Yesterday’s post was about a Cosmic Corner brand of fake cannabis. Back in July 2011, Juicy Puff was suddenly ordered off the shelves by the government and temporarily removed from sale after it was found to be contaminated with phenazepam.
Here’s what Associate Minister of Health Peter Dunne had to say at the time. (Emphasis mine.)
DRUG REFORM ON THE WAY
Associate Minister Peter Dunne today said finding phenazepam in a second product within a week reinforced the problem of suppliers being able to put unregulated drugs on the market.
“The people in this industry are generally not trustworthy or reliable,” he said.
“They are fast-buck merchants who, on the one hand claim to be offering a legal and safe alternative to illicit drugs, then throw their hands in the air and say they do not know what is in their products when our testing catches them out.
“They cannot have it both ways.”
Dunne said restrictions that would curb the marketing and advertising of synthetic cannabis products were just weeks away, and would be made through amendments to the Misuse of Drugs Act.
“In the longer term the solution we are looking at is reversing the onus of proof and making the manufacturers and suppliers prove their products are safe before they get anywhere near the market.
Currently, authorities have to prove such products were unsafe before they could be taken off the market. “We are doing that successfully, but it is not an ideal process. It is cart before horse and the restrictions that will come in the next few weeks are an important step in addressing these issues.”
The following month, in August 2011, Parliament voted to pass the Misuse of Drugs Amendment Act (No 2) 2011. This amendment enabled Peter Dunne to start issuing temporary drug bans called Temporary Class Drug Notices.
Remember how Peter Dunne sold us the follow-up Psychoactive Substances Act?
Here‘s what he told the United Nations Commission on Narcotic Drugs when he took the world stage in Vienna, Austria earlier in 2013. (Emphasis mine.)
While we have placed more than 30 synthetic cannabis-like substances under temporary bans, but we are aware that there are potentially hundreds more that could replace them.
Last month, the New Zealand Government introduced new legislation into our Parliament that will end the game of catch-up once and for all.
We are going to reverse the onus of proof so the manufacturers of these products have to prove they are safe before they can bring them on to the market.
He said the same thing in 2012. It’s what he’s said all along, time and again. In his capacity as a Cabinet minister. On behalf of the New Zealand government. (Emphasis mine. Click the banner below for the official statement from the Beehive.)
As promised, we are reversing the onus of proof. If they cannot prove that a product is safe, then it is not going anywhere near the marketplace
None of these products will come to market if they have not been proven safe.
I think I’ve said enough to establish beyond reasonable doubt that Peter Dunne, the National government’s Associate Minister of Health, promised us this on behalf of the current National government.
Would you feel happy purchasing and consuming a product that had been proven safe? Many of you will answer, yes. What reason do you have to think the products now on the market are safe? Well, none of the products now on the market would be on the market if they hadn’t been proven safe, right? The National government promised us that that simply wouldn’t happen.
But the government has broken its promise. None of the products now on the market have been proven safe. None of the products now on the market has been tested. They are only now being tested. On you, the consumer. And some of the products the government approved for sale have since been proven unsafe.
Is it morally right to test untested drugs on people after promising them that they’ve already been tested and proven safe? Is it morally right to test untested drugs on people after first having obtained their misinformed consent? It’s certainly not legal.
Here’s Section 10 of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act 1990.
Right not to be subjected to medical or scientific experimentation
Every person has the right not to be subjected to medical or scientific experimentation without that person’s consent.
The National government is in breach of the Act. Someone should take these conscienceless psychopaths to court. They’re criminally insane.
What’s the damage? Kidney failure is the damage. A government approved product called Kryptonite has caused some test subjects to experience
Kryptonite: Kidney failure, hallucinations, vomiting, chest pains.
This according to the Dominion Post.
Back when it was still on the official records, and approved for sale from approved outlets, this is what the MoH told us about Kryptonite.
