 Thank you everybody for coming along this evening. It certainly is a great privilege to come here. It wasn't that far to come from Auckland, really. And of course it was such a privilege to have Peter and his colleagues from the Hungarian Civil Liberties Union come to Auckland this year. In fact I see Peter quite a lot. He was in Switzerland just a few weeks ago doing some very good things so you guys are on the map. Anyway, the Psychoactive Substances Act is the first ever attempt by any government anywhere in the world to regulate drugs. The traditional approach of course has been based on the prohibition model that we've all been enduring for the last 50 years and one of course which you guys are very familiar with here in Hungary. The Star Trust is a non-profit NGO that was established in New Zealand and is subsequent to this act becoming law. So we're quite a new organisation but we've been involved in lobbing the government for many many many years. Personally I have been involved in this industry for almost 20 years now. And the reason is because as you saw in the video, New Zealand is a country where we've had to either grow or manufacture our own drugs. And the reality of course is that we acknowledge that people have always desired altered states of consciousness. It's a very normal thing. And prohibition has actually made that desire very challenging and criminalised people unnecessarily. The turning point for our country was this. Firstly, we've had to deal with the challenge of novel psychoactives longer than anyone else in the world because of the fact that we're off the traditional drug routes. And what happened when the government was banning these products as I know you have been doing in Hungary is that the next product that came out would be more dangerous and potentially more harmful than the previous one. And then of course the government would ban that and then we end up with another product. And there was a game, it was like a cat and mouse game where the result for the public was much worse. When I'm talking with the government officials and the prohibitionists I always start from one place that we all agree on. We all agree that we want to improve public health outcomes. That's our goal. We want to make things better for the public. How do we do that? Where we have a debate and an argument is around how do we achieve that strategically? We believe that the government should take control of these products and strictly regulate them and that this is the way to guarantee better public health outcomes. The traditional way of banning has been proven not to work. The tipping point in New Zealand and the reason why we were the first to regulate is because in 2011 we had the New Zealand Law Commission do a special review of our Misuse of Drugs Act and it was the first review we'd had in 20 years and what they discovered was that it wasn't fit for purpose. Maybe in the 1970s and 80s it was effective when there was only maybe one new drug coming onto the market every few years but the reality today is that we have new drug coming on the market every day and the Misuse of Drug Act wasn't working. So that was number one. The second thing that we had that was very important in 2011, the same year, was the Global Commission on Drug Policy. Have you guys heard of this organisation? It's a very high-powered organisation with some world leaders who sit on that body including Ruth Dreyfus, the ex-president of Switzerland that I had got to meet last week and they also recommended that we must look at innovative solutions to deal with the realities of contemporary drug use especially in the internet age. The reality is today is that people everywhere in the world can purchase their drugs with a click of a mouse. How can the government control that? They can't even keep drugs out of prisons. They got no chance of keeping drugs out of people's homes if they truly want access to them. So the Star Trust supported by this research from the New Zealand Law Commission and the Global Commission on Drug Policy advocated very strongly to the politicians that we needed to regulate, tax and educate the public about safe use. So our position was based on harm minimisation and education. Now this of course meant that some people were going to push back against us but the government when they were presented with all of the expert evidence when they listened to the scientists and they took a vote on regulation we had a vote of 119 MPs to just one. Just one MP voted against this and last year he was charged with fraud. So he was not a very good MP, right? So we had broad cross-party support when the central government saw all of the evidence and listened to the experts and this is what we would ask of the new Hungarian government. We would call upon them to please listen to the experts and trust the scientists. And that's a very difficult thing when it comes to drug policy because this is the only area of policy where the journalists typically have more power and influence than the scientists. Would you, is that the situation here in Hungary? I think so, probably is. So the Act was voted into power on July 18th, 2013. Last year it's a very new Act and when I look back now, almost a year later I think it's pretty obvious to me that some of the government officials did not understand what they were really doing in terms of opening this up. But we've opened it up and now other countries around the world are looking at New Zealand and wondering if maybe, maybe regulation is a better option than prohibition and maybe this could deliver better public health outcomes as all of the experts tell us it should do. Now, unfortunately, we have an election in New Zealand in two months and it looks like it's going to be a very close election. And so what is happening now is we're seeing some pushback in order for some of the politicians to get extra profile. They will play on public fears and they are now pulling back their support of this Act and saying that maybe this was a mistake and they've inflamed some negative media messages that have caused the government to get nervous and so they have temporarily cancelled this interim period and withdrawn all products that were currently on the market. That was a very sad day for us and this only happened just last week. However, we still have an Act and we believe that when the election is over we will be back on track and by about the middle to the late next year we should have a full Act in place and a testing regime with clear guidelines on how to validate a low risk claim and we know that there are manufacturers ready to go to have their products tested and approved and then sold through the strictly regulated retail channel. So we still believe that this Act will deliver on the promise of creating better health outcomes and take that market off the black market because currently in New Zealand when the government have cancelled that interim period essentially the market still exists and this marketplace wasn't 30 million dollars which is what we thought it was I was telling Peter earlier the figure, the actual figures and it's only a country of 4 million people over the last 12 months while we were in this semi-regulated market there was 140 million dollars of business done much much more. The government are taxing that business at 30% so there's some pretty good revenue there and even the most conservative politicians the hardcore anti-drugs campaigners still love to make money all right and here in Hungary we would say the same thing surely it's a better option to regulate this marketplace and tax it and then educate the public about how to safely use these products in a very disciplined way take that industry off the black market and take control of it this is the only way forward so it's our hope and I really hope that our presence here today is inspiring to you because I think Hungary is in a very difficult position I think that you have some big challenges here and yet I know that there's some very good people in this country doing some very good things not just the Hungarian Civil Liberties Union and we would encourage you to look at what we're doing and take confidence from that and be encouraged and trust the experts trust the scientists not the journalists not even the politicians trust the scientists and listen to what they have to say look at the evidence and then try gently gradually to change the policy so that it's more evidence based and that is the only way for us to improve public health outcomes and ultimately it's a human rights issue that's our belief thank you very much for your time this evening and I look forward to answering questions when we have the panel very shortly thank you very much