 Pja hiad, mahtantu tу iail aq? Keau Electric Ta'ta ni jere ta'ta ni, mahtantu te taitha pension mrdoo kapli kapli kapli kapli kapli ka première kapli that we seem to get. So thank you to the Star Trust. Thank you to Dr Ethan Nadelman. My neck is sore from the amount of head nodding I had during your speech this morning. It was fantastic. Thank you so much. Thank you also to James, of course, Detective Inspector Rob Dundam and Dr Brian Emerson for giving us an appraisal and a point of view of where current public policy is. And of course, welcome to all the thousands of people who are watching this live stream right now on thedailyblog.co.nz. Please tweet your questions if you have any right now to hashtag Pathway to Reform. That's hashtag Pathway to Reform. We'll put your questions to our panel right now. If you have questions, please put your hand up. I have a roving microphone person wandering around. Just quickly before we get to that, James, if I could just ask you firstly, how did you manage to pass the Psychoactive Substances Act, pass the more reactive political elements within Parliament? Oh, it's working. I think that's ultimately that's more of a political question, perhaps an illegal one, but I think one of the things you've got to understand about the act is that it does bring together a lot of different streams of thought around drug policy and one of those is that the act is quite right to say that it's a crackdown. It's taking control over the market. I mean, the reality of it is that, yes, it's a progressive measure, but at the same time, the act has probably banned more drugs than any other act in history. I mean, that's the reality of a pre-market prohibition. So I think a lot of it was also a recognition by Parliament that we've tried every other drug policy solution under the sun and none of them have actually worked. So this might not necessarily have sat that well with everyone, but it's better than everything else that we've tried and it might actually achieve the outcomes we're looking for. Detective Inspector Rob Dundam, critics will say that the police gain quite a lot of resources and power on the war on drugs. So I suppose my first question is, how serious are the police for reform on drugs and would the police like to see more regulation of alcohol? I'm not really here to discuss policy on drugs or alcohol, but as I stated in my presentation, it was really focused on the introduction of the Psychoactive Substances Act. A lot of these issues are going to play out across a whole lot of interested parties and including the community. And at the moment, everyone who's observing what's going on is seeing that. The police's view would be that that's probably a healthy thing given the subjects that are in front of them. And the police's core role still is around enforcement of the act and the reduction of harm and listening to and responding to the wider community around what the issues are. Do you think the act's working at the moment? I think given that it's only been in for eight or nine months, that's a pretty big ask to ask whether it's working or not. There's a lot, as I've said in my presentation, there's a lot of things going on. And things are changing rapidly and almost daily at times. So the act implementation is still in a shakedown phase and our enforcement focus is just in response to that. Dr. Brian Emerson, why hasn't harm minimisation managed to overcome the more punitive drives? Why do we like to punish people who use drugs? That's a long story to answer that, but I would say for a couple of perspectives. One, we've gone through 100 years of propaganda. Prohibition dates back over 100 years and it has been almost a mantra for that period of time. And people are having a hard time wrapping their head around a new way of doing things. It's a simple in terms of a government perspective, but a very ineffective way to respond to drugs is to prohibit them. And that's been the pattern for years and it has been shown to be not effective and in fact harmful. The second point is that, unfortunately, society likes to scapegoat. And it's easy to scapegoat people who are vulnerable and marginalised, who happen to be more visible in their drug use. And so what has happened is that the drug laws have actually been used to punish and segregate elements of society because they're easier to target. And so it's a whole different approach to actually recognise that drug use is a society-wide issue and to shift to a society-wide solution instead of a targeted solution to vulnerable groups. After we can start taking questions from the floor. Microphone over this away please. Is that on, is it? Yeah, kia ora, by the way. Great presentations, all of you, thank you. A question probably directed both at James and Robb and probably ultimately Robb. On a long paper, the regulations around public health surveillance and minimising harms looks reasonably solid. And in fact, I think there have been 11 retractions of licences, Robb, not six, I think another five happened in January this year. So that's clearly working quite well. But I'm just wondering how viable you see, particularly with the police where you're looking at engaging with people who are experiencing problems through perhaps retail access. The group that I see as most vulnerable in New Zealand are people with mental health