-heartedness, that they just want to make money at the expense of other people’s misery. But the easy access must stop. We must, in this House, do all that we can to stop the ease of access, to get rid of these drugs, to marginalise the people that promote them.

So when I hear other parties who will not support it, particularly the Greens—what a mealy-mouthed, ridiculous assertion was made by the member who stood for that party, saying this bill is embarrassingly impotent. It is not so much the member that uttered those words; what a soft and ludicrous option the Greens are taking here. I think that Labour also really needs to look at itself carefully. The idea that this won’t make a difference, says the police Minister, Stuart Nash. Well, if there’s anyone who ought to know better, it would be the Minister of Police. They are playing politics. The idea that if it goes to a select committee it can’t be improved is ridiculous—of course it can. So if there are any positive ideas or any initiatives coming from that party and the Greens, then why don’t they come up with them and use them in the select committee process?

That’s what happens in this place. If you don’t think every aspect of the law or the legislation that’s proposed works, then move in to change it. Don’t vote against it. Cite mental health and that we have to do everything before we can do anything—what an absolute crock of an argument, and I’m deeply disappointed in Labour and the Greens for their gutless approach to this. We need to increase the penalty, and as a member of the Justice Committee, I’m happy to be getting it. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Assistant Speaker. Synthetic cannabis is clearly a scourge, and I applaud Simeon Brown for bringing this to the attention of the House. It’s just disappointing that the measure he proposes would have absolutely no effect whatsoever.

We want to attack this problem on the basis of good evidence, and the evidence says that increasing sentences for addiction-based crimes has no effect. All we’re going to do is take the people who are victims already—victims already; people who are not cared for by our society, people who are ill in many ways—and incarcerate them, and to lock them away where we don’t care for them. I want to care for those people, and this Government is not going to attack those people. It’s going to attack the problem—the problem of a society that has let things slide and that hasn’t been addressing these issues. This is a problem of health and of mental health and of addiction, and that’s what we need to attack, not the people who suffer these problems.

I know that this is a terrible tragedy for many. We need to stop it, but we’re not going to stop it simply by further criminalising these activities and increasing sentences out of all order. This is a problem of health and of economics, a problem of opportunity, and a problem of growing inequality. This is a problem which afflicts our weakest and poorest most, so this is poor policy. That’s the first thing: this is simply poor policy.

This is an Act which was, in fact, designed entirely differently. It was originally designed to regulate, not prohibit, and can I just say that, in fact, section 106 of the Psychoactive Substances Act—if the member had taken the time to read it carefully—sets out that the Act is to be reviewed five years after commencement. It commenced July 2013. A few months away, we’re going to have a review tabled in this House. Yes, we can look at the problem; let’s look at the whole problem.

Look, in the nine words of the operative section, it is simply all over the place. We’re attacking supply in this bill. We don’t even address the question of importation or the question of manufacture, so it’s still a two-year sentence for those, but eight years if you happen to be caught with a wad of this cannabis in your pocket. So look, it’s poorly implemented, as well.

So we’ve got poor implementation, it’s poorly timed—we’re looking at this in a few months’ time—and it’s poor policy. What this is really just a knee-jerk reaction—a reaction where we see a problem and we say, “Increase the sentence.”, as if a person who is afflicted with these problems is going to even know that there’s been a law change.

We know for a fact that people in these communities don’t follow with close attention what goes on in this House. It matters to them not one whit if we increase the sentence. It changes behaviour not at all. What we need is to be there, on the ground, addressing the social causes of this problem, not simply incarcerating these people so we can put them out of sight and out of mind. There are real and critical social and health problems that we need to address. This is not a criminal problem in the same manner. Whilst absolutely we need to address it, this is not the way to do it.

So really, what we’ve got here is ignoring the problem. It is miscategorising the problem in a way that we can be comfortable about as a comfortable society. Well, let’s not do that. Let’s face up and accept that there are members of our community that we have failed. Some of them are young members. Some of them are members who are mentally ill. Many of them have addiction problems. Let’s reach out and lift them up, not cast them down, and that’s what this bill would do. It would take someone who suffers from these problems and cast them down and away into a descending spiral of criminality.

So look, we don’t want to revictimise the victim. We don’t want to live in a society where we lock away our problems. This Government is committed to addressing questions of health and mental health and addiction. It’s got a massively ambitious plan to spend the money that is needed to do that, and for that reason I will not be supporting this bill.

Thank you, Madam Assistant Speaker. I’d just like to take a few moments to respond to some of the comments that I’ve heard from the other side of the House. I’m not sure what bill the member who just sat down was reading, because I’m not targeting the victims and the ones who are taking these drugs. This bill is about targeting the suppliers and the distributors and those who are selling these drugs. And from all that, I think, those people who are making money out of other people’s misery need to be locked up and they need to have harsher sentences, and that is what this bill is designed to do.

I’ve been quite confused listening to, particularly, members of the Labour Party. It almost feels like they want to vote for this bill. “We like the intent—we like the intent of this bill.” is what the Minister of Police said. The opportunity here, at a first reading, is to vote for this bill, to send it to the select committee, to let the public have their say, and to consider the issues which come up from the submissions.

One other objection which has been raised has been that this will continue a so-called war on drugs, this is an archaic bill or it’s a failed process, or even those who are in favour of decriminalisation and regulation of illicit drugs should support this amendment. The law regarding synthetic drugs allows for the sale and supply of a substance if the supplier can prove them—we’ve heard that from the member Louisa Wall. But what this is designed to do is if those people are breaking the law, they should face the consequences of it.

Another objection has been raised that this Act is coming up for review. Well, I haven’t seen the terms of reference for that review. I don’t know how long that review will take. I don’t know when it will be, who’s going to be doing it, whether the public would have their say, and then we don’t know whether there will be any legislation actually recommended to the House from that review. So we have an opportunity here today to fix a discrepancy in the law as it currently stands. It is obvious it is needed, it is measured, and it is appropriate. It is vital that synthetic drugs are no longer considered to be a drug that Parliament is not too concerned about. We need to act, and we need to act now, to send a clear message that supplying these drugs is a serious offence.

Another objection which has been raised has been that there is a mental health inquiry coming up which will look into addiction. I’ve read the terms of reference for this inquiry and it doesn’t make one mention of the harm that is being caused by synthetics—not one dicky-bird of a mention. Again, this is another review which will take time. We have an opportunity here to look into this issue, to address it, and to make the changes which are needed.

This bill is a targeted amendment focused on increasing the penalties available for those found guilty of dealing those dangerous drugs. These are maximum sentences available for maximum penalties. I call on all members of this House to vote for this bill to go through to the select committee. I would also like to just acknowledge New Zealand First and thank them for their support of this bill. I acknowledge the issues which they have raised, and I look forward to those issues being addressed and discussed at the select committee so that the public can have their say and that we can work through those together.

I call on members not to let party affiliation affect your vote; to not let ideology affect your vote. The people of New Zealand don’t want us in this Parliament to be soft on crime or soft on drugs. This bill is on their side. I commend the bill to the House. Thank you.