Green MP Chloe Swarbrick’s medicinal cannabis bill has failed at its first reading

The bill lost 47 votes to 73, with both every National and NZ First MP voting against it.

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Swarbrick told media that National would lose votes over the decision, because 78 per cent of Kiwis agreed with the premise of her bill.

While Labour and NZ First allowed MPs to vote with their conscience on the issue, National stood as a party against the bill.

Party leader Bill English said on Tuesday a small number of MPs would be granted special dispensation to vote for the bill, but in the end none did.

Chris Bishop, who had told media he would support the bill as later as Wednesday morning, ended up voting against it.

After the vote he told media that he had decided during Wednesday that he was actually against the bill, and said no MPs had pressured him to make this decision.

It’s understood there was some ill feeling within the party towards those who gained the special dispensation to cross the floor.

In contrast to a significantly more conservative Government bill which was progressed to select committee on Tuesday night, this bill would have allowed the terminally ill and debilitated to legally grow cannabis if prescribed it by their doctor.

The Government’s bill went so far as to set up a scheme to allow cannabis-based medicinal products and provide a criminal defence for anyone terminally ill charged with possession of marijuana.

Of the 46 Labour MPs in Parliament 38 voted for the bill, along with every Green Party MP and ACT leader David Seymour.

“What’s been demonstrated in the House today is that it’s not a House of Representatives,” Swarbrick said.

“78 percent of New Zealanders agree with the premise of my bill, it was voted down today by quite a majority, so the National Party has really proved itself to be quite conservative on that.”

“I’m really gutted, because there are thousands of people out there who will now be criminals for at least the next two years.”

Swarbrick said she believed National would have lost plenty of votes tonight.

“I think National definitely lost a few votes tonight, I think they showed their true colours.”

Auckland Central National MP Nikki Kaye announced she would vote against the bill, despite rumours she was one of the members who had been granted special dispensation.

Kaye said she was “the most conflicted she has ever been” on the issue, but would not cross the floor for a bill that was still likely to fail.

As she finished someone in the public gallery yelled “it’s not your husband dying”.

As the Government bill only provided support for the terminally ill, people like 14-year-old Grace Yeats who has a rare brain illness, could still be criminalised.

Yeats’ family currently buys Sativex, one of the rare cannabis-based medicines available, at the steep cost of $1100 month.

The Sativex helps with pain and seizures and has even allowed her to regain her voice.

“We have to fund through fundraising and begging through GiveALittle which is not really sustainable. We’ve got enough for … six months left,” Grace’s mother Tracey Yeats said.

The pair were at a picnic in support of the bill on Parliament’s lawn on Wednesday ahead of the vote that evening.

“People’s qualities of life can be really hugely enhanced by a simple medication that should be available to everyone,” Tracey Yeats said.

“[Grace] has regained her speech. She hadn’t spoken for a couple of years since her brain injury. She is using her hands a lot better to navigate her iPad to back herself up when she can’t get the words up verbally.

"I can’t deny her that medicine now. I know it works.”

Swarbrick hoped that by getting her bill to select committee more evidence could be heard on the issue and parts of it could be worked into the Government bill.

Medicinal Cannabis Awareness coordinator Shane Le Brun said it was very important that people with debilitative illnesses were allowed access to cheaper cannabis products.

“The real question is whether is it is acceptable for the police to be busting quadriplegics, triple amputees, wheelchair-bound MS patients - because those are all things police have done in the last year,” Le Brun said.

He had reservations about how far Swarbrick’s bill went but wanted to see it into Select Committee, as he thought it would be much easier to “downgrade” Swarbrick’s bill than “upgrade” the Government’s one.

National’s health spokesman Jonathan Coleman voted against the bill and said it was “deeply flawed.”

“I know this is not the member’s intent, but this will be de facto decriminalisation,” Coleman said.

The former doctor said he had worked with a lot of patients with chronic pain and it was very hard to disprove any type of pain.

“Pain is one of the most difficult areas of medicine to get to the bottom of, to manage, and to treat. But it is also something that is very hard to disprove,” Coleman said.

Labour MP Greg O'Connor, a former police union boss, said he opposed the bill as it would lead to teenagers having more access to cannabis.

“Passing a bill that permits unregulated cultivation of cannabis with the medical profession as gatekeepers represents an absolutely wasted opportunity to learn the lessons from those other jurisdictions,” O'Connor said.

“This will lead to a situation where through the legal ability to grow cannabis the state will lose absolute control over any ability to regulate it.”

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Source: stuff.co.nz/