disorders. And I'm just wondering the extent to which, and there's quite a lot of evidence around that, I'm just wondering the extent to which you think you're going to be able to engage with retailers to really minimise the harm for that as an example of a particularly vulnerable population. Yeah, it's certainly a critical issue and one that we're seeing currently with some of the activities around the retail sector. I think there is an opportunity as the regulations for the act of being discussed at the moment with public submissions and Ministry of Health going to have a look at those and then make some decisions around regulation. There may be some opportunity to have a look at some drivers of those issues as well. So things like availability and which obviously people are coming to a retail outlet for a purchase. And at the moment there's no regulations around that particular side. I think the other side of that equation is that the discussions, the platform we've set at the moment in terms of the amount of times we actually visit retailers, the conversations we're having with them, trying to reinforce also aspects around how do they manage people who are coming and sharing information about people who they have concerns about so they can actually be passed on to other people who could provide some assistance. There's a number of avenues there that can and probably are already being pursued to some degree. James, how are we going to... Have you seen the harms drop? Yeah, harms in relation to overall... Negative events, negative events of consumption. Like, I know the police deal a lot with violence, aggravation, that sort of thing in particular. I wouldn't have information on that, I couldn't tell you. All I wanted to add is, and I don't have a direct sort of easy answer to this, but one of the real challenges I think the authority and the expert committee are going to face when determining where the products are low risk, are those issues where the product is low risk or posed as no more than a low risk of harm for 99.9% of consumers and there's a 1% of consumers for whom the product isn't absolute no-no. I mean, and by way of example, I mean, I'm mildly allergic to peanuts, but I don't expect that the government's ever going to be banning peanuts because I get sick of eating too many. And there is that kind of challenge. I mean, how do you work out low risk when people's reactions to substances will be very different? And I don't have an answer for that, but I do think it's something that will need to be thought worked for very carefully probably over the next six to eight months. Dr Brian, isn't how are we going to protect those more vulnerable sections of the community? That's a very good point. And I'll be speaking this afternoon about a broader public health approach because regulation doesn't cover everything. And there are a whole range of other elements. I mean, critical is having an adequate health and social service structure for those. Another critical aspect is dealing with the determinants of health, poverty, homelessness, early childhood, trauma and violence, which predispose people to use substances for not to cope with those stresses. So key to reducing the harm to those vulnerable groups is those wraparound types of services that's upstream public health and preventive services. Regulation isn't the complete answer. It's a key cornerstone, but it's not the only element. We'll take another question from the floor, our microphone person, quite a bit. Yes, hello. I'm curious about the possible regulation of use for people under the age of 18. I'm the parent of three teenagers right now, and I can say in the United States that the prohibition against alcohol used by minors is completely ineffective. And 23 out of the 50 states have laws where parents can introduce alcohol to their children. And I'm wondering if you might see an evolution here in New Zealand or in Canada or elsewhere where we return the use to minors to the families rather than completely prohibit it by the government. Who wants that? I mean, at the moment, in terms of the act, it's much like, I imagine it is in the States, there's an absolute prohibition on providing or selling or even possessing psychoactive substances that are under the age of 18. I mean, realistically, obviously in an ideal world, you would be able to sit down and assess the risk of each substance to each individual and then decide whether the substance should be provided to each individual on a case-by-case basis. I mean, that's not actually practical, so there's always going to be a level of abstraction there. I mean, I do wonder about whether in the long run, we might look at reassessing that 18 barrier, but I would not hold my breath in the current climate, to be honest. Anyone else? Thanks for the question. I think the key thing to recognize is what is it that's illegal? It's not the use that's illegal. I don't know if use is illegal in the States, but in Canada, possession is illegal. So, the question is, are you really focusing on making sale to young people illegal, but under a regulatory model, you could have a situation where provision to young people by parents is not illegal. And that's an important one, I think, to raise and keep in mind, because certainly part of the cultural upbringing and parental upbringing of kids is how