Product name Psychoactive substance(s) Quantity Company name Physical address Status Interim product approval number Kryptonite Red SGT-7 25mg per gram Lightyears Ahead Limited Unit 4/24, Airborne Road, Albany, Auckland Under consideration P0058 Kryptonite Green SGT-19 40mg per gram Lightyears Ahead Limited Unit 4/24, Airborne Road, Albany, Auckland Under consideration P0059
What are SGT-7 and SGT-19? The Ministry of Health has never told us, and neither have the manufacturers or suppliers, even though Section 58 the Psychoactive Substances Act says
Restrictions and requirements relating to labelling of approved products
…
(2) A label for an approved product must include the following information in a prominent position on the label:
(a) a list of the active ingredients of the product and the appropriate quantity of each active ingredient;
But the Ministry of Health has let slip (here) that SGT-7 is
ADB-CHICA
and SGT-19 is
4-fluoro-AM2201
So now you know. No, wait …
You’ve never previously heard of ADB-CHICA or 4-fluoro-AM2201, right? Well, neither have I, and neither has Google. We still don’t know WTF-7 and WTF-19 they are.
Suppose that someone other than the manufacturers and the Ministry of Obfuscation knew the chemical identities (structures) of these substances? Could they have reasonably guessed that they would cause serious adverse effects such as kidney failure? Well, it’s reasonable to think so. Indeed, I sounded the alarm here a few months ago.
The compound on the left is AB-005 which has interim approval. The compound on the right is XLR-11 which was banned as from 13 July 2012 by Peter Dunne. They are structurally similar. They are analogues.
The problem here is that XLR-11 has been linked to acute kidney injury in some users. Now the Ministry of “Health” has seen fit to approve an analogue of a suspected kidney toxin for human use. But it’s legal so it must be safe, right? Yeah right.
But it turns out there’s a problem in my reasoning. You see, we can take an educated guess that analogues of known nephrotoxins are quite likely unsafe. But we don’t know which structural similarities count. Some wise heads in the online drug-using community have suggested that the culprit is not the backbone of the XLR-11 molecule (i.e., the ring structures) but the fluoropentyl side-chain. And there’s at least three products with interim approval that contain a fluoropentyl side-chain, viz., 5F-PB-22, (S)-N-(1-amino-3, 3dimethyl-1-oxobutan-2-yl)-1-(5-fluoropentyl-1H-indole-3-carboxamide and 1-(5-fluoropentyl)-3-(4-fluoro-1-naphthoyl)indole.
However, in the event it’s none of the suspects above that have so far caused kidney failure in some users. It’s one or both of ADB-CHICA or 4-fluoro-AM2201. And what this means is that we cannot make a reasonable educated guess as to which synthetic cannabinoids are possible nephrotoxins. They’re all suspect.
The National government is conducting medical experiments on New Zealand citizens without their informed consent. Really, they’re only one step away from the Tuskagee syphilis experiment and two steps away from the Nazi human experimentation of Josef Mengele.
Never again!
The National government is criminally insane. And must be stopped.
Alcohol….. Liver failure….. What Game are you playing here Richard??????
Have you lost your marbles????
What’s this ‘Safety’ you claim to exist???
Libertarianism is not about any of this…. You’ve become a Nanny Statist.
As for claims to Kidney failure….etc where are you getting your ‘Facts’???…. From the Prohibitionist ‘Media’?
You are being a Bloody hypocrite.
Tim.
The government is using its own citizens as subjects in dangerous medical experiments without their informed consent.
The government is lying to us.
As a libertarian, that concerns me enough to speak out.
This according to the Dominion Post.
Where else would I get my facts? The same place the Prohibitionist media got them? From the government, via an OIA request?!
Why won’t the government reveal the identities of the psychoactive substances it has approved under the Psychoactive Substances Act?
Please listen again to my plea for BLTC. Note the distinction I make between three main kinds of drug-related harms.
The government is inflicting new harms on its citizens. The Nanny is poisoning the children it has forcibly adopted and whose welfare it has entrusted on their behalf to its care.
Government doesn’t rightly have the authority that it presumes to have in the Psychoactive Substances Act. Therefore the Act is wrong.
Should we do (or support) wrong that good may result?
I’m ginna have to write a Blogpost on this one to rebut you Richard.
