Misuse of Drugs (Medicinal Cannabis) Amendment Bill

When I was making my contribution when the bells rang last night, I had introduced briefly the bill and spoken about the extension of palliation, and had thanked New Zealand First for their contribution in that regard. That will be moved in my SOP when we come to that part of the bill. That extends the protection for those who use illicit cannabis who are dying, to ensure that they have a compassionate consideration, and that they can access cannabis without fear of prosecution until we get a regular supply of medicinal products in New Zealand.

I spoke about the medicinal cannabis scheme that we’ll be setting up with this bill, and the way in which that will be overseen. I also spoke about the deregistering of cannabidiol and the use of seeds, which the Green Party has suggested as an amendment, which will be in our SOP, around the use of seeds, which are already existing in New Zealand because there are New Zealand specific strains, which may have medicinal possibilities that exporters may wish to use and promote, and also thanked the Green Party for their contribution around ensuring that regulations must be in place a year after the bill has passed in the House. I want to thank the parties of the coalition for their contributions.

Now is not the time for a broad debate; we’re on the title clause. I briefly did want to acknowledge though that the Opposition has brought a couple of SOPs to the committee that we’ll discuss at the appropriate point. One of them looks to put a parliamentary sunset clause into the legislation. I guess I have a mixed reaction to that. We have, in our bill, a review that would enable the Minister of Health, who’s accountable to this House, to end the exemption for illicit cannabis. I have some amusement, I guess, at the concession contained therein. Because, of course, if there was a National Government in place in 30 months’ time they themselves could bring it to the Parliament if they wanted to. I guess, effectively, in this SOP the member is conceding there won’t be a National Government at that time. I think I want to admire his courage for getting that through his caucus. Because I think that’s quite extraordinary that he should be conceding the election at this early stage. So it’s a somewhat pointless SOP because if they are in Government, they could certainly bring that matter back to the House if it concerned them. I guess, with that SOP, they’re effectively conceding they’re expecting the coalition to carry on beyond the election. I suspect when he took it through his caucus he wasn’t deliberately undermining his leader or anything like that. But I am amused that it has reached the committee.

The other SOP puts regulation in place around the bill. The Opposition will contest that that regulation is important. I would argue that it’s better for experts to design the regulation as we move in what is, effectively, a moving market where new safety aspects and so on will kick in. We need to have a flexible responsive regime where experts not politicians can comment on this.

But as I say it’s a narrow debate. The first one, it’s on the title so that will be the end of my contribution. I feel like I’ve introduced a bill and the debate that is to come. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair. And while the Minister is correct that the title clause is a narrow debate, the presiding officers have been generous enough to allow the Minister to provide a reasonably broad basis upon which we can commence the committee of the whole House stage. I think that is a sensible start to what will be, I hope, a sensible debate.

The Minister in his contribution both last night and right now has, I think, shown a slightly graceless approach to what has been a lost opportunity for some bipartisan support for an important piece of legislation across the House. Last night he congratulated and thanked and acknowledged himself, his Government colleagues in the New Zealand First party and the Greens, but could not bring himself to acknowledge any of the contributions that have been made by the National Party and, indeed, specifically Dr Shane Reti on this important issue. That is, indeed, a disappointment and a shame. I worry. I am a supreme optimist—

CHAIRPERSON (Poto Williams): Order! Please refer to the member with his proper name.

I do apologise. The Minister—I worry that that is a marker of the attitude that could prevail in this debate, where there is actually a really good opportunity to get into the detail of this bill and look objectively at some of the sensible proposals for amendment that have been provided by him, by the Government, and also by the National Party and Dr Shane Reti.

Now the title of the bill is actually something of an indicator of the mismatch of what we’re trying to do here because it is an amendment to the Misuse of Drugs Act, but, indeed, its primary purpose is to create a licensing regime for not the criminalising of the use of substances but the decriminalising of them, and, in particular, a framework for being able to enable those who are chronically unwell, in pain, and who may have the opportunity to benefit from the sorts of substances, the sorts of medicines, that can be created out of THC products that are not presently available. The bill does talk to that. I have to say that it says very little—in fact, nearly nothing—about that. The clause that we will debate later on says 59 words about the licensing regime—59 words. So this is something that I’m sure the Minister of Police and the New Zealand Police will be very interested in. Health authorities, mental health authorities, and social development agencies are going to be vitally interested in what we are actually doing here, and the Minister and the Government provide guidance to the degree of 59 words.