do you talk to them as adults to bring them into that adult age? That something doesn't magically happen at age 18, so it's definitely an area for consideration because one of the most protective factors in terms of problematic substance use is the interaction of the parents and children with regards to how they're brought up, and that whatever it's, whether it's sex or drugs or rock and roll, that factor needs to be allowed in terms of the natural upbringing of children, so I think that's a great point. Next question from the floor. Where's our microphone, Bang? Thank you. My question is addressed principally to Dr Emerson, but I'd welcome replies from other speakers. Can I begin by making two remarks? One is to congratulate the organisers and all the speakers. It's a great event. It's very, very important, and it's not just important for New Zealand. This is really internationally a very important event. Second comment I wanted to make is that my name is Dr Alex Wade, and I'm president of the Australian Drug Law Reform Foundation. My question is really about the most dangerous drug that many of us use. Can I go to the mic? Australia's got a mixed record in terms of responses to alcohol drugs. There's some very important innovations, and we've lacked those for a number of years. About 30 years ago, we started to have regular production of every few years of responsible guidelines for responsible drinking, and these were always based on a comprehensive review of the scientific evidence about the risks of alcohol. And the question is, now that we're starting to move, albeit slowly, towards a regulatory approach for other psychoactive substances, could we start to try and encourage the production of scientifically based guidelines for responsible drug taking? How to minimise the risks? Accepting, acknowledging, recognising that other psychoactive drug use is going to occur. Some of that will cause some harms, but always trying to minimise the health, social and economic cost of those harms. Some colleagues that I'm associated with and I produced guidelines for responsible cannabis use in Australia a few years ago, it's hard to get that out given the overall legal framework on cannabis in Australia, which is prohibited in all jurisdictions. But I wonder, sir, whether you would think that that would be something that we should be encouraging as we move towards, albeit slowly, a more regulatory environment for all psychoactive substances. Right. Very good point. And I think that goes with one of the assumptions that I said about a sort of a public health approach, is that we will continue, humans have used drugs for eons, we'll continue to use a wide range of drugs, and in that I'm including alcohol and tobacco. And the reality is, how do you do that with the minimum of harms? Certainly the low risk drinking guidelines, Canada has promulgated low risk drinking guidelines, there has been a set of low risk cannabis use guidelines also produced, and I could see that the natural extension of that is low risk guidelines for opioids, amphetamines, whatever the drug is that's going to be regulated, that's actually one of the key elements. I mentioned one of the points of informed consent, the informed consumer, part of being an informed consumer is having access to low risk, whatever drug use guidelines. That's a key plank. All I might add there is that it seems reasonable to me anyway that in an environment where we've got approved products where the regulatory authority holds a huge amount of clinical information about the risk profile of those products, it does seem sensible to me that it will be pretty straightforward to produce some guidelines around responsible use of those products in those contexts where you know exactly what the product is and you've got a huge amount of data about what it does and how it poses risks. Next question from the floor. Maybe I could just add one more point on that too. I think the key thing that producing those types of guidelines do is it gets away from the notion that because a product has been approved by the government, it's safe. In fact, having such things as low risk guidelines actually says these are not safe, they have a risk and here's how you can avoid that risk. That's a key part of that discussion as well. We've got some questions through for the tweets. Yes, indeed. Yes, we do. We have a few coming through. This question from Matt asks, Brian, is it realistic that other countries, for example, Canada, will adopt policies like the New Zealand Act and how would it be modified to fit? I would say that I think it's very realistic because of what's happening around the world. I sort of liken it to the Berlin Wall coming down. We've started to see bits and pieces of the Berlin Wall coming down, the Berlin Wall of Prohibition. And once that started, it came crumbling down in a rapid succession and I would see, for example, specific to Canada, we are developing a regulated cannabis industry. Now, it's restricted to cannabis for medical purposes, but the structure of the Act and how the regulated market is being established could easily be a platform for a regulated market for all of cannabis production. So, I think this is quite likely a start of a big change. People watching live on stream right now can tweet their questions, hashtag pathway to reform. Any other, you've