Drug and Substance Checking Legislation Bill (No 2)

on behalf of the Minister of Health: I present a legislative statement on the Drug and Substance Checking Legislation Bill (No 2).

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: That legislative statement is published under the authority of the House and can be found on the Parliament website.

I move, That the Drug and Substance Checking Legislation Bill (No 2) be now read a first time. I nominate the Health Committee to consider the bill and, at the appropriate time, I will move that the Health Committee report the bill to the House by 29 October 2021.

The purpose of this bill: in December last year, when we passed the Drug and Substance Checking Legislation Act, we did this so that the drug-checking organisations could operate with legal certainty over the summer period. That bill was for a temporary Act, which will self-repeal this coming December. At the time that last year’s bill was passed, we said that we would develop a permanent regulatory system for drug checking. This bill will enable that system.

Under the current drug-checking Act, the Director-General of Health appointed KnowYourStuffNZ to carry out drug-checking work at festivals and other locations across Aotearoa. Over the past summer, KnowYourStuff found that a lot of the drugs that had been sold as MDMA were actually a dangerous synthetic cathinone called eutylone. Eutylone can result in seizures, paranoia, and other serious effects. During the new year period, KnowYourStuff asked people who used their services whether they still intended to take a drug once they knew it was a synthetic cathinone. Three-quarters of those people said that they would not take that drug. These are people who had already purchased the drugs and had intended to consume them, but once they were informed about what they actually had, they chose to say no.

If drug-checking services had not been available, most of those people would have unwittingly consumed eutylone, and it is likely that some of them would have ended up in hospital. Because KnowYourStuff was able to operate legally and openly, they were able to warn people about the eutylone circulating in the community. We know of many people who chose not to take their drugs or who take extra precautions because of those particular warnings.

There are strong benefits from drug checking, even when a drug is as expected. If drug checking shows that a person has MDMA, for example, they are told about the risks of MDMA. They are told how to reduce those risks—for example, by not taking other drugs at the same time. They are never told that MDMA is a safe drug.

It can be difficult to get health advice to people who consume drugs. They don’t always trust official advice. They can be afraid to ask for help because they are afraid of prosecution. Drug-checking services provide honest and non-judgmental advice which can reduce risk and help people avoid serious trouble.

This bill will enable a licensing system for drug-checking service providers. The licensing system will make sure that anyone providing drug checking has accurate tests and is providing good, sound advice. There will be oversight provisions so that we can be confident that everything is fit for purpose. If there are significant problems, the licence can be suspended or cancelled, if necessary.

This bill is similar to the current drug-checking Act in most regards. What we have seen so far is that the current Act works reasonably well, and so, many elements of it will be carried over.

Like the current Act, the bill amends the Misuse of Drugs Act and the Psychoactive Substances Act to allow drug checking to take place with legal certainty. It also provides that it is not an offence to host a drug-checking service.

The biggest difference between the current Act and this bill is the licensing system. This will provide more oversight and a mechanism to suspend or revoke a licence if the provider is not doing their job properly. Another important difference is that there are no repeal provisions in this bill, because it enables a more permanent regulatory system.

This bill also amends the Medicines Act. This is because people may bring in a substance which turns out to be a prescription medicine. The amendment means that it can be checked in the same way as a controlled drug or an unapproved psychoactive substance.

Finally, this bill contains transitional provisions to ensure that there is no gap between the current system and the new one. Organisations appointed under the current Act will be able to legally operate while they are waiting for a licence decision. The bill will ensure that these providers are not back in a legal grey area during their busiest time of the year. I commend this bill to the House.

The question is that the motion be agreed to.

This bill makes permanent, as Minister Peeni Henare has said, the temporary bill that was passed in this Parliament at the end of last year—in December, from recollection—under urgency. National with regret—because I do think this bill and this Parliament indeed is well intentioned—opposed the bill then, and we continue to oppose it now. I’m not going to speak for long. National’s arguments—

💬 Hon Members: Oh!

Well, you know, I’ve got nine minutes 22 left. We’ll see how I go! National’s arguments were made fully at the earlier bill, and you can check me out on Facebook and a bunch of other media if you want to see those positions.

💬 David Seymour: Down with the kids!

That’s right. Not on TikTok, though, David Seymour. That’s just a bit too much for me.

This bill and the Minister’s position on it is that it’s evidence-based. But the evidence globally—in my view, having gone through this in quite some detail for the earlier bill—indicates quite the opposite to the other parties in this Parliament’s positions. This is a case of those parties being in sync, I’d suggest, with the zeitgeist of the times but not with the best global studies. I referenced several studies—

Chlöe Swarbrick: Which I debunked.

Well, Chlöe Swarbrick says she debunked them. She didn’t come up with a skerrick of evidence in her rather strong speeches last time. I referenced several studies in the last bill, I’m not going to do so again, but—

Chlöe Swarbrick: Which you misused.

If the member keeps doing this, I will get to 10 minutes, and I am trying to do this in about five. I referenced several studies before. What they, in summary, indicate is, firstly, that by pill testing we provide a false confidence and encourage a view that the pill taking is safe and that use goes up; and that, secondly, because that use goes up with that false confidence around the safety of the pills, fatalities will increase. I said I wouldn’t go into studies, but I’m getting challenged here from members around the House. UK—my recollection is from around 40 fatalities per year pre-legalised testing to around 90. Its use went up, and inextricably fatalities went up in the United Kingdom, and that is but one study in this regard. After all, as the studies also show, and this is something that I defy members to successfully challenge, it’s not the additives or the compounds—give it a variety of names—that kill; it is the core component of the substance. So, for the most part with this bill, we are talking about the MDMA the illegal, illicit substance within those E pills. And, of course, no MDMA or E pill is safe with or without impurities. It’s that MDMA that kills.

💬 David Seymour: MDMA doesn’t kill you.

So if this is an evidence—well, the member David Seymour, who’s somewhat rational, on these, says, “It doesn’t kill you.” Well, there’s been a number of fatalities in New Zealand, where people have, effectively, as a result of taking MDMA, overdosed and drowned. It’s simply the reality of that.

💬 David Seymour: They drank too much water.

He’s blaming the water now! David Seymour is blaming the water. I mean, that’s fundamentally what we’ve got to, the level of this debate. So my simple point is that if this is an evidence-based harm-reduction issue, which I suggest most of those around me say it is, well, actually, we shouldn’t do this. Use goes up, fatalities go up, and there is a false confidence, when no MDMA—even if someone comes along and says, “Well, it’s got no impurities”, or it has—is safe.

And, of course, this is a health reduction issue, but when those around us say that that’s all it is, and that’s what Minister Andrew Little, the senior Minister here in charge of this bill, has said, I respectfully, entirely disagree. It is a health issue but it is also, clearly, a criminal issue. And, if it’s not, well, actually the party in Government at this time, the Labour Party, should do away—and this is, effectively, we’ll give her some credit, Chlöe Swarbrick’s position—with the Misuse of Drugs Act and the various other laws in this Parliament that make it criminal law. They won’t do that because they know New Zealanders don’t believe that, but they come back to this tripe about it only being a health and not a criminal law matter. Of course it’s both, and to say it isn’t means that the Government and the police are ignoring those laws.