The other part of the bill, which is actually commensurate with the title of the bill, the Misuse of Drugs (Medicinal Cannabis) Amendment Bill, provides something of an exemption from prosecution from the present Misuse of Drugs Act—a thing that I have described as an island of immunity in an archipelago of offending—because the bill, as it was introduced, provides an exemption from prosecution for those who would use illicit substances because they are dying, and the National Party will support that. We support that because, frankly, by the definition of the bill as it came in, that is hardly the most heinous breach of the Misuse of Drugs Act. We heard from Richard Chambers, the Assistant Commissioner of New Zealand Police, responsible for prosecutions and investigations, who told us that, indeed, New Zealand Police aren’t out there arresting and locking up terminally ill patients because they are having a joint, nor should they. But Mr Chambers also agreed that there was an issue that New Zealand Police will face because while they may not be able to prosecute and don’t care much to prosecute those people who are ingesting the illicit substances, they may well be quite interested—[Bell rung]

CHAIRPERSON (Poto Williams): I will call the honourable member again. However, you’ve spent the last call largely talking broadly about the bill. I did allow the Minister in the chair to give some general statements. I will now ask you to confine yourself to clause 1, which is about the title.

Thank you, Madam Chair, and it is to the Supplementary Order Paper that the Minister described in his opening bat that I will address my comments, because I think they’re really important both to the title and to the purpose of what we are trying to do here, and that is that we, basically, provide an exemption from prosecution for those people who are using these drugs.

CHAIRPERSON (Poto Williams): That debate will come up later. That will come up in later clauses. Confine yourself to the title clause, please.

Well, I will, Madam Chair, because, actually, we can call this any number of things and we can have a quite trite sort of debate about whether the title is correct. But I’d rather actually address whether or not it is correct by looking at the substance of what we’re trying to do, and that is provide an immunity from prosecution.

Now the Minister’s Supplementary Order Paper (SOP)—he has said in his opening call on clause 1 that he has introduced an SOP to change the definition of “terminal” exemption away from 12 months to something else. And in my second reading speech I indicated that National would have a problem with that if indeed palliation, as it was described, would open the gate for people who were not dying but who were otherwise receiving palliation through their medicine to be able to ingest illicit substances. Having studied the Minister’s SOP, that is not indeed what he has done—what the Government has done. In fact, anybody looking at this could argue that, in fact, this tightens, not loosens, that exemption, but nevertheless it certainly hasn’t gone to the degree that we would have significant concern with.

One area we will have concern with and we will discuss when the clause comes up is the absence—

CHAIRPERSON (Poto Williams): I ask the member one more time. This is your last warning. I ask you to come to clause 1, “Title”, please. This is the debate we are debating. It’s a very narrow debate.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I will then therefore add my trite contributions about what the title could be, because it is anything but an amendment to the Misuse of Drugs Act. What this does is decriminalise cannabis. So let’s talk about how it does that. It does that because the Government has given a pass to people who smoke cannabis and therefore the title could easily be something different: the “Get out of Jail Card”, the “Island of Immunity in an Archipelago of Offending” title, because that’s exactly what this does. The title could easily be many other things to give effect to what is actually happening here and that is immunity from prosecution.

Now the purpose of the bill, as it’s laid out, talks about a temporary exemption from prosecution until a licensing regime is in place. Only here’s the problem with that: it’s not temporary; there’s no time limit. This could go on for ever and the Minister in his opening salvo tonight says, “Ah, ha, ha. The National Party don’t think they’re going to be back in Government.” That is not the problem we have with this. The problem is when we’re back in Government in less than two years’ time, we’re going to have to come back to this House and introduce primary legislation to do what this bill says it’s going to do, including in the title, and that is provide a temporary regime.

There’s nothing temporary about this and that’s why, when we do get to debate Dr Reti’s SOP providing for a time limit on this, we’ll be doing the Government’s work. We’ll be doing what they said the bill is intended to do: provide a temporary exemption from prosecution. But the meat and drink of this will be in what the licensing regime looks like and, actually, this is where the primary purpose of the bill and the title of the bill are a complete mismatch, because there was no reference in the title to what we’re really doing here and that is creating a legitimate licensing regime.

The title is not only inadequate but the clause that gives effect to that is woefully inadequate: 59 words—and we decided that wasn’t good enough. We tried in select committee, we tried in the second reading, and now we’re going to try again to do that with Dr Reti’s SOP, which provides the bones, the meat on the bones, to a noble but fundamentally flawed bill.

Now the Government says they’re not going to support it. I’m optimistic that we can convince them through this committee stage, however long that’s going to take, that that is the right thing to do, because this is the purpose of the bill as described by the title.

Madam Chair, this will be a short call. I just, however, want to respond to a few of the comments made by Michael Woodhouse, particularly within his own framing of them being quite trite. With regard to how he stated that this is an incorrect title for this legislation, being the Misuse of Drugs (Medicinal Cannabis) Amendment Bill—that’s exactly what this bill does: it amends the Misuse of Drugs Act, because the Misuse of Drugs Act schedules cannabis within class C as a controlled substance.

