 Ba, what's happening close to home, what's happening across the ditch? Well I would like to introduce you to my colleague, you feel like a pair of mine, someone who I've had the opportunity to work closely with over the last few years, someone who I've got a lot of respect for who's fighting a pretty tough battle in Australia where there's different things happening in different states. It's a very challenging market over there Maid like to ask for an update please, from Fiona Padden. Thank you very much. Q Make your wear related items for the viewers, realised that maybe this morning I went out and saw this morning I went out to examine my take on a new year for a New Zealand T-shirt because I thought that's what I'd wear today but you guys were cool to have two shirts like that here. storyline Ethan I don't think I'm going to be talking about any particularly good news coming out of Australia, I'm going to start a campaign to see if New Zealand will adopt us Rrengata, mae un せーリ instagram Landmark MakBA, Gweincia Padais a pwais serai shorda ma Ran Aungledu tte-nakau Dar Neg exact nupis Aungledu ā turu Rai Aungledu Mac Nahan Lech YeaiSA Anged Sister in between, and a new sense of association, which was born from the adult industry, so we represent the adult stores. And now, we represent tobac χ νس, and some of the other sort of stores, the happy herb types of stores that supply these new emerging psycho-actives. I also have the pleasure to be the leader of a very new political party called the Australian sex party, We ran on a sex drugs and rock and roll kind of platform, very much drug law reform and obviously joined with other drug law reform parties. I mean Greg Chipp here is from the drug law reform party, we had a number of parties and there's a lot of reformers in there. We've got Dr Alex Wodak here in the audience as well who has been on the forefront of pushing for logical, sensible, evidence driven reform. Unfortunately that's not where Australia seems to go. We don't follow evidence, we follow tabloids and we have done that. So with adults starting to sell these products in the mid 2000s I suppose and this was interesting. I mean I blame the internet, we blame the internet for everything in Australia or whatever it might be. But it was when the internet started eating in on the porn market. So the adult stores were looking for other products to supply and they went for the fake viagra's for a while. They even did fireworks for a while and that was fantastic. Canva was like the porn and pyrotechnic capital of Australia. Unfortunately we banned fireworks shortly after that. Talk about a nanny state. So we saw this decline and also interesting, I mean tobacconus was seeing a decline because lo and behold that regulated drug was in decline. So they were looking for alternative products to stock. But in 2011 the prohibition laws began on these emerging substances. Interestingly it wasn't from our usual prohibitionists. We didn't have the good reverend Fred Nile and the good reverends and the good prohibitionists out there campaigning for this. It was the mining companies. The mining boom has a lot to answer for in Australia and some of it is the introduction of these laws. It was the mining companies that were saying, you know what, our workers are trying these substances. Because we have such heavy testing for marijuana that it means that someone on a seven day on seven day off shift, if they have a joint during their seven days off it'll show up on their test, on their workplace testing and they won't be able to work and will have and will fire them. So a lot of those employees were using the new alternatives to not to work high but to be able to enjoy another form of relaxation through these products and not get fired for it when they went back to work seven, four or five days later. But the mining council said, no this is too hard, we can't have this. So in some bizarre illogical way they said, can you please ban these so we can regulate it better? Because if they're illegal then we can regulate them better. I have no idea how this works and they also said and we can use it in our enforcement the way we enforce alcohol. Hello, alcohol is legal and which is why we can regulate it. So this flawed logic has continued on and WA West Australia was the first to go down this path. Mainly because the mining companies told them to. The WA government is practically owned by the mining companies. They then went down this path, we need a national approach in Australia. We didn't have a kind of a body for this in Australia so they turned to the therapeutic goods administration which manages our medicines. They said but it's not therapeutic and we said well we weren't actually making that claim and maybe they are but nonetheless it's not therapeutic so we're going to ban it because it's not therapeutic. We're certainly completely the wrong way. So in the past three years we've had over 30 laws introduced into Australia, state and federal. But still every day in every state these substances are being sold. So these laws have not worked nor will they work. Even went so far as to ban names. So some bright fair trading minister went I know how we're going to stop this. We're just going to ban the name. You keep selling chronic but we're going to ban chronic. You can't sell anything called chronic. Look I don't know if anyone from his office is in here but guess what? We actually took the packaging off with that name and we put another packet on it with a different name. So now they're going to go for even broader legislation. Queensland got the ball rolling. They said if a product is chemically similar