I want to just touch on the wider position and picture here. Soft peddling of illicit drugs seems to be the position of the Government today. This part of that agenda is one that they run despite, and, I would say, in disregard of, a referendum result New Zealanders had last year. I believe the tragedy will be played out on those youths over the next few years, as this, in my view, experiment rolls out.

Finally, I just want to touch on, because this should be an evidence-based picture that we’re presenting, the “evidence”—and I say that in quotes, for Hansard—that the Government relies on. Well, there’s been nothing, and Peeni Henare actually got up and said something along the lines of “Well, it’s all been great since we passed this law. Wonderful, isn’t it? Fantastic.” There’s been nothing since the law change at the end of the last year that comes anywhere within cooee of giving us an evidential picture in New Zealand that somehow this is safe. I want to be careful, but I do say, and I raised this issue over the Christmas period, there have been fatalities—more than I’ve ever seen—in and around summer festivals.

Chlöe Swarbrick: Where there was no drug checking.

The member says, “Where there wasn’t testing.” Minister Peeni Henare says quite the opposite. I’ve asked written questions. I’ve lodged Official Information Act queries on these issues. I have been unable to receive anything from the Government, Police, or any other agency that gives me anything about those facilities, and I don’t make any big point on that other than to say, simply, we should actually, if we’re trying to be evidence-based in this House and debate these laws, have the full picture, including what’s actually happening in this regard.

Then, there’s the Victoria University study. I know colleagues of mine will mention it. I say quite clearly to the media who keep trotting it out for the left, who keep trotting it out: it is not robust evidence; it is a self-selecting survey. In the report’s own words—I would say it’s written by a professor who is known for drug advocacy—says, “The sample was a purposeful, focused, non-random sample.” Well, I say respectfully: that gets us nowhere. And I would say to Stuff in particular, Stuff, the New Zealand Herald, and other media: stop quoting it as decisive evidence that somehow this is all OK and it’s safe.

Secondly, in relation to this Victoria study, even the results themselves, when you go through the graphs, are not at all promising. Despite the spin of the Government, the reality is that half in the survey would or might take the pill even if it was not as presumed—that is, even if it did have a compound in it. About 80 percent would take it, even if the pill or the drug was only partially consistent with presumed. And more than 90 percent, according to this self-selecting survey, would take it if the drug was confirmed as illegal. And I come back to it: how good is that? I’d say it’s pretty poor given that no MDMA or E is safe.

We should be evidence-based. We should be careful in this area. I say, actually, this bill is an experiment we will regret at our leisure.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. It doesn’t seem so long ago that we were here in this House debating the previous, time-limited Drug and Substance Checking Legislation Act, and it’s really wonderful to be here debating a more permanent solution. Because when I first talked about the previous bill, I talked about the number of young people that were turning up in emergency departments because the substance that they’d taken wasn’t what they thought it was. I talked about the challenges for health professionals, as they were working alongside young people trying to figure out what it was that they’d ingested, and often young people having quite severe symptoms, so just trying to work out how to resolve those symptoms when you weren’t sure what they’d ingested. So when we passed the temporary Drug and Substance Checking Legislation Act in 2020, what it meant is that last summer, a number of those substance-checking services could operate with legal certainty over summer and were available to provide that testing and identify some of those substances that, indeed, weren’t what people thought they were. But what this bill does is it makes a more permanent approach.

I want to talk a little bit about why drug checking is important and recap on that, because it’s not just the drug checking itself—and when I’m talking about drug checking, I mean people surrendering a portion of what they’re intending to take so that they can ascertain what’s in it—but it’s also the conversations that go alongside that. I think it’s important that advice about staying hydrated, about not mixing substances, about not taking the drugs with alcohol or other illegal drugs, those are the conversations that are all so important. Also, when the results of that testing come back, talking about what’s in it and, if it isn’t what people thought it was, then providing that advice so that the person can make an informed choice.

I think the research has been already talked about from Victoria University of Wellington. What they did find is that 68 percent of those who had used the KnowYourStuff drug-checking service had changed their behaviour. Either they’d decided not to take the substance after it had been checked or they listened to some of that harm reduction advice. And 87 percent of those who used KnowYourStuff said that their knowledge of harm reduction had improved. But also for those festival organisers who had KnowYourStuff at their events, they noticed fewer serious incidents related to illicit drug use. But also the medical personnel that were working at those events because, you know, they noted that often it was difficult to tell what substance someone had ingested—so if you were having drug-testing services there, then you had a better knowledge about what was circulating at the event for future treatment.

So just thinking through: what does this bill do? I think basically what it does is it follows on from the previous Drug and Substance Checking Legislation Act, which is due to expire 12 months from when it came into force, and it’s similar in many of the respects. But there’s one main difference, and that is rather than the Director-General of Health appointing service providers under the previous Act, in this bill the director-general is able to issue licences for substance-checking services so they can carry out specified functions, and it’s reasonably prescriptive what those functions are. So the first one is providing that information so that you can actually do harm minimisation and talk to those people that are potentially seeking the advice through decisions about the usage. Then the second part of it, obviously, is testing the substances and ascertaining what’s in them. And then, once you’ve done that, having that conversation with the person that handed over the substance to say this is what’s in it, and then having that responsibility to dispose of that, if that person decides to surrender their drug and also for the samples that they’ve tested.

So there are some very clearly described functions there. But just why this permanent change is necessary is because, prior to the temporary legislation coming into place, if you were an event organiser and you allowed a drug-checking service to operate on your premises, you could be prosecuted under section 12 of the Misuse of Drugs Act, because the sense was that you were knowingly allowing someone on premises and it actually identified that you had knowledge that drug use may be happening on your premises. So what this permanent solution does is it means that it’s no longer an offence under that Act if you’ve got a licensed drug-checking service operating on your premises. It also allows those drug-checking services to operate with legal certainty.

So this is an incredibly important bill, because what it means is we’re going to have more drug-checking services available at more events, and that means we’ve got more harm minimisation for those attending those events. So I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Mr Speaker—

Chlöe Swarbrick: Here we go!

—and thank you, Chlöe Swarbrick—for the opportunity to take a call on the Drug and Substance Checking Legislation Bill (No 2). Yes, now she can save her woke rage till a little bit later, when I’m sure she’ll get a chance to be able to speak on this piece of legislation. National continues to oppose this legislation. I think it is fair to say that everyone coming to this debate wants to keep New Zealanders safe, and particularly younger New Zealanders, but there are also sound reasons why it is logical not to support the legislation and what it is doing here. It is a consistent approach from the National Party, which takes a view that drug policy is both a health issue and a criminal issue.

This bill is not based on strong evidence. That’s the first point. The departmental disclosure statement, which has been provided to this House, says here that “There are no inquiries, reviews or evaluation reports specifically about regulation of drug … services. However there is research from New Zealand and overseas on the effectiveness of drug checking services.”, and quotes only one report. That one report is a report from the Victoria University, which seeks to provide some rationale as to why this should be put in place. That report, Drug Checking at New Zealand Festivals (Final Report), was issued last year in November.