You are wrong on so many levels and what gets me the most is that you seem to have bought into the political ‘craziness’ of many of your ALCP friends that the way to get Pot legalised (ie for your own vested interest)….is to castigate and persecute the …. ‘artificial legal highs’.
You are now working for the Man.
My blogpost will be based upon Free market principles, self responsibility, and the argument that there are no toxic substances… only toxic amounts…. and i will be challenging your notion that it is the states duty to insure that all products that are consumed by people are ‘Safe’.
That is just one of several important blog posts I feel obliged to do even though I don’t really have time to do them justice.
Another one is on what has happened to Alan Titford…. not an easy subject… one that involves some personal insights and experiences.
I’ve been giving the artificial legal highs some pretty good reviews recently. 😉
Tim, it is NOT my notion that it is the state’s duty to ensure that products consumed by people are “safe”.
What I’m saying is that IF the state takes upon itself the duty to ensure that products consumed by people are “safe”, THEN it ought to fulfil its self-imposed duty instead of deceiving people into thinking that it already has.
I think that the government should have NO involvement in the recreational drugs industry.
I’ll leave out trying to define whether or not this blog post is libertarian!
But there are some points that need correcting:
Contrary to what you wrote, none of the products granted interim licenses are claiming to have been “proven safe”. No one is saying that. And the products remaining on sale are not “Government approved”.
What they did do was grant *Interim Licenses* to approximately 25% of the products on sale at the time the Psychoactive Substances Act was enacted. They recognised that if they immediately banned all products until all the tests were done and proper licenses eventually granted, that would be a de facto prohibition which was not the intent of the law. This shows foresight and an understanding of drug markets that we have not been accustomed to seeing in our officials and politicians, and is something we should be congratulating them for.
You also emphasise a risk of kidney damage from the active in Kryptonite but did not mention that the MOH took their license away months ago when they became aware of issues with that active. (http://www.health.govt.nz/our-work/regulation-health-and-disability-system/psychoactive-substances/interim-product-approvals#refused)
By all means push the argument that “cannabis is safer”, it’s something everyone can agree with, but we should avoid demonising or castigating other drugs so we can get *our* drug legalised.
Regards
Chris
Chris, thanks for your comments.
True. But they have come to market. Despite the fact that Peter Dunne, in an officlal statement from the Beehive, said
I’m concerned that he might have misled some people.
If the products remaining on sale are not government approved, why are they listed on an official government website under the bolded heading Interim product approvals? I say the products remaining on sale are government approved.
I say that is absolutely the intent of the law. New Zealand reached peak prohibition in July 2013.
Foresight? What terrible things did the government imagine would happen if they simply continued with the regime of Temporary Class Drug Notices? None of the products remaining on sale would have been subject to Temporary Class Drug Notices, since under the Misuse of Drugs Amendment Act (No 2) 2011 the Minister of Health is authorised to temporarily ban a substance only if he has reason to believe that the substance poses, or may pose, a risk of harm to individuals, or to society. None of the substances remaining on sale poses more than a low risk of harm …
… except those that do.
I didn’t mention it explicitly, no. But I implied that the product was no longer licenesed when I said
The point is that Kryptonite was, at one time, approved for sale from approved outlets. It was only *after* some poor fuck’s kidneys packed up that the approval was revoked.
Even the Prohibitionists now agree! 🙂
Absolutely.
CLR Rule #1: Don’t diss other people’s drugs
Please note that I’m not calling on the government to ban anything at all. I’m a libertarian! But I am calling on the government to stop approving things. Just as, from a libetarian perspective, the government has no business banning things, so, too, from a libertarian perspective, the government has no business approving things either!
I fully realise that with the way the world is heading we’re stuck with a regulatory model (in New Zealand’s case, tacked on to, rather than replacing, a pre-existing prohibition model) but couldn’t the government just stick to mandating health warnings on the packaging similar to the health warnings that must by law appear on cigarette packets? You know, something like
or, perhaps
accompanied by graphic images of teenagers on dialysis machines?
This is what the synthetics did to ordinary New Zealanders. 🙁
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TyxGSXZJy5s