• Oppose the decriminalisation of cannabis and any liberalisation of other drug laws.
• Regularly review the classification of drugs to ensure that they accurately reflect their health, behavioural and social effects, and only allow them to move upwards into more serious classes of drugs.
• Ensure that laws dealing with new drugs are fast tracked in response to changes in drug culture, informed by the experience of police.
• Introduce tougher penalties for all drug dealing, including cannabis, and make it an aggravating factor in sentencing for those found guilty of dealing to young people.
• Raise penalties for receiving income from the proceeds of drugs, and introduce legislation that allows for the confiscation of the proceeds of crime for all gangs and criminal organisations with the onus of proof of lawfully acquired wealth shifted onto the suspect.
• Enact legislation that make drug dealers an accomplice to any crime committed by their 'customers', where the activities of those customers are related to their drug use and where the link can be reasonably established.
• Allow police to drug test all offenders, including young offenders, and make it mandatory for all young people testing positive to be referred to treatment programmes.
• Ensure that all who are apprehended for possession or use of drugs for the first time are required to undergo treatment, whether they receive a custodial sentence or not.
• Introduce specialist drug courts to allow treatment options to be incorporated into sentencing, combined with the use of further sanctions for continued abuse of drugs and other re-offending.
• Remove being under the influence of drugs or alcohol while committing a crime as a mitigating factor in sentencing.
• Deny home detention for drug dealers.
• Require prisoners to undergo full toxicology testing on admission to prison to establish the level of drug use and provide them with a clean start through targeted detection, deterrence, treatment and education programmes.
• Crack down on the level of drug use in prisons with the aim of making all prisons 'clean'. The Department of Corrections will be funded to ensure that it can continue to provide a comprehensive programme for the elimination of drug use within all prisons and youth correction facilities, reporting progress annually on its achievements.
• Ensure that re-integration services for prison inmates upon release include mandatory drug-testing and drug treatment options.
• Ensure that Customs are sufficiently funded to stop the importation of drugs.
• Crack down on sales of alcohol to minors by increasing police resources to enforce underage drinking laws, introducing stronger penalties for supply, and a change to the law to require retailers to check age ID by law.
• Increase the age at which liquor may be purchased from off-licensed premises to twenty.
• Institute a zero blood alcohol level for all drivers under the age of 25
• Compulsory testing for drugs of drivers involved in accidents causing injury.
• Toughen penalties for driving while disqualified or without a licence, alcohol or drug-impaired driving, and driving at excessive speeds.
• Allow police to test drivers for drug use in the same way that they presently test for alcohol use.
• Establish legal guidelines for drug-testing in workplaces, schools and other environments, and encourage comprehensive employee assistance programmes in return for reduced ACC levies, to ensure there are no barriers to implementing testing.
• Ban advertising promoting illicit drug use or accessories.
• Introduce a Restricted Substances Act that would regulate the sale and use of party pills and other substances such as nitrous oxide and solvents that also have legitimate uses.
• Undertake thorough research into the relationship between the level of drug use and all other crime.
• Require all coroners to drug test all suicide victims to help determine the relationship between drug use and suicide.

• Boost funding for drug treatment programmes, and ensure that residential treatment centres are available and properly funded in each region.
• Review the use and availability of methadone with the intention of reducing methadone reliance.
• Place greater emphasis on increased funding and co-ordination between alcohol and drug services and mental health services to ensure appropriate, accurate assessment with correctly directed treatment.
• Require the Ministry of Health to undertake research to establish the relative cost effectiveness of existing treatments, including day treatment, residential treatment programmes and other options, with the clear objective of achieving recovery for drug dependency rather than just maintaining it.
• Research and establish the annual cost to our health system of drug use.
• Fund research into the physical and social consequences of the use of party pills and other 'legal highs'.
• Ensure that tax revenues from the sale of legal drugs - alcohol and tobacco - are directly channelled into programmes to address drug abuse and cover the terrible cost to both our health system and to our families.
• Investigate the role of alcohol and other drugs in youth suicide and other forms of self-harm.

• Support public education campaigns that highlight the negative health effects of smoking, alcohol and substance abuse.
• Establish a separate subject called 'Life Skills', with a curriculum that includes a segment devoted to drug education.
• Require education programmes dealing with risk-taking behaviour in adolescence, such as drug use, to present abstinence as a genuine option, rather than the current focus on 'harm minimisation' that does not respect the ability of our children to make sensible decisions, and is often in conflict with the law.
• Work with schools to ensure that they remain drug-free by promoting treatment options in conjunction with punishment for drug offences.
• Ensure that schools implement tough anti-drug policies programmes in consultation with the police and other agencies such as DARE and Life Education Trust.

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