Misuse of Drugs (Classification of BZP) Amendment Bill

First Reading, Tuesday 11 September 2007; 4.30pm

Hone Harawira, Member of Parliament for Te Tai Tokerau

Kia ora Madam Assistant Speaker.

I had better start off by saying that the Maori Party will support this Misuse of Drugs (Classification of BZP) Amendment Bill going forward to a select committee, but I have to say that I am absolutely amazed at the hypocrisy of the people in this place, the alcoholics and the……

[I Withdraw and apologise]

I struggle to understand how this House can talk about the problems of benzylpiperazine (BZP) when there is clearly no research on the long term effects of BZP on the population, but there are truckloads of research on the long-term adverse effects of alcohol and cigarettes.

So here we are pontificating and prattling on about BZP and we do not have the courage to do anything about alcohol.

Look I know how many people die every year from cigarettes – more than four and a half thousand New Zealanders - and here we are talking about the possibility that at some point in the future, somebody may die from BZP.

We know for a fact how many New Zealanders die every single year from cigarettes: four thousand, seven hundred people – and what is the difference?

Is it because we are getting a billion dollars in tax? Is that the reason why we are not going to do anything about cigarettes?

We know that alcohol probably kills more and we do nothing about that.

We sit in here and say, “we’ve got a couple of legal drugs. We’ve got cigarettes and alcohol and we know what damage they are doing to our society, but we are going to crush BZP”.

Madam Speaker, I struggle to understand where on earth we get the ethics that enable us to go bang, bang, bang on BZP.

I apologise if I am not quite like everybody else - I don’t drink alcohol; I don’t do drugs and I don’t do cigarettes, so I am obviously not like a whole lot of others in this House.

One of the reasons I do not do a lot of that stuff is because I can't go around talking to rangatahi about problems that are caused by these kinds of substances and be an alcoholic on the side. Kids pick it up pretty quickly.

That is why I admire the stance that Nandor takes, because at least when he’s talking about drugs, he believes in what he is talking about. I do not personally believe in them, but that is my position.

My position is that if we are going to do it to one substance, let us do it to the lot. Let us have the courage to say to one another, “Yes BZP may be a problem” – in fact there is no research to prove that there is, certainly no long term research because it has not been around long enough, but there is long-term research to prove that cigarettes and alcohol are killing people.

I heard one of the previous speakers talk about how we don’t want to use our kids as experimental rats in a laboratory. Yet we allow the alcohol companies to sell these little bottles of alcopop.

I heard about the speaker talk about all of these colourful and cartoon-type wrappings. That is exactly what alcopop is all about – those little six packs that can be bought of that slightly pop soda kind of alcohol; it is just alcohol in disguise for kids.

What do we do about that?

We jump up and down and we huff and we puff and we splutter and carry on, and do nothing about it.

Along comes BZP and all of sudden out comes the big hammer.

I am amazed at the ‘mmmmmmmmmm’ – is there a better word that that, that I can use, Madam Speaker?

[interjection from the floor – double standard? Two-faced?]

The House has problems in separating out something that has just popped up.

Yes I heard the Minister prattling on and asking if he was a killjoy. Hell yes, he is a killjoy. Of course he is a killjoy.

It is OK for older people – people of our age – to drink alcohol and kill people on the roads, but we dare young people to take BZP when we do not even know if it is going to hurt them. How do we know it is going to hurt them? How do we know?

No research has been done on the long term use of BZP – I heard the Minister say so, and I have heard other speakers say so.

The research is only short term because BZP has been around only a little while.

But here we are, happily banging the kids on the head and trying to tell them they cannot have it, but heck, we can.

What is this when we can speak in such terms about drugs of any nature? I am really amazed.

Madam Speaker, I heard the Minister about a moderate risk of harm – that it had been determined that BZP has a moderate risk of harm.

We happen to know that alcohol has a high risk of harm and that cigarettes have a high risk of harm, and what do we do to make them illegal, apart from nothing?

Yet here we are, we are banging on BZP because it has a moderate risk of harm.

Of course this is a kill-joy legislation. Here we are.

We are happy to allow the high risk of harm products to continue to be sold legally in this country, and then we are going to come along and go smash on a product with a moderate risk of harm.

And no those products are not all the same because we know that alcohol and cigarettes have a high risk of harm to any New Zealander who consumes them.

We know from this Social Tonic crowd or whoever it is who has done the research that BZP has a moderate risk of harm.

The product we are banging on about, is the one with the moderate risks, the high risk stuff gets away with everything. Everything is all lined up: fines, periodic detention, jail and everything else. The result is that people are going to get smacked over if they do BZP but they can keep on drinking as much alcohol as they bloody like.

People become knighted if you become a baron in the liquor industry. But if someone tries to do something that might introduce a moderate risk of harm he or she will go to jail.

Madam Speaker, I am sorry for getting my speech probably all back to front but I could not just stand here and listen to all that kind of stuff that has been said.

I have to say that at the end of the day, that if BZP has a high risk of harm, I would say yes, let’s do something about it. But we are talking about banging on a moderate risk substance and allowing two absolutely clearly high risk of harm products to continue to be sold legally in this country. There is something seriously wrong with this House.

Thank you Madam Speaker. Kia ora tatou katoa.

Ends

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