With regard to his point about how this will provide, supposedly, immunity from prosecution and it could therefore be the “Immunity from Prosecution Bill”, that is completely untrue and just, actually, factually incorrect. That’s not how this law would operate. I’m not sure if Mr Woodhouse is familiar with how the prosecution process operates or works, but a criminal defence does not shelter you from prosecution in any way, shape, or form. It is a criminal defence for when you have been prosecuted and you are defending yourself in a legal case. It is a defence.

I also wanted to respond to his point about how this is supposedly decriminalising cannabis. I mean, if we really wanted to go down that path, I suppose, to a certain extent, it could be argued that we’re decriminalising cannabis for those who are in palliative care—i.e. on their deathbed. Do we really want to stop those people—in the same words that were used by Michael Woodhouse—from smoking a joint? I just find that quite a sad contribution and would hope that we can end this debate on the title clause so that we can get to commencement, because patients have been waiting for far too long.

Thank you, Madam Chair. It’s a pleasure to take a call in the committee of the whole House of this bill, the Misuse of Drugs (Medicinal Cannabis) Amendment Bill and to speak to clause 1, the title. Just acknowledging those for the body of work that we are going to be talking on here tonight, there are a number of people who have helped us to get this stage: the industry players; I’d like to acknowledge the Parliamentary Counsel Office, Sarah Gwynn, Shane Le Brun from Medical Cannabis Awareness New Zealand, and international and local collaborators.

The title talks to “Misuse of Drugs”—open bracket “Medicinal Cannabis” close bracket—“Amendment Bill. The open bracket and close bracket “Medicinal Cannabis” could of course be “(Medicinal Cannabis Products)” or “(Medicinal Cannabis Scheme)”. It has quite some breadth to it, and I’ll come to some of the breadth that the Minister took when he described the previous bill and this current bill. But as a medicinal cannabis product, the position that we will be taking, and as a scheme, is that we’ll outline our position and why, and we’ll outline the principles that have guided us to that position and the pathway to solutions towards medicinal cannabis products that in our hands will be high quality; will be safe, accessible, and affordable; and will ease the suffering of New Zealanders.

In the previous bill, as the Minister outlined in his introduction, there were three main objectives. The first was to deschedule cannabidiol (CBD); the second was the terminal exception, which we’ve heard some discussion on already; and the third was quality standards for a medicinal cannabis scheme. In this bill it maintains—and certainly the title describes it accurately, I think—descheduling CBD. It modifies the terminal exception. It starts describing the medicinal cannabis scheme—it uses words like “cultivation” and “manufacturing”—and it adds support for a domestic strain. We’ll talk to all of these. Some of these, we think, they have actually done a better job, so the title does actually describe it quite well. Some of the modifications, we think, have actually made it worse, and some we just cannot get to, and we’ll describe exactly why that is as we progress.

I think the main issues that we want to put on the table here—that would well come under the title and that we would not change the title to encompass—would be that we will have some challenges around loose leaf, which has already been described by various members tonight, and we will have some challenges around what the media have called legislative laziness—that is, the medicinal cannabis scheme, which clearly, again, sits under the title of “medicinal cannabis” and that we see and that the public have seen as a huge emptiness, a bare blackboard, and that’s what we want to talk to in this bill in this debate. What we want to do is we want to bring forward any knowledge we may have that might be useful. We have been willing to share. We are still willing to share. None of us have a franchise on all the good ideas in the world; neither do we. But what we do have, we’d like to share.

I’d like to pick up on what the Minister said when he was raising the question around Supplementary Order Paper 179, which talks to a sunset clause. We’ll come to that and other clauses in greater detail, but just to say there is a formula that brought us to that point. It was agnostic to which party holds the Treasury benches; it was just trying to do the right thing. So as we get to that clause, we’ll see if the Minister still stands by his position when he can see how we came to it.

The medicinal cannabis title—we think this is a completely adequate title. We see no need to change it. In our hands, it could be a number of other things, and we’ve thought about this, but the gravity of what we’re talking about—fundamentally starting some process towards cannabis reform in a shape—is really not requiring any smart sort of changes to the title other than what it is. It describes it accurately. We will talk to parts of it as medicinal cannabis products. We’ll talk to parts of it as medicinal cannabis licensing. We’ll talk to parts of it as medicinal cannabis scheme—all of which sit under the title. So we’re very much looking forward to further discussion. Again, we’ll just put on the table that we have come here tonight to collaborate and are happy to share with those across the Chamber. Thank you.

I move, That the question be now put.

Motion agreed to.