This report, which the Government has relied on, is in my opinion not worth the paper that it has been written on. Firstly, you go to the page on acknowledgments where it says here on page 2: “Thanks also go to the politicians and ministry staff who supported this project. The use of illegal drugs is a politically sensitive topic”—fair point—“so it was very welcome that Hon Stuart Nash, Chlöe Swarbrick, and Hon Dr David Clark openly supported the research.” Well, I’m pretty sure that sounds like a pretty objective bunch of people helping to support this research! “[The] research would also not have been possible without the support of ‘Know Your Stuff’ ”—another completely unbiased organisation trying to put forward some evidence around this particular issue.

I then turn to the executive summary, where it says here that “Four groups of people were interviewed: festival/event organisers; medical personnel who worked at … events; volunteers working for [Know Your Stuff New Zealand]; festival attendees/wider New Zealand public … Overall 66 people were interviewed … 911 surveys were completed, with the final survey sample after cleaning totalling 861. The sample was a purposeful, focused, non-random sample.” Now, for an organisation such as the Victoria University of Wellington, which prides itself on its academic inquiry, its independence, and its ability to try to really understand the issues, this seems to be one of the most biased documents I’ve seen, which has used what is called “purposeful, focused, non-random samples”, which I think pretty much means asking people who you think will agree with you and getting a result which they wanted.

And then you look at the findings. They interviewed 66 people. Well, guess what? “All 66 people who were interviewed … thought drug checking was a good idea”. Oh, my goodness! You ask people who agree with you, and guess what? They agree with you. Amazing. You go to the methodology—amazing—“The key aims of the research were to gather … a [wide] range of views.” Well, they didn’t do a very good job at doing that. There was an online survey which was distributed via social media—whose social media? “the lead researcher’s Twitter account”—she’s very well known for her views—“ ‘Vic Deals’ and … Facebook pages of ‘JustSpeak’ ”—very independent lobby group—“the ‘New Zealand Drug Foundation’ ”—they don’t have an interest in this at all—and “ ‘Know Your Stuff’ ”—another organisation with no interest in this particular topic.

So here we are looking for an evidence-based approach, which is what the Green Party and the Labour Party will try to tell us, and the one New Zealand document which they have based the rationale for passing this legislation on is anything but rational, anything but independent and impartial. That piece of document, as I said, is not worth the paper it’s written on, and I believe Victoria University should be ashamed to have their name on that piece of document.

The other overseas piece of research was Andrew Groves in the Harm Reduction Journal, which says that there have been “no studies [which] have fully tested in a controlled way, whether pill testing reduces harm.”

Chlöe Swarbrick: Maybe because it’s illegal?

Well, there have been plenty of opportunities in other countries where it has been legal, and he looked around the world and came to the conclusion that there have been no studies—

Chlöe Swarbrick: Give us a citation, Simmo.

Andrew Groves in the Harm Reduction Journal; you’re most welcome to look it up.

The next point is that this bill goes wider than previous legislation. This bill allows for much wider testing than just at music festivals. I think we can put aside the issue of music festivals, but the public then need to ask the question of whether they want to see drug testing like this more widespread around New Zealand. Do we want to see drug-testing services in the main street of our local town centre? There’s some in the House who might think that’s a good idea. There are others who would see and remember what happened during the whole issue of the Psychoactive Substances Act. I was on the Manurewa Local Board at the time, and I remember when a legal high shop opened in the main street of Manurewa, and because it said “legal highs”, everyone thought, “Well, they must be OK, so therefore we’ll use them.”, and we saw the enormous social consequence and devastation caused by those substances. This is something which will also see that mission creep as these drug-checking services open up.

And it’s already happening. The New Zealand Drug Foundation has already started drug testing out of their offices in Wellington and recently started doing it out of their office in Auckland. The question the public need to ask is whether they wish this to happen in more localities, other town centres, and near other places where their children may go—all of those questions, and those are issues which I don’t believe the public have been asked to give consideration to. Those are something which I hope, if this bill does go through select committee—which I hope it doesn’t, but assuming it does—the public put their voices forward on that very point: should this just be limited to music festivals, or is the public actually happy with drug-checking services popping up on main streets up and down our country? That, I think, is a very serious issue.

Another significant issue here in this piece of legislation is that the legislation makes it explicit that the results of testing by drug and substance checking services will not be admissible in criminal proceedings against the person who supplied any controlled drug or unapproved psychoactive substance for testing. Now, this is something which we need, in some way—the police need to have some ability to hold to account those supplying drugs which are harmful and which are causing major, major harm in our communities.

The final point I want to make is that it needs to be put on the record that the reality is it doesn’t matter how many times you test MDMA; it’s still a dangerous drug. This bill does not make MDMA safe—doesn’t matter how many times you test it; it’s still not going to be safe. It doesn’t matter how many times you have a conversation about it; it still doesn’t make it safe. This legislation doesn’t have the evidence basis that the Government claims it does, and the National Party will not support it.

Thank you, Mr Speaker, and thank you for the chance to rise in support of this bill, the Drug and Substance Checking Legislation Bill (No 2), to take a call, add a contribution, and make two or three points perhaps a little bit clearer. The single broad aim of this legislation is, again, and I think we need to remind ourselves, to minimise the harm by allowing checking services to operate legally in New Zealand within a permanent regulatory sort of system, and I don’t think we can lose sight of that.

So there’s three points that I just want to emphasise. Firstly, the drug-checking Act was implemented, obviously, as many people have already said, as a temporary piece of legislation to allow for drug checking to take place over this past summer. But as it is in its current form, it’s not best practice, particularly because there isn’t that access to oversight of the appointment decisions or oversight of the provider activity, and there are no provisions for appointments to be revoked. So this piece of legislation is more robust and can address at least those shortcomings. I think, as Minister Henare said, the biggest difference between the current Act and this bill that we are talking about tonight is in the licensing system, which provides much more oversight and gives us that mechanism to suspend or revoke a licence to test, if the provider is not providing their particular service properly.

The second point is that checking a drug or a substance allows a person, essentially, to make a lifesaving decision not to consume it should it turn out to be not what it says on the box, so to speak. That’s actually incredibly important and nothing to be scoffed at or taken lightly. It doesn’t need to happen every day. It doesn’t need to happen in every community. For every time that happens and a person is able to negotiate their way out of a potentially risky situation, then that’s worthwhile.

As Minister Henare stated earlier, it was common over this past summer—and I think we’ve all heard various permeations of it—for synthetic cathinones to be sold as MDMA, and they’re so much more risky. Although it’s temporary, the current Act has already been shown to have an impact. I’m just going to go back a little bit and talk about that Victoria University research and repeat: 68 percent of surveyed festival goers who used the drug-testing services reported—that’s all right; self-reported. That’s what a survey is. They reported a change in their behaviour as a result. The study never claimed to look at or demonstrate the safety of drug taking, because guess what? Taking drugs isn’t particularly safe. It wasn’t providing evidence and shouldn’t be slurred in that way in this House. The previous “contributor”, Simeon Brown—perhaps we should put that in quotes for the Hansard—who talks about false confidence, smugly dismissed research for not being robust in an area or with regard to findings that it never claimed to make in the first place.

