Misuse of Drugs (Medicinal Cannabis) Amendment Bill

Thank you, Madam Chair. We start to get into something of the substance of this bill, because the principal Act that we are amending is the Misuse of Drugs Act 1975, and that Act is a very important piece of legislation. Now, there are differing views not only within this House but around the country about the degree to which the substances that are outlawed by the Misuse of Drugs Act 1975 are indeed harmful.

There are further discussions and beliefs around the degree to which this Parliament should actually legislate to make something that is a personal choice, something that is ingested by the individual, unlawful under the Misuse of Drugs Act 1975. Indeed, the Health Committee heard quite a bit from submitters that—it may have been arguably outside the scope of the purpose of this bill, but it certainly wasn’t outside the goal of amending the Misuse of Drugs Act to have that conversation, which was that, perhaps, we should have gone further to amend the Misuse of Drugs Act, on the basis that—well, two things: firstly, it is an individual’s choice whether they want to ingest illegal substances.

Secondly, there are benefits to doing so for people who are outside of the scope of the purpose of this bill, and therefore the Misuse of Drugs Act should be amended even further than the Government intended to do. In my second reading speech, I referred to some research about the efficacy, or lack of it, in respect of the use of cannabis substances in people with chronic non-cancer pain or non-terminal pain. Now, I made a bit of a mistake there, because I referred to it as a longitudinal study of 1,700 people. I’ve gone back and checked. This was an article published in The Lancet of July this year, entitled “Effective cannabis use in people with chronic non-cancer pain”. I speak to that in terms of the degree to which we are amending the Misuse of Drugs Act, because we heard a lot of submissions that we should go further, that we should actually expand this out further than the definition that is contained in clause 4.

I was particularly interested to note the findings of that Lancet study, which is from Australia—the study of 1,514 participants, who completed a baseline interview about their use of illicit substances in the belief that it would be better for them for their chronic conditions. Actually, this study, a very carefully constructed scientific study, found that after four years people—compared with people of no cannabis use—actually were doing worse not better. They had greater pain severity scores than those who hadn’t used cannabis. They had higher reliance on prescription opioids. They had lower pain self-efficacy scores. They had greater generalised anxiety disorders. And there was no evidence of a temporal relationship between cannabis use and pain severity or pain interference, and no evidence that their cannabis use reduced prescribed opioid use—I mentioned that.

Now, I say that in this context because we are amending the Misuse of Drugs Act, but we’re doing so for a specific purpose, and that is to provide an exemption from prosecution for people who are terminally ill. I, frankly, don’t believe they are better off for that. But if they are terminally ill, where’s the harm? For those who came to us and said the principal Act should be further amended to include chronic conditions that weren’t terminal, this is a party that acts on the evidence, and the very clear evidence, including from the most recent study published in The Lancet, was that there was no benefit, no efficacy for use of that.

💬 Louisa Wall: That’s not what we heard, though.

That’s not what we heard. The chairman of the select committee is quite right. We heard very different things. Indeed, Chlöe Swarbrick in a recent media commentary uses as evidence people’s attitudes. People’s attitudes are not evidence. The actual lived experience of those who ingest cannabis and find themselves no better off but worse off is evidence. So in the scope of this bill I think we need to be very careful not to conflate the two conversations this country is having; that is, the decriminalisation of marijuana and the use of marijuana for medicinal purposes.

Thank you very much, Madam Chair. I’d like to speak to clause 3 and the amendment of the Misuse of Drugs Act. I find this amended bill incredibly disappointing. We had over a thousand written submissions and more than 170 oral submissions, and in that exercise, submitters bared their souls. They really did. I think everybody who attended hearings of the select committee were absolutely moved by the stories. I certainly was myself, and I appreciate that those people came in to talk to us. But after all those submissions and all of us listening to those submissions, nothing in this bill has changed.

I think it’s all about the fact that the bill was rushed, that it was about delivering on the 100-day promise, and so it didn’t really matter how weak the bill was—they had to introduce it. But the promise was to introduce a medicinal cannabis regime and, of course, this bill doesn’t. It does open the door a crack—it opens the door a crack—but that crack was resolutely slammed shut again during the select committee process. We know no more now about the shape of the promised medicinal cannabis regime than we did before we began this work. So much energy, so much effort, and so much input by so many, but nothing new has been achieved. As I’ve said, all this bill does is allow someone who’s seriously, seriously ill—in fact, someone very close to dying, and, in fact, within the 12 months for terminal illness, although I know there’s a Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) following—not to be charged for the offence of possessing and using cannabis.

