 We came to Auckland, New Zealand to film about the law introduced recently by the government to regulate the market of new psychoactive substances. This is the hemp store, one of the few retail outlets that get government license to sell these products in small amount to adults. This is the hemp store and we have become the first store in the world to have a license to retail psychoactive products. The license lets us sell approved psychoactive products at the moment we're in an interim period where about 40 products have interim approvals. Over the next couple of years they must do a really comprehensive testing program modeled on that for pharmaceuticals to prove that their substance is a low risk and then they'll be given permanent licenses. The products that are approved under our psychoactive substances act are all synthetic cannabinoids. Here we have all the different ones that are available, the flavour and the price and the weight. This is the active ingredient and we've grouped them by active so like these three products all use PB225F for example, these three products all use AB Fubanaka. We have the strengths as well so you know well this is a more mild one, this is the strongest one, that one's in the middle. So these are one milligram tablets of SGT42, they're actually quite strong, you wouldn't want to have more than one I don't think. Star Trust, an Auckland based NGO, invited us to a conference that local and international experts discuss New Zealand's regulation of new drugs. Why is it that the use of new psychoactive substances is so important in New Zealand? New Zealand is definitely off the traditional trade routes for illicit drugs so New Zealanders have had to innovate when it comes to seeking altered states of consciousness that's one of the reasons why cannabis is so popular in New Zealand. New Zealand's rate of using cannabis is pretty much the same as Australia and America which are generally ranked as the top three countries in the world at using cannabis but our arrest rate is the highest of the lot. So per head of population the New Zealand police actually arrest 50% more than America which is astounding and we still can't believe that but it's true and if there's a legal alternative of synthetic cannabis a lot of people decide well I'm just gonna do that so I don't get arrested. The use of legal highs began to increase in New Zealand at the end of the 90s much earlier than in Europe. A few days after the government banned the substance a new drug would appear on the market. In 2013 the government realizing that prohibition doesn't work passed the law that places the burden of proof on drug distributors to provide evidence that their product poses a low risk to public house. Can you explain us how the act regulates manufacturing? So at the very top if you're a manufacturer of these products you need a license you need to comply with a brand new code of manufacturing which is very very strict sets a standard similar to the pharmaceutical industry and those products need to be approved by an independent scientific committee before you can get that license. It's actually the most regulated industry and out of anything in the country. At a retail level there's certain rules that everyone has to follow such as it's limited to adults only that's defined as people over 18 no advertising we can't get out there and promote it we can't try and talk people into taking it it's compulsory that any adverse effects are reported we can't hide them or pretend they didn't happen you have to have the active ingredient on the packet you have to have the manufacturer's details on the packet there's a warning a health warning that goes on it there's contact number for the national poison center in case people are having problems and they need some help or advice how do you make sure that the rules of this new regulation are enforced for example age limits we conduct um what's called controlled purchase operations we also do this for alcohol so we will go into a retail outlet with a with a young person who will attempt to make a purchase and see whether they're complying with the act or not what about money how much how much money this this this market generates yeah the ministry of health did an assessment of the value of the industry about a year ago and they assessed it at around 30 million dollars kiwi per annum in terms of turnover at the moment the government haven't made a decision in terms of some kind of excise duty on this industry but what they have done is I've set some licensing fees that are incredibly high to give an example if you want to apply for a license to produce or manufacture a product the application is 180 000 dollars new zealand that's quite a lot of money and then of course the testing regime that you have to go through to validate your low risk claim is probably one to two million dollars on top we have some reports saying that this new uh synthetic cannabinoids are more risky or more dangerous than the the plant itself what do you think about that I think the reports do conclude that synthetic cannabis does potentially have more harmful impacts than natural but the one thing we need to remember is that in the history of cannabis consumption in New Zealand synthetic or natural there has never ever been a fatality the average consumer in New Zealand of this type of product is a 35 year old male married with two children holding down a regular job now that's not a statistic you'll read in the newspapers here but that is the truth of it this industry currently turns out about 10 000 packets a day so in terms of the harms if you look at statistically we're less than 0.001 percent of the consumers actually have a medical challenge with these products which is certainly less than the 1 percent of the population that have potential for a negative psychotic reaction to any kind of psychoactive whether that's coffee energy drink or something else this is quite possibly the best drug law in the world its main problem is that it's limited to novel psychoactive substances we think that all low risk substances should be allowed to be applied for to be part of this regime and that would include cannabis the beauty about amending the psychoactive substances act is we don't even need to talk about cannabis we just need to take out this one line that says anything in the misuses drugs act can't be applied for we just take out that one line and then it's up to us to gather the evidence that shows cannabis is low risk this is a very new act it is eight months old it is far too early now to say whether it's whether it will work but all the evidence is good they've taken the number of outlets from three to four thousand to a hundred and fifty now there are far fewer outlets but now we know where they are now they're accountable now we know they have to comply with the law similarly with products there were somewhere in the region the ministry of health thinks of two to three hundred no one really knew what was in them we didn't have control and now under the psychoactive substance is that every approved product you can go on the website you can look it up you can see what's in it so you know exactly what you're getting we do envisage so that in the future there will not only be synthetic cannabinoid products there will be analogues of ecstasy there will be psychedelics there will be energizer you know and fetamine type things that there will be all sorts of ones but that the key is that they're all going to be low risk it's a very brave and great initiative on the path to regulation and it's kind of foot in the door and it's absolutely obvious to anyone all of us who've looked at the course of prohibition over 50 years it's a disastrous failure and the only sensible route forward is strict regulation what is the lesson learned from this policy to other countries well i think the first thing to learn is do watch what we're doing i mean it's very early days yet and we're still learning as we go because we're the first country to do it but i think the other lesson is there is a solution here there is a way through we think we found it and we think that what we've done is new and different and we think that it will work so if you're if you're having trouble with new psychoactives pay close attention to what we're doing in New Zealand in April 2014 a few months before the national elections under pressure from the tabloid media and the vocal minority who opposed the new law the government decided to remove currently approved legal highs from sale until they can be proven to be low risk supporters of the law say this was an unwise move which will lead to the stockpiling and black market sale of these substances it is now up to the next government to decide the fate of the psychoactive substances act