Thirdly, the permanent regulatory system for drug checking would help crucial harm education, as my colleague Liz Craig talked about, to be disseminated to people who are at risk of drug harm, remembering that that is a very real risk. People who consume illicit drugs tend to be hard to identify and tend to be quite hard to reach within health messaging. So drug checking brings people who consume drugs into contact with people who have, and can provide them with, information and advice and potentially connect them to those broader health services as well. This is usually provided in a peer sort of situation, so it has a much stronger influence generally than from official sources.

Now, it’s also worth noting that there is often limited information about which drugs are currently in circulation in New Zealand. This makes it more difficult for police and health services to anticipate, prevent, or respond to drug harm, particularly if it’s from novel substances. I think given some of the contributions tonight, it’s probably only fair that Dr Fiona Hutton gets a bit of a name check here when she concludes that “The research detailed in this report and the international literature support drug-checking services and demonstrate the effectiveness of drug checking as a harm reduction measure.”, adding that “There is no evidence that drug checking increases drug use or encourages those who do not use illegal drugs to begin using them.” In making this quote, she cites international literature from various places overseas including the UK, Portugal, Netherlands, Canada, Switzerland, and Australia.

So, in summary, if the drug checking Act provisions are repealed, which they will be in December 2021, we are left without a system in place. Drug checking will revert to that legal grey area, which is not ideal. I don’t think now is the time to go backwards on this issue. This bill is in line with Labour Party policy to treat drug use and drug abuse as a health issue and not a criminal issue, and on that basis, therefore, I’m happy to commend this bill to the House.

E te Māngai, tēnā koe, tēnā koutou e te Whare. It’s probably quite useful to zoom out a little bit and to talk about what we’re talking about when we discuss the regulatory approaches that we can take to substances in this country, and when I’m referring to substances or drugs kind of writ large I’m also talking about things like tobacco and alcohol, which are licit or legal substances at present. That regulatory spectrum on the one side of things looks like complete prohibition. That is, obviously, what the National Party appears to be advocating for, because it’s worked so well for the past 40-plus years, when we’ve seen the proliferation of more drugs, more drug harm, and otherwise! The other extreme end of the spectrum is a complete free market.

If you look at the mountains of evidence that we have accumulated over the past few decades on those two approaches—one end of town, which we’ve taken by compounding criminal prohibition and the criminal penalties inherent in that; the other end of town, enabling things like advertising, glamorisation, and glorification of substances like alcohol—both of those ends of the spectrum are where you end up with the maximisation of harm. The reason for that is that in both of those extreme ends of the spectrum—on the one side you have an entity, criminal organisations; on the other side you have an entity, corporates, particularly monopolistic behaving corporates—you have entities which are incentivised to exploit vulnerable communities in order to make a quick buck. The way that you deal with that is bringing the issue into the light through a mechanism that should be pretty well known in this House: it’s regulation. That is where, when you talk about something like alcohol or you talk about something like tobacco, you say, “Hey, we can better regulate and control that to provide people with better information about what they’re deciding to do with or put into their bodies.”

On the other side, when we’re talking about the likes of prohibition, we have to recognise that the National Party can bang their fists on the table as much as they like, but the Misuse of Drugs Act 1975 has been a demonstrative failure in that we have consistently seen more drugs on the street, harsher substances on the street, and increased problems in our communities. The best way to deal with that issue is to tackle that reality, because the reality is that we have unknown people in unknown places consuming unknown substances in unknown places to unknown effect. The very least that you can do is inform people about what they’re doing, and the evidence shows us that people make better decisions when they have that information.

So to the bill in front of us tonight: as has been outlined by other speakers, it makes permanent the amendment to section 12 of the Misuse of Drugs Act. Section 12 of that old piece of legislation, that terrible piece of legislation, the Misuse of Drugs Act 1975, in its original writing makes it illegal to knowingly provide a place where people consume substances. That provided, technically, the ability to prosecute, practically, actually, any bar, club, or music festival in the entire country, bar the fact that they feigned ignorance that this stuff happened. But by virtue of the introduction of a harm reduction measure, which you could argue makes them knowing that people are consuming these substances—and actually, therefore, that we have far less hospitalisations; to the point made before by the Hon Simon Bridges, we have evidence from 2016 out of the UK that shows us that there was a 95 percent reduction in hospital admissions at festivals by virtue of the implementation of drug-checking services.

If you provide people with that information and you put them through the system, the likes of which has been provided on the smell of an oily rag by a ragtag, phenomenal group of volunteers led by Jez and Wendy at KnowYourStuffNZ for the past several years—and I know that there are members in this House from both sides who have been into this tent, so I really, really want to question the supposed consensus of the National Party on this issue—what you’ll see is that Jez and Wendy and their volunteers will provide you with the starting point that consumption of illicit substances is not something that you should probably do, and it’s dangerous, and there is no way to safely engage in this behaviour, but, hey, if you are going to do this, then here are ways to minimise that harm, and we’re going to let you know whether what you have is something that you thought you had. And, hey presto, what all of the evidence shows of the past several years, as reported on knowyourstuff.nz—I hope the National Party are taking notes; it’s “knowyourstuff.nz” that was being asked for before by the likes of Simeon Brown and Simon Bridges—if you go on to that website you will see consistently that the majority of people will dispose of the substance and not take it if it turns out not to be what they thought it was.

Actually, we have far more profound and long-reaching evidence, as released about a week ago out of the International Journal of Drug Policy. This shows us, actually, qualitatively and quantitatively on about 3,500 people out of the UK who’ve been followed up over a process of the last three years, that actually not only does it change potentially harmful behaviour at the point of that potential harmful behaviour, but it has flow-on effects. Two-thirds of people in this study had changed their behaviour permanently because of the interaction that they had had with a drug-checking service, which in turn meant that they were less likely to engage in harmful behaviour.

Now, I also just really need to address a few of the points made by the National Party in their, I think, intentionally quite riling contributions tonight, one of which is the point made by Simeon Brown that, you know, “Are the public going to be happy with these drug-checking services popping up everywhere?” Well, it may come as a surprise to the likes of the member Simeon Brown, but it actually happens, again in this place called reality, that people aren’t just consuming illicit substances at music festivals. They happen to do it every other weekend as well. And we know this because we’ve also heard from the National Party that they’re frustrated that the police are not enforcing the law at present. The reason that the police have not been enforcing that law is because it is completely unworkable.

I also need to refer the member and the other National Party members who are attempting to barrack me right now to what happened in the 1980s in this country when we were a world leader and we instituted the very first national needle exchange services, which they seem to have forgotten about in their tweets about “Does this mean that we’re now going to have needle exchange services?” We do, and we did it first. And as a result of that, we have the lowest in the OECD amount of HIV/AIDS amongst intravenous drug users in the entire comparable countries that we often compare ourselves to. That should be a win. Of course, Dr Nick Smith, people are still taking these intravenous drugs, but would you not prefer that they do not contract HIV/AIDS and lead to their deaths by virtue of doing a behaviour that your preference for criminal prohibition would continue to see occur?

