HOLY MOTHERFUCKING SHIT!
*Ahem* I mean...
I'm not surprised by the speed at which products have been approved- I am STAGGERED by the speed at which products have received interim approval!!
To be completely honest I was incredibly cynical about this whole idea- I thought it was a elegant way to forever ban all 'legal highs' by 'allowing' them, but making the criterion for legality being so prohibitive that everything was deemed to be unfit to be legally sold.
My biggest hope is that some of the older, weaker-by-weight synthcans like jwh-018 & jwh-073 (that were still incredibly strong, but not 5mg-overdose strong) make a comeback. If people absolutely insist on smoking synthcans from observation/limited experience jwh-018/073 were by far the most similar to natural cannabis but also seemed to cause far fewer problems than with the newer AM/PB/SGT series and so on.
Have searched the internet for a proper list of chemicals that have been approved but haven't turned up anything. I might give the Ministry a call and see if they can give me any info & I'll see if I can report back.
I also wonder if we might see the emergence of a New Zealand based RC manufacturing sector- a New Zealand based company would operate at far higher standards than 95% of the Chinese/Indian labs that are the source for most of this stuff and would be able to provide a level of quality assurance (as well as you having legal recourse when dealing with a legitimate NZ-based company if things do go sour)- as far as I can see, even in countries where RCs are largely legal (for instance Poland has a large RC industry) are various vendors operate legally/are registered companies/pay tax/etc most of them have to deal with grey-to-black operators in the market- many of the Chinese manufacturers will be violating various Chinese laws, even if what they are making/selling is legal. Because New Zealand has decided to try to regulate this market (kinda like how we legalised prostitution- which has worked very well and I was sceptical about that too) it's not a grey area, an NZ-based JWH manufacturer would be obliged to abide by the Consumer Guarantees Act as well as proper Labelling Laws for instance.
I do find it quite ironic that a of now- on an interim basis- the sale of full agonist cannabinoids is legal while the possession/cultivation/sale of the original, partial agonist THC remains illegal. No stranger than the original analogue laws that created this whole situation I suppose.
I watch on with keen interest....