A critical analysis of New Zealand's Psychoactive Substances Act 2013 and its implementation process : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Public Health at Massey University, Albany, New Zealand

Listed in 2017 Dean's List of Exceptional ThesesIntroduction: In July 2013, the New Zealand Parliament passed the Psychoactive Substances Act (PSA), the world’s first law to regulate the availability of new psychoactive substances (NPS, “legal highs”, LH). Under the “interim PSA regime” 47 products were permitted to be sold subject to new retail and other regulations. In May 2014, the Government abruptly ended the interim regime following public protests. This thesis aims to critically evaluate the PSA and its implementation. Methods: A mixed methods approach combined qualitative and quantitative methods of data collection and analysis. Legal analysis of the PSA and related legislation, and content analysis of parliamentary debates and public submissions were completed. Semi-structured interviews were then conducted with key informants (KI) including politicians, government officials, health professionals, and LH industry actors (n=30). Questions about health perceptions and social acceptability of approved products were added to an annual survey of police arrestees (n=834). Analyses of primary data included thematic analysis of interview transcripts and statistical analysis of data from the arrestee survey. Results: The legal definition of “psychoactive substance” (s. 8, 9(1) PSA) overlaps with other regulatory regimes (e.g. medicines, dietary supplements) resulting in an unclear legal status for some products. Interviewed KIs identified a number of issues with the “interim regime”, including the safety of interim products, speed and efficiency of withdrawing problem products, the lack of regulations on price and retail opening hours, slowness of developing regulations for the full PSA regime, and the effectiveness of communicating the new policy to stakeholders and the public. As the market commercialised, the LH industry adopted business and lobbying strategies previously attributed to the alcohol and tobacco sectors, including targeting vulnerable customers. Surveyed police arrestees considered approved synthetic cannabis (SC) products higher health risk and less socially acceptable than alcohol, tobacco and many illegal drugs, reflecting problems with interim product approvals. The ban on animal testing of prospective products is likely to prevent further implementation of the PSA, unless a new political consensus is achieved. Conclusions: The issues experienced during PSA implementation highlight the significant challenges of establishing a legal market for psychoactive products. The time, resources and planning required to successfully implement the PSA may have been underestimated

Referendum Campaigns in Hybrid Media Systems: Insights From the New Zealand Cannabis Legalisation Referendum

During New Zealand’s 2020 cannabis legalisation referendum, advocacy groups on both sides widely debated the issue, utilising "older" and "newer" media channels to strategically influence voters, including through appearances in traditional media and paid advertising campaigns on Facebook. Comparatively little is known about the campaign strategies used by each camp and how they leveraged the hybrid media environment to advocate for their positions. We analyse the cannabis legalisation referendum campaigns using primary data from our digital ethnographic study on Facebook, a systematic quantitative content analysis of legacy media websites, and a review of published reports from other authors. We show how positive sentiment towards cannabis law reform in the traditional media was amplified via referendum campaigners’ activity on Facebook. While campaign expenses on both sides were similar, money was spent in different ways and via different mediums. The pro-legalisation campaign focused more on new digital media channels, while the anti-legalisation campaign diversified across a range of mediums, with greater attention paid to traditional political advertising strategies, such as leaflets and billboards. The New Zealand case study illustrates how greater engagement with the "newer" media logics may not necessarily secure a favourable outcome during a national referendum campaign. We discuss how the broader media and political environment may have influenced campaigners' choices to engage (or not) with the different media channels

Practitioner Rehabilitation following Professional Misconduct: A Common Practice Now in Need of a Theory?

Theories of rehabilitation have long been articulated in health and criminal justice contexts, driving rehabilitation practices in each area. In this article, several prominent theories are described to illustrate how their core assumptions aim to facilitate recovery and reduce relapse or reoffending. Professional disciplinary bodies are also often compelled by law or regulation to attend to practitioners’ rehabilitation after professional misconduct, with similar aims to restore the practitioner to safe practice. Yet, no rehabilitation theory has been articulated in this context despite professional rehabilitation being distinct from other settings. We propose that the current absence of a coherent theory is problematic, leaving professional disciplinary bodies to ‘borrow’ assumptions from elsewhere. Since rehabilitation penalties are frequently made by professional disciplinary bodies, we review several theories from health and justice contexts and highlight elements that may be useful in developing professional misconduct rehabilitation theory. This includes proposing methodological approaches for empirical research to progress this

Assessing options for cannabis law reform : a Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) with stakeholders in New Zealand

Background: A number of jurisdictions are considering or implementing different options for cannabis law reform, including New Zealand. Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) helps facilitate the resolution of complex policy decisions by breaking them down into key criteria and drawing on the combined knowledge of experts from various backgrounds.Aims: To rank cannabis law reform options by facilitating expert stakeholders to express preferences for projected reform outcomes using MCDA.Methods: A group of cannabis policy experts projected the outcomes of eight cannabis policy options (i.e., prohibition, decriminalization, social clubs, government monopoly, not-for-profit trusts, strict regulation, light regulation, and unrestricted market) based on five criteria (i.e., health and social harm, illegal market size, arrests, tax income, treatment services). A facilitated workshop of 42 key national stakeholders expressed preferences for different reform outcomes and doing so generated relative weights for each criterion and level. The resulting weights were then used to rank the eight policy options.Results: The relative weighting of the criteria were: "reducing health and social harm " (46%), "reducing arrests " (31%), "reducing the illegal market " (13%), "expanding treatment " (8%) and "earning tax " (2%). The top ranked reform options were: "government monopoly " (81%), "not-for-profit " (73%) and "strict market regulation " (65%). These three received higher scores due to their projected lower impact on health and social harm, medium reduction in arrests, and medium reduction in the illegal market. The "lightly regulated market " option scored lower largely due its projected greater increase in health and social harm. "Prohibition " ranked lowest due to its lack of impact on reducing the number of arrests or size of the illegal market.Conclusion: Strictly regulated legal market options were ranked higher than both the current prohibition, and alternatively, more lightly regulated legal market options, as they were projected to minimize health and social harms while substantially reducing arrests and the illegal market