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: I’m going to warn the member: too much use of the personal pronoun, bringing the Speaker into the debate. Don’t do it.

CHLÖE SWARBRICK: Apologies, Mr Speaker—I was doing a bit of a Mark Mitchell there. I also just need to very briefly run through the process that has been alluded to frequently by National Party members as a reason as to why we shouldn’t do this, and that is the psychoactive substances legislation. I would refer members of the National Party to the chronology which happened under their watch in Government. The psychoactive substances legislation was created under the former National Government and was a process to try to grapple with the fact that the Misuse of Drugs Act classification scheme requires that every single time a new substance comes on to the market, Parliament quickly tries to prohibit it. By virtue of that process and new chemical procedures being developed, we saw that Parliament had to do something differently if it wanted to maintain this criminal prohibition. That was the psychoactive substances legislation.

Largely, Government had its hand forced by the continued proliferation of synthetic cannabinoids. At that point in time, we had a number of people who were experiencing a huge number of issues. What was actually proposed in the psychoactive substances legislation was a procedure to regulate to reduce harm. Inherent in that was, for example, requiring that those substances were sold in R18 venues without any sale of alcohol being present. In practicality, that meant those substances went from being sold in a ubiquitous place, like dairy counters, to in a pretty evident and obvious place, like adult stores, which were the only kinds of places or shops that fit that bill. All of a sudden, that compounding and visibility of the issue meant that there were lines outside of these shops, and at that point in time, with the temporary licensing scheme implemented, there were no deaths by virtue of those drugs that had been licensed under that temporary scheme. But a knee-jerk response from the National Government to repeal that temporary licensing pushed those substances underground and in turn killed nearly 50 New Zealanders, based on coronial reports. We can and must do better.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I rise on behalf of ACT in support of this Drug and Substance Checking Legislation Bill (No 2). It is not often that I find myself on the same side of an argument as Swarbrick. I live in great hope that one day she’ll wake up and apply the same principles to economics and personal property as she applies to freedom of the body and mind. But until that happens, we’re going to have to focus on this bill and the reason why all members of good conscience should support it.

It’s very simple. On the politics, on the policy, on the morality of this legislation, it is completely wrong for this House to prohibit drug checking. Drug checking is when people come together voluntarily and offer a service to help their fellow New Zealanders stay safe. That’s what it is. People like KnowYourStuff have been taking considerable risks, placing themselves in legal jeopardy, on their own time, with their own money, to go to festivals and test drugs to help people ensure that if they do have drugs that have been infused with impure substances—horse tranquiliser and awful stuff far worse than MDMA—at the very least they can find out that that’s the case and not take it. That’s what we’re talking about—people helping people voluntarily. That’s why I think a conservative political party should support it. We don’t want the State to solve all our problems. When we see people helping each other voluntarily, we should actually be in support of that, rather than standing in this House and prohibiting it.

Then there’s the politics of it. What do parents really think about this legislation? Well, there are two things they might think. They might think pill testing will encourage their kids when they go to a festival to take drugs like MDMA. If they know it’s pure, the logic goes, then they might be more likely to try it than if they were unsure and worried that it could have horse tranquilliser in it. And no doubt, for some kids, that is actually true. Allowing pill testing will mean some kids will try MDMA whereas they might have been discouraged by the risk of there being bad things in it. But surely even the opponents of this legislation have to concede that there will also be kids who are saved from taking much more dangerous things because they are able to test and find out that the dangerous stuff is inside the pills that they have.

Really, on a moral basis it’s pretty difficult to argue that you want to make sure that no more people take safer pills at the cost of some people taking very dangerous ones—because that’s effectively the argument. When you’re a parent and you know your kid is going to get invited to festivals and go along to these things in the summer, do you really want to take the risk because you think, “I hope my kid won’t try anything but if they do, I want there to be a facility to make sure they don’t really take bad stuff.”? That’s the politics of it, for the opponents of this bill. Do you really want to say to parents, “We want your kids to go along and risk taking really dangerous stuff, but at least it will stop a few people from experimenting because they’re too scared.”? Do you want to say to parents, “Do you really want to bet that your kid’s not going to be one of the ones that tries it anyway?” That’s the politics of it.

Then there’s the data. Some people want to say that, actually, the number of people taking MDMA is going to increase more than the number of lives that are going to be saved by being able to detect the really bad stuff. I would say that, actually, no side has managed to put forward compelling evidence that it’s one or the other. I don’t think anyone’s actually presented the data. The National Party stands up and says that the data that the Labour Party’s put up is terribly compromised, and the Labour Party says that the National Party is bringing evidence from 1975, but neither of them have presented compelling evidence one way or another.

That’s when you come back to the basic morality. Should this Parliament pass a law to prevent people from helping themselves? Here is a philosophical question: do we believe that people should be able to make informed choices about how they live their lives and how they use their bodies? Well, some people would say that it’s better to keep people in ignorance in the hope it will scare them off making any choice at all. I think that is philosophically a very difficult position for any party on the right of politics to sustain. The State, as Big Brother, will keep citizens in ignorance, stop them from accessing information, stop them having information voluntarily provided by their fellow citizens, because keeping citizens in ignorance is for their own good—is that really the position of the National Party when they oppose this legislation and retain the prohibition on pill testing? I think that if they thought about it for a moment, they would not take such a position.

In conclusion, the starting point is a question of whether this House should prohibit New Zealanders from voluntarily helping each other. The ACT Party says that we should never stop people voluntarily helping each other, and that’s what people like KnowYourStuff are doing. The second question is which is the greater risk: that some kids at festivals who wouldn’t have tried MDMA will try it and therefore increase usage; or that people will take drugs when they don’t know what’s in them, thereby increasing harm? The ACT Party says that when neither side is presenting greater evidence, the lesser risk is for a few more kids to take MDMA than for some kids to be taking horse tranquilliser because they don’t know what’s in the pills they have. Finally, there’s the philosophical argument that we should live in a free society where people are free to receive and impart information and make decisions about how they use their minds and their bodies and their property for themselves, not be kept in ignorance by the Big Brother State for their own good.

When you weigh up those points, it should be easy to see that the moral and philosophical and the practical evidence is in favour of supporting this bill and allowing pill testing. But, finally, there’s the political argument, and I want to say to the people I represent, and perhaps people opposing this bill: do you really think that parents who know their kids are going to festivals, parents who know their kids may be offered pills, parents who think their kids are pretty good kids but can’t really be sure they won’t be tempted, would want them to go to a place where they can find out if their pills are dangerous, or would they want them to go to a place where they just risk it and might be given something with horse tranquiliser in it? That’s the simple question, and I think I know how parents in the Epsom electorate and beyond would answer those questions. They would want their kids to be able to make informed choices, and that is why the ACT Party is in favour of this legislation.

