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.
Ross Meurant: The case for decriminalisation.