got anything else? Floor, to the floor? Right over here. We'll take two more, those two in front of there. This is directed at Rob, really, only. Are you, say, do you don't want to, you're not here to debate why the drug policy issues? And that's right. I don't think it's the role of police to debate these kinds of issues. They are there to enforce the law, not to contribute to making it. And there are unfortunate examples in the community where they actively do affect this, such as a program called Drug Bust on TV and things like that. But my question is, you said on one of your slides that you look at both sides of the debate and that you look at the consequences or something to the effect of your enforcement activities. In the wider drug policy area, not talking about legal highs, do you also do that? Do you, does national police headquarters look at wider issues that, for example, the ones raised very spectacularly by Ethan Nadelman? Do you, is the police aware of these issues, that this is actually a controversial area? I'm only asking you, as a matter of fact, do you discuss these issues or is it just prohibition or nothing? I think the police are aware of wider issues because we sit in the middle of this in terms of enforcement and the law. So we need to be cognisant of the debate that's going on. But at the end of the day, there's a law and it needs enforcing and that's really our primary role, which we will do, but we are quite prepared to listen to people and where that fits into what the purpose of the law was and in this respect, you know, reducing harm to people, then that's important to us. And, you know, we try and work in that area to achieve that just like everybody else does. Do you think it's working? The current, the current law, I mean, I'm just looking at some stats here from just, I'm just looking at some stats here from just speak that show that young people prosecuted for drugs, doubled between 1994 to 2011. Is that a drug policy that's working? In terms of the psychoactive substances that I've already said, I think it's far too early to say anything in terms of whether things are working or not. And it's not really the police's position to say whether it is or not anyway, as I've been reiterating all the time, you know, we have a primary role and that's really what our purpose is. And I'm sure that ongoing debate and into the future, a lot of those sort of questions will emerge further and there'll be answers to them. Sure. Front-hand, yeah. Yeah, there's at least two ways, there's probably more ways, but there's at least two ways I can think of that the industry can employ science to help reduce harm and help enforcement. That's one issue is the issue of antidotes like receptor-specific antagonists. Very often with a little bit more research work, an analogue of an approved substance can be found to be a very active specific antagonist, basically an antidote to a substance. So in the case that you do overdose or you do take too much or you do push yourself to the limits of usage, the industry can provide an antidote for many of the substances. It doesn't require that much work and that's a very useful tool in harm reduction. And also for, say, ligand-specific immunoassays, you can find yourself in a situation where a substance, a product, has great success and then organized crime, look at it and say, oh, let's package some of our junk that way and then you get like fake Viagra, you get a fake product, which it's got all the documentation because it has been approved at the expense of the manufacturer and then it's circulating and spreading harm and making a bad name for the product. That can be combated with a ligand-specific immunoassay that you can develop pretty quickly, but I don't see the act giving points to manufacturers that provide these solutions to enforcement or to harm reduction. Have you considered those things? Is the science outstripping the regulation? Yeah, that's pretty much why we've got the act. That's a short answer. Look, I think one of the challenges that is going to come up for the expert committee and I should emphasize I'm not the expert committee, I'm a private citizen, but that will come up for them is, as you say, there's a lot of other factors that go into assessing the risk profile of a product other than, other than its physical characteristics. As you say, the availability of antidotes, how it's packaged, those kinds of issues are all things that I think, anyway, I think the committee should take into account, particularly in terms of counterfeiting. This has already been a bit of an issue in New Zealand and I think one of the solutions to that, probably in the long run, will be a much more robust system of packaging, so packages will have batch numbers, they'll have tamper-evidence seals, they'll have holographic, et cetera, et cetera. Now obviously that's never going to completely remove the capacity for counterfeiting. There's always going to be people up there who will open packages and restuff them and reseal them, but the harder it is, the less likely it's going to happen. We have to wrap it there, ladies and gentlemen. We have lunch on the way and I know how much we all want to eat that amazing food out there. Please put your hands together to thank our panel, James Gunn, particular inspector Rob Gunn and Dr Brian Emerson.