It’s my pleasure to rise a second time in the House today after having recently spoken on the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) Legislation Bill. This time I’m speaking on the Drug and Substance Checking Legislation Bill (No 2). I just want to acknowledge David Seymour; I used to live in his electorate—rather, I spent the majority of my life living in Epsom going to school and medical school there, and I never thought I would actually agree with him. So never say never, I guess.

As a member of the Health Committee, as well as a medical professional, I’m proudly supporting this bill. I’m supporting this bill because last summer the Labour Party - led Government legalised drug-checking services to operate at festivals over the summer and it’s already having an impact. As we’ve heard from other members—the deputy chair of the Health Committee, Dr Tracey McLellan—research from Victoria University has shown that 68 percent of people surveyed, festival-goers who used the drug-testing services, changed their behaviour as a result of that. This behaviour change meant that some disposed of their drugs that had been tested, some reduced the amount of drugs they took, and 87 percent, that’s a lot, said that as a result of talking to the testing team they understood more about the harmful behaviour involved in taking the drugs.

The problem we’ve got at the moment, though, is the Act will expire in December and experts are telling us that it should be made permanent. The Act has also given welcome reassurance to those operating the services in New Zealand, as well as festival organisers who host them, that they will not be criminalised for their efforts to keep young New Zealanders safe.

Under section 12 of the Misuse of Drugs Act 1975, it is an offence at the moment to knowingly allow premises to be used for the commission of an offence against the Act. Before section 12 was amended by the drug checking Act recently, on an interim basis, event organisers and other hosts who allowed drug-checking services to take place were at risk of prosecution under section 12, because the promotion of drug-checking services could have constituted evidence of knowledge that drugs were being consumed or possessed on the premises. The drug-checking amendment on section 12 provided that it’s not an offence to host a drug-checking service any more.

But if a permanent regulatory system is not introduced, drug checking will revert to a legal grey area and drug-checking service providers and their hosts will again be at risk of prosecution. It is likely that drug-checking services will be provided at fewer events once again.

As a health professional, I would say it adds another layer to it, because once you test the drugs you know what people are taking and you are able to provide the best medical care to people. In my own career, I have seen people come to me, but not knowing what the drug is means it takes that much longer to provide that care. So, for us, it’s always been about a health perspective, not the criminal aspect of it, and we want to make sure that people have that access available to them, especially our young kids.

So I will say to the Opposition: “know your stuff” before you criticise Victoria University, Simeon Brown. And as such, I would recommend this to the next stage.

The next call is a split call. I call Chris Penk.

Thank you very much, Madam Speaker, for the opportunity to speak on the Drug and Substance Checking Legislation Bill (No 2).

We’ve heard a number of different claims on the other side of the House, and on this side of the House to the extent that the ACT Party has contributed to the debate, along the lines, of course, of harm minimisation. I think it’s worth acknowledging from the start that that, in itself, is a worthy goal. I’d like to think that every member of this House would want to minimise the harm associated with drug taking. So just to put it in that context, I very much hope that we are arguing over the detail about how that might best be achieved, and, of course, more particularly on whether sending a particular message about the safety of particular drugs, notwithstanding any additional elements, is where we need to focus our efforts.

So taking the intent of the legislation at its face value, namely “to try to minimise drug and substance harm by allowing drug and substance checking services to operate legally in New Zealand.”, we can make a number of different observations. The first is that one of the points of emphasis of the bill is the idea of legal certainty. This is explained in the general policy statement with reference to the handling of controlled drugs. But more accurately, or more importantly, the point is not simply the handling of the drugs; it’s the fact of handing them back to a person who has handed them into the care of these checkers, who might have the best intentions in the world, but who are nevertheless engaging in activity that will increase the likelihood of harm from the drugs themselves in the act of handing them back. So whereas we see in the explanatory note a number of different functions that can be carried out, one of which is the testing, another of which is the checking, another being the advising—these things are all fine, of course, in themselves, but it is the returning of the drug or substance to the individual who had presented it for checking that is the dangerous element that we can see in the licensing regime, that is to allow the activities to be carried out in a way that’s licensed or regulated.

Of course, there is also an interesting issue, as one of the stated aims of the licensing regime to legitimate the activity is “providing information and harm reduction advice to help individuals make informed decisions about drug and psychoactive substance use:”—well, amen to that. Providing information and advice is a very worthy aim indeed, but it is not illegal at the moment to provide information about the harm that drugs can cause to young people, or indeed any other people, and the more of that the better, but it doesn’t require an act of Parliament to allow such education to take place, and it is indulging in a straw man argument to suggest otherwise.

I do also want to comment on the scope of the bill in the sense of the different aspects of New Zealand public life or private life, indeed, that are covered by it. Again, somewhat of a straw man argument to reference heavily music festivals, because there is no such limitation in the bill. But if we’re going to focus on that then let’s at least interrogate that notion in a way that is giving the proper attention that this category of entertainment deserves. There has been far too little comment on the nature of so-called music festivals at which drug taking is so rife. A drug festival with a soundtrack is not a music festival. If the amount of drug-taking activity endangering the lives of young Kiwis is such that we need to make a law so that they need not be afraid of allowing drug checkers on site then how about we, as a Parliament, legislate better and as a society deal with the problem better of the fact that there is so much illicit drug supply and use going on in the first place. That is at the heart of what we should be dealing with and not the relatively innocuous activity of the checking, the testing, certainly the educational element, but, of course, the handing back of that which is dangerous with or without additional elements, which may or may not be known; that is a straw man. Again, we should resist that notion. We should resist sending the message that drug taking, in the case of these very harmful substances, is OK. We must resist this idea that we could hand back that which will kill or injure our young people under the guise of education and false notions of harm minimisation.

I’ll be honest: I don’t like drugs as much as those on the other side of the House. I’ve lived somewhat of a sheltered life. I grew up in Masterton, and I didn’t really have the opportunity to have drugs until I went to the University of Otago, at which point I said no. I went overseas and played rugby in Ireland and travelled around Europe. I spent a week in Amsterdam, and I still said no. I had no interest in trying drugs whatsoever. I, like many on the other side of the House, thought—and still think, to some extent—that they are bad. But I’m actually not hearing anyone tonight say that they’re good, and I think that’s the guts of this: we need to face facts.

I’ve never done any hard drugs. I’ve tried marijuana twice. The first time was by accident—that’s God’s truth—and I was crook as a dog. Then my mate said to me “Well, you’ve done it now. You’ve gone your whole life without trying it. You’ve gone and done it. You may as well try it properly.” And I did, and I was crook as a dog. So I’ve done it twice, and I was crook both times, and I’ll never do it again. Horrible. Awful experience. I’ve never tried any of these things that are listed in this piece of legislation, but am I going to cast judgment on those that choose to do it? Of course I’m not. And that’s the thing. This is what we’ve got here. We can’t place some ideological view, some conservative view, that drugs are bad and the people that take them are doing a bad thing, and therefore they should be told off and we should increase the laws and increase punishment, and it’s on them; it’s their own fault.