That’s all it does. It doesn’t help any of these very ill people to source product. It doesn’t help or provide for any of these very ill people safe medicinal quality drugs. It doesn’t help these very ill people by protecting a carer or family member that supplies the cannabis for them. So I think many of us are hugely disappointed that there have been no changes.

We believe that the New Zealand public, and certainly the thousand or so submitters, wanted to see the shape of the medicinal cannabis scheme proposed. After all that—all that—that’s what they were looking for. That’s what they felt they had been promised. But, as I said, we opened the door a crack, and when the submitters started to talk about what the regime should look like—what sort of quality products they’d like to see, the type of rules that they believe should be introduced, the rules that might keep our community safe, how we could ensure the quality of the cultivation of the plants, how we could look at the quality of processing, how we could do quality manufacturing—the discussion was shut down.

National believes that the people of New Zealand, the submitters, and the Parliament should have some say over the shape of this proposed medicinal cannabis scheme, and that’s why my colleague Dr Shane Reti introduced his bill and also SOP 178 today. That would be so that when we vote for this bill, if we do, we’re not voting blind; so we have some idea what this medicinal cannabis scheme would look like—the scheme that the door opens with this bill, but we can’t see through it.

I move, That the question be now put.

Thank you, Madam Chair. The principal Act here, in clause 3—we’ve heard submissions from, certainly, my colleagues talking about how the purpose of the principal Act is to describe a medicinal cannabis scheme and, as the title says, medicinal cannabis extending into products. I think one of the greatest disappointments that we hear across the sector, and maybe the main reason why we are unable to support this bill, is the lack of detail. The media called it legislative laziness—that’s what they called it. It’s a bare landscape.

We have to imagine that across the House we have collaborated on other sensitive issues—and, be clear, this is a sensitive issue. We have collaborated on poverty. We are collaborating on the climate. We’ve each been able to see and scrutinise what might be in those bills. Here—nothing; another sensitive topic, and nothing. No framework, nothing. We’re going to leave it to unnamed officials for some period of time to define a framework that is very, very important. Everybody is disappointed with the absence of any sort of skeleton framework. Industry are disappointed. Their concern is that they have assets that are now sitting cold; not knowing what’s coming next, they can’t anticipate, they can’t plan. We have the medicinal cannabis community wondering, “Where am I going to get it from? Is there a dispensing mechanism? Who’s going to be able to get it for me? Will I be able to collect it myself? What if I’m too sick? What if I can’t get there?” Are there any provisions there for a carer or a carer card, as we described in some of our previous pieces of work, to help people who might be too ill to be able to access medicinal cannabis products themselves—nothing.

We could have had some key areas—manufacturing maybe, licensing would have been kind of good, dispensing would have been kind of good, as well. Nothing. No guidance to the sector. No guidance to really anyone who’s involved in this domain and, to the parliamentary colleagues across the Chamber, for a topic like this that really does need parliamentary oversight.

Let’s remember we put it to the committee—that was how we fell apart. We put it to the committee, and the chair won’t disagree with me that all we asked for were these sorts of details to come back to the House. It was all we asked for. We even sent away the clerks to say, “How do we do that?”, and they came back and said, “Oh, it’s called an affirmative instrument.” Yep, that’s what we’re looking for: some detail from the scheme. We have some knowledge that we could put together with others across the House and we could work out some framework that could have some degree of public scrutiny that could stand here tonight. The answer came back: no.

And so what that “no” means is: it’s blank. As this bill progresses through, it will not change from being blank, and for a topic that’s this important, that really is not acceptable. And, furthermore, that is probably one of the main reasons why the National Party will not be supporting its progress further. We need more detail. We could have lived with even a framework—a skeleton framework, probably—but no, nothing. So it’s with great disappointment that we have to sort of understand that there’s nothing there. The work wasn’t done. I think the media’s reference to it as legislative laziness is correct, and the Minister may want to put some sort of items in the discussion here that we could understand.

It’s pleasing that the Supplementary Order Paper that he has actually starts talking about manufacturing, actually starts talking about cultivation, but they’re just words. That’s not enough. Tell us a bit more. Where can you grow it? We’ve had those discussions. We met with industry. We’ve been informed by what industry had told us. We can help with that. We know what industry is thinking around what might work for locations, and we may still be able to help with that, but in a framework that everyone around the House can agree to—that the public, that the House, that the medicinal cannabis community can see and scrutinise.

That’s the sort of work we wanted to do. That’s what we were putting on the table with the select committee, and the Government came back saying, “No. We haven’t done the work, so we have nothing to scrutinise. The answer is no. It will be a blank board, and unnamed officials over an undefined period of time will tell New Zealanders what a medicinal cannabis scheme looks like, will tell industry what it looks like.”