to a banned product or it's pharmacologically similar to a banned product or it's intended to be or if you're pretending to intend that this product might be good and might have some fun consequences then it's banned. So to overcome any evidentiary difficulties they just said look if you took that bit of Damiana because you thought it was going to make you feel good well then it's illegal for you to take that being possession of that Damiana. They did also in this process of doing the chemical structure they also banned the products that we use to make cheese. They also banned avocado and echinacea is now a dangerous drug in Queensland. The Queensland members of parliament were very sensible in their approach to this. They said well if it walks like a duck then it's a drug obviously. This did actually backfire when they raided one of our members' stores and seized the very dangerous Himalayan pink salt. They seized quite a quantity of it. They subsequently returned it with $40,000 with the compensation as well. New South Wales then went down. I just read today actually the New South Wales Government not only are we going to ban all these things we are going to name and shame anyone found selling these substances. So they said okay if it's got a significant psychoactive effect it's banned unless it's alcohol. So we're not quite sure what that means about a significant psychoactive effect. We know that it's not alcohol so we're still selling various products in there. Again they went through this notion of also analogs of any product, any banned substance. So they actually banned a large number of the plants growing in Parliament House. So the whole garden around New South Wales Parliament is actually a dangerous drug which may explain some of the decisions they've been making. They did do an inquiry into this. They had 21 submissions, 18 said don't prohibit it, it won't work. You need to regulate. So they ignored all of those of course. So now they've actually banned our national flower the wattle in New South Wales. Victoria, I'll be quite quick on this one. Victoria was the last state and we just had that go through a few weeks ago they thought they'd knocked it on the head. I'm not a chemist so they brought in a whole bunch of stuff I didn't understand about hydrogen atoms and two rings. Have you changed more than two rings or up to two rings? Anyway, I understand that the first product that bypasses that legislation will be out next week. So there was a bit of a run on actual marijuana in Victoria for a week or so while we brought into the new substances. So none of these have worked. Over 30 laws. What's really interesting in this is over 30 laws and it was interesting listening to the New Zealand police. They've had 13 convictions. Well, we haven't. We haven't had any. I correct myself there. We have had some convictions. But only when people plead guilty. When we've had people defending their cases, there's been certain cases, I think it was a case last year where the police had to quietly return 100 kilos of a product. Other cases where they've just been thrown out of court. So 30 laws, three years, banning everything from cheese. Oh, that's the other good point of Victoria. They banned tobacco. And we wrote to them and said, you know you've banned tobacco. And they said, yeah, we do. But it won't matter. Because that doesn't count. It's not like the drug law would over... The Drugs Act would override something like the Food Act or the Tobacco Act. We've had a different opinion on that. And they said, and I think it's up there on that letter, but I'll just see if I've got it here. He goes on to say that it's intended to capture dangerous drugs, not tobacco. And drugs that are not yet listed as a drug of dependence. A drug of dependence, well, not tobacco. And that may be listed in the future. I actually foresee a time when tobacco is listed as a dangerous drug. I think I may even see that in my lifetime. But obviously not to the Minister. So we've done all of this. Our laws aren't working. We're terribly jealous of New Zealand. You know, they're coming from Australia and I don't say that very lightly. But in the meantime, the industry has taken it into its own hands. So we've got this grey industry. And we've introduced what we like to call grey regulation. We have introduced a hologram system. So when a product comes onto the market, the Eros Association gets the lab reports. We can confirm that those lab reports are true. We can confirm that the product is what it says it is. And we can put a sticker on that. We've worked with the police on this. They are in favour of this. It has enabled us to recall products when we had an incident where there was a couple of hospitalisations from a product. We were able to recall that product immediately and put a note out. When the law changed in Victoria, again, we were able to recall those products. Now, I'm a constant optimist, which is probably why I'm standing here today. But now that we've banned cheese, tobacco, avocados... I mean, we've even banned our fucking national flower. Why am I still an optimist? When I see what we're happening here, I see that we're creating... We will continue in a grey market. I come from the porn industry. Porn is illegal in Australia. We sell 13 million of the films every year. And we pay tax. And if I'm really, really optimistic, I hope that one day I will be one of the first politicians to be able to say in Australia, I inhaled and I really enjoyed it. Thank you. Well, well, well, there it is. Yeah, tobacco killed 4,000 people in his own last year. Yeah, amazing. Cannabis was zero. And the year before that, zero.