Let’s just face up to a fact: some people take drugs, and it is a bloody dangerous thing to do, so let’s bring in measures to make it safer. Bring in education and bring in testing at music festivals in particular, so that if people make a choice to try a drug, they can do so knowing that the stuff that the facts say is actually hurting them and actually killing people is not in the drug. When we step back from our personal views and look at the facts, and show that the temporary bill that was brought in has been able to assist people in identifying that a significant proportion of the drugs that they tested were not what they thought it was, this bill will save a lot of hardship, a lot of pain, and quite possibly save lives. So let’s as a House put aside our personal views. I don’t want people to take drugs, and I say that with the greatest sincerity, because I’m worried about it. I’m worried about the impact that it will have on them. I’m worried about the impact that it will have on society. But they’re going to do it anyway, so let’s make sure that it’s safer.

I’ve learnt a lot since taking on this role, since coming into Parliament four years ago. I went to my first music festival since being elected to this House, and that was an eye-opening experience—literally. There were people that I think most people would be quite surprised to see engaging in these sorts of substances—respected people with respected professions, from right around the country, getting together, enjoying themselves, enjoying the company of their mates and their family, and enjoying the music and things that were on offer. At times, I felt uncomfortable. I’ll be honest. It’s not the sort of situation that I or someone in my job probably wants to be around, so I removed myself at times.

I was worried about what was in those products and the damage that it could do, but in what this bill proposes, there will be provisions available for people to check what they have and make sure that it is what they think it is. Then, at least, we will know it’s safe. So whilst we still might not like it, at least we will have that worry out of our minds. And one day, if I am lucky enough to be a father, I will have a conversation with my children and say “Look, I don’t really want you to do it, but if you’re going to do it, make sure it’s safe.” Isn’t that pretty much what we’ve all heard from our parents at various times when we were growing up? Make good choices—that’s pretty much it, isn’t it?

💬 Simeon Brown: It simply just normalises it.

Look, make good choices—that’s the guts of it. One day you’re going to be an adult. You can do what Simeon Brown does as he squeaks over there and says—casting judgment. That’s what he’s doing. He is casting judgment on people. He’s got an opportunity now to bring in law that will save lives and help people, and instead he’s sitting there judging people. I refuse to do that. I commend this to the House.

Fa‘afetai lava, Madam Speaker. Thank you for the opportunity to speak on the Drug and Substance Checking Legislation Bill (No 2). I also acknowledge the member who spoke before me, Kieran McAnulty, and say yes, I agree, taking drugs is not good. I mean, being a clinician and seeing the harmful effects it has where I’m from in South Auckland—it is so dangerous that I’ve seen people lose their lives as well. Working at Middlemore Hospital’s emergency department (ED) and seeing the effects there and also seeing people come through our primary clinic doors as well.

This bill deals with the reality of drug use. We say that, obviously, in a utopian society we wouldn’t see people take drugs, but in reality they do. So this is one of the levers to minimise harm in order to protect our community, our whānau, and those who are taking drugs. As I said, being in a clinic setting, I remember seeing a couple of teenagers in school uniform come to the clinic in Manukau, and seeing that one friend was so concerned about her other friend who had taken some tablets but didn’t know what the actual drugs were—in an emergency setting trying to stabilise her friend, and her friend didn’t know what was taken. She had taken it from home. We rang the family; they didn’t know what was taken. So these are the types of scenarios where we really, definitely need to know what the patient has taken in order to provide treatment. Obviously, sent her to ED for them to do a drug test as well. That’s why this is one of the bills that I fully support in order to minimise harm.

When we talk about MDMA and the testing of that drug—ecstasy, molly, or pingers, as it is called—this is one of the things where some of the providers or the drug suppliers lace it with different things. One of the drugs that is so harmful is the eutylone, or the synthetic cathinones, as it’s also known as. The risk of seeing our young ones, whether it be with fast heart rates, seizures, collapsing in front of you, all these different harmful effects that, when we identify these drugs, we really need to make sure that this new system can be put in place in order to prevent and lower the risk of these issues occurring.

As I see with those who have fatally and tragically lost their lives here and overseas—especially, I point to Australia and what we’ve seen in their studies and evidence across the Tasman. It is so important that we learn from international studies, that we can bring this into the ongoing work that’s going on with the temporary Act, that we can roll this out smoothly, and that it carries on providing safety.

We’ve seen the numbers. We’ve heard the research, done by Victoria University, about the 68 percent that once they knew of the test results were able to get rid of it and change their minds. Also, the number of 87 percent, which I think is really pivotal in terms of getting tested and knowing and getting education; the 87 percent that had said that they have increased their understanding of the harm reduction for the drug they were about to take; and, also, the 53 percent from the study that said that their knowledge has substantially improved knowing the test result.

We look to the companies that provide the testing as well—this bill will help in terms of providing licences, provisionally, to make sure that there is some oversight and they can get their full licences after a period of time. This bill is one I would recommend and support because it does so much to minimise harm and also educate our community in drug taking, and that’s why I support this bill. Thank you.

There’s not a member of this House that wants to see our young people die as a consequence of using recreational illicit drugs. Twice in my work as a member of Parliament I have had the awful situation of working with parents trying to bring the bodies of their loved children back to New Zealand from different corners of the world where they have died as a consequence of experimenting with recreational drugs. It’s awful. For the record, one of them was at a music festival where the drug had been tested but still died. The emotion of seeing those young people returned and the funerals in my community was horrific. Other members have tried to characterise it that if anybody doesn’t agree with this bill, somehow they’re disconnected with young people. Well, I’ve got three of my children at Otago University. I’ve got another teenager. Don’t lecture me on what it is to be a parent and my love for my children.

The issue that we need to debate in this House is that by allowing for drug and substance testing are we sure that it is going to make it safer. Now, I was interested in the contribution from Dr Leavasa, and he said, “We need to look at the research from countries like Australia.” Well, I think Australia is a good comparison because culturally they’re actually pretty similar to us and I would say a lot more similar to us than maybe the Netherlands, which is the only other country that’s gone down this path, and I would say that there is a lot of cultural differences. Well, the University of New South Wales did an in-depth study of 392 deaths from recreational drug use. Three hundred and ninety two young Australian lives lost to illicit drug use. What that research showed is not one—zero—were caused by impurities in the ecstasy that they used; zero. So when I hear members from both the ACT Party and the Green Party and the Labour Party saying that we need to make decisions on a research base, saying that this is all about saving lives because of impurities, I challenge them, and say, “Show me the deaths from the impurities, because I can show you 392 deaths of people who have taken ecstasy.” So my worry with this bill is that we are going to be saying to young people, “It’s got no impurities, it’s pure ecstasy. It’s OK.”, when it is not.

Now, I can appreciate where the ACT Party comes from. They come from a civil libertarian perspective, and they say whatever individuals take in their body is their business. On the basis of that, you’d legalise heroin and cocaine and all those drugs. But here’s the problem with that philosophy: it’s not just the individual that’s affected when people take dangerous drugs. There’s, of course, an impact on the mental health system, and every constituency or other MP has seen that. There is impact on violence, on poverty, on workplace accidents.

💬 Chris Penk: On families.