Now, I have no doubt there’ll be some advisory committees that are already terminally late. So, while we’re talking terminal, the proposed medicinal advisory committee was due to have started well before now, and hasn’t. So it is with some disappointment—extreme disappointment, in fact—that we have no details further on this scheme. We were willing to collaborate but the Government said no.

I move, That the question be now put.

I’m going to take one more call, but I’m going to be really strict on this. We’ve strayed away from the clause 3 debate, so I would ask Nicola Willis, when I call you, please—the clause 3 debate.

Madam Chair, thank you for the opportunity to take this, my first call on the Misuse of Drugs (Medicinal Cannabis) Amendment Bill, here in this committee stage. Of course, right now we are debating clause 3, which relates to the principal Act, and it is significant that we in Parliament tonight are working on legislation that would amend the Misuse of Drugs Act 1975. That is a piece of legislation that has significant ramifications for New Zealanders in terms of what is and isn’t classed as illegal activity with regard to the choices they make about using drugs.

Now, the fact that we are amending that principal Act and that we are taking this significant step also highlights the opportunity that’s lost, because in taking this significant step in amending the Misuse of Drugs Act, we have an opportunity before us. The opportunity is to introduce a real medicinal cannabis regime. I support the introduction of a genuine medicinal cannabis regime in New Zealand, but, of course, in amending the Act tonight, that’s not what we’re going to get. We are going to get, of course, some of the way there in introducing an exception and a statutory defence for terminally ill people, but what we are not going to get is a detailed regime that would allow a setting of standards for products manufactured, imported, and supplied—to have a genuine medicinal cannabis regime.

Of course, the opportunity lost here is that we’re all here to amend the Misuse of Drugs Act. In fact, on both sides of the Chamber tonight we have agreement that that Act should be amended and that, actually, things have moved along. Our understanding of the science and our understanding of the impact that medicines and drugs can have on people who are suffering from illnesses have moved along. Our community is asking many of us to take steps when it comes to the Misuse of Drugs Act, and so it’s unfortunate that the extensive work that has been done by Dr Shane Reti to develop a genuine regime for the introduction of medicinal cannabis has been ignored by the Minister of Health, in particular, and by his colleagues opposite. Instead, we’ve had the argument that in amending this Act, we should leave open broad, sweeping powers for a Minister at a later date to introduce a regulatory regime.

We had the Minister earlier say that this was appropriate as it would allow for experts to have their say on those regulations. I put it to you that in amending the Misuse of Drugs Act 1975, we have to be aware that this is the work of Parliament and that Parliament is the proper entity to be setting those rules. I would argue that this is not an area that it’s appropriate simply for regulations to be at play but that Parliament itself—the democratically elected representatives of this House—should be giving clear guidance on what our community and what our society thinks the framework for a medicinal cannabis regime should be. I think we are all derelict in our duty if we stand here tonight and say, “Yes, we’re prepared to take the significant step of amending the Misuse of Drugs Act 1975, but we won’t convey to the New Zealand public what the detail of a medicinal cannabis regime would be in the future.”

I’d put it to you that, in fact, it is quite possible to reflect expert opinion. It is quite possible to think about what that licensing regime would look like. It is quite possible to determine the rules around where manufacturing could take place, under what circumstances, and for whom, and that is proven by the fact that Dr Shane Reti has done it. He has worked alongside experts. He has travelled overseas. He has studied other jurisdictions where there are effective medicinal cannabis regimes. He has put that work together into a substantive proposal, and the Minister, who’s smiling at me now, knows that the truth is he’s rejected that work. He’s rejected that work, and that is a missed opportunity because here we are: we are in agreement—Labour, National, the Greens—that we should amend the Misuse of Drugs Act.

This is a significant moment in our Parliament. You had the opportunity to be a statesman, Minister—sorry, not you. The Minister had the opportunity to be a true statesman and say, “This isn’t actually about political point-scoring; this is about getting an enduring framework for medicinal cannabis in this country—something that New Zealanders have asked for, something that many members across the House have worked on, something that experts all over New Zealand have contributed thinking on, and something that is quite within the power of Parliament to put forward. Instead, he said, “No, no. We’ll put that on the never-never. We’ll put that on the ‘We’ll develop it later.’ ” Another working group, another “Leave it to someone else to develop the regulations.”, and I think that’s a shame. I think that that belittles the Parliament, because we could do this within this bill, and yet that is left wanting. I’m disappointed.

I move, That the question be now put.