My colleague says, “On families.”, and anybody in this House who knows families that have dealt with drug abuse and addiction is—man, it is tough, and I wouldn’t wish it upon my worst enemy.

Now, my second concern that the Parliament needs to be very open about with this bill, as compared with the bill we considered under urgency last December, is this: the word “festival” was used over and over again in the bill that was passed last December. We were assured this is all just about providing testing at those music festivals and concerts. Well, ‘ello, ‘ello, this bill provides no such limitation. We are talking about introducing drug testing right across the community. There’s a certain logic to it. If you truly believe that you’re going to make the music festival safer by enabling drug testing, well, the logical answer is that, well, you’d do it at the local nightclub, you’d do it at the local dairy. This bill provides for permanent drug-testing facilities in our communities. We need to be open that this permanent change in the law is taking things considerably further. My worry is that Parliament needs to learn the lessons.

I have a very different view to Chlöe Swarbrick about the experience of this Parliament in 2013. The Greens had long advocated a view that regulating dangerous substances was a better option than prohibiting them. I have never seen this Parliament do as fast a U-turn as what we did on trying to regulate psychoactive substances. Those members that are here representing those communities of South Auckland, I say go connect with your community organisations, your A & Es, and the like that had to deal with the scourge of recreational drugs when this Parliament was seduced into an argument of saying that liberalising and testing and regulating was a better option than prohibition. The Green Party argues that there was nothing wrong with that law. I say there was everything wrong with that law. It did not work. It was a disaster. It cost lives. Parliament needs to learn from history and from its mistakes.

I also have to note some kind of odd analogies that we heard from the Green Party and from Chlöe Swarbrick. In characterising the National Party as conservatives, she tried to run the argument that said, “Oh, well, the National Party would say it’s like sex. And the National Party, if they had their way, would ban sex, and just simply say no to young people.” Can I say to the Green Party, there’s a difference. You can have safe sex. There’s no safe way to use ecstasy. There’s a key difference. She then used the analogy, “Oh, this legislation is just like providing a seatbelt.” Well, I say that analogy is wrong too, because if the car’s unsafe it doesn’t matter whether you’re wearing a seatbelt or not; it doesn’t make it any safer. It is my view that ecstasy is unsafe, tested or untested.

I also want to take issue with those that are quoting some of the research in saying that, “Oh well, we did it and the research showed that it all works.” My colleagues have pointed out that the research that has been cited from Victoria University specifically said, “The sample was purposeful, focused, and non-random.” Well, what credibility would anybody from a science background give to a non-random survey? When I read that research it gave me the jeebies. You know why? It said that 90 percent of the participants said that after it was tested, they’d still use the drug.

Now, I have got absolutely no problem with the public funding, at music festivals and other places, for good information to tell young people the dangers of these illicit substances; absolutely right. But what you can’t do is claim that the only way you can provide that information at music festivals and other places is to also provide a drug-testing service. That is a flawed logic. There isn’t a member of this House that does not support better information for all people to make better informed choices.

The last point I want to make is there’s a perception that this bill is very mainstream. Well, the New York Times reported this week that we would be only the second country in the world to go down this path of providing testing for drugs that are illegal. This is quite radical legislation. At the select committee, I want to challenge the Government to be open and transparent. We do need to make an evidence basis. We know that further lives have been lost over the last year. My view is the clearer that this Parliament can be that drugs like ecstasy should not be used, the better and the stronger our message is.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. Thank you so much. It’s with pleasure that I stand this evening as the final speaker for the Drug and Substance Checking Legislation Bill (No 2). It’s always fun to have the last word.

But before I start with wrapping up what we’ve heard before us this evening, I have to first begin by standing in defence of my colleagues Dr Leavasa and Dr Sharma, who, I would like to point out, are doctors in name because they have clinical medical practices. Both have lived, clinical experience of treating people who have experienced drug overdoses and the side effects of taking MDMA that was not, so they are very familiar with the effect of this legislation and why we are standing here in support of it.

But, to wrap up, this bill allows drug and substance - checking services to operate with legal certainty, and the drugs we’re talking about are MDMA, cannabis, LSD, ketamine, magic mushrooms, amphetamines, methamphetamines, etc. [Interruption]

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jenny Salesa): Order! Order! We will hear this speech in silence, thank you very much, members on my left.

Thank you so much, Madam Speaker. So what we’re doing is testing to see whether the drug is fundamentally what the person thinks it is, and I’d like to start by just highlighting the fact that I think most of us agree on—yes, I hope we do—and that’s that no drug use is the safest option. So when we’re looking to see if the drug is what we think it is, it could be sugar—and when I say “we”, I beg the House’s pardon. I’m not referring to us here in this House. We could be looking at sugar, plaster of Paris, or ketamine being sold as MDMA or cocaine. It’s really—

💬 Simon Court: Oh, what a rip-off.

Yeah, it is a rip-off. Thank you, I do agree. It would be a rip-off. You would feel cheated, but wouldn’t you be fortunate if that were the only thing that you were experiencing, because what you don’t want is to be getting synthetic cathinones.

It’s really important when you’re doing this testing to give advice, because advice is resulting in information and harm reduction. Advice allows people to make informed decisions.

Then, of course, the other purpose of these testing stations is to safely dispose of the samples being tested and also of the drugs themselves, if they’re surrendered. Why do we do this? Not to put too fine a point on it, we do it because people die when they take contaminated drugs, and I do absolutely 100 percent agree that drug use is not a safe activity and not one that we want to encourage. In New South Wales, tragically, we saw that six young people died in 2018-19; in New Zealand, we’ve seen 13 young people hospitalised due to contaminated MDMA, and a Canadian study has shown that about a quarter of samples, they found, when tested were contaminated.

But if we’d like to look at the amazing work being done by KnowYourStuffNZ, looking at the years 2019-20, they tested 1,368 samples—according to their excellent website, which I’d like to refer you to for further information—and 86 percent were as expected, but not safe-use drugs. We’re not saying that drugs are safe here. Two percent of those were cathinones: n-ethylpentylone, which can cause death and mass hospitalisations. Two percent of them were mixtures. They also found high-dose mixtures, so they had two or more doses when only one was expected, and it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to work out that that’s not the best plan.

So when people are tested—and we’re looking at about 78 percent, I think, of people who are attending festivals who are planning to use drugs at those festivals. So it’s quite a few people, and, interestingly, only 4 percent of those would be first-time users. Testing resulted in 68 percent of them altering their behaviour. They were either taking less, declining to use the drugs, or deciding not to mix them. So this pragmatic piece of legislation substantially reduces harm.

Ninety-seven percent of people that attend festivals, and 97 percent of those that don’t, think that this legislation is a good idea. Medical personnel think that this law change is a good idea because they recognise that young people will take drugs even if they’re illegal. Festival organisers themselves have had far fewer serious incidents resulting from drug consumption.

But what I have to end with is the words of KnowYourStuff—which we would all agree with, I think—which are “that the safest option is always not to take the substance.” With that, I commend this bill to the House.

The question is,

Bill referred to the Health Committee.

Instruction to the Health Committee