Opponents vow to fight highs

Adult Selections stores owner Steve Batty, said there was lots to consider before he would even think about selling legal highs again.

Local councils which led a charge against legal highs last year are determined to fight back against their possible resurgence.

Shop owners will be able to apply for a licence to sell legal highs again from mid-this year, after the Psychoactive Substances Amendment Act, passed under urgency last May, removed all psychoactive products on the market.

But Associate Health Minister Peter Dunne said no legal high had been approved for sale in New Zealand, under a new testing regime which did not allow testing on animals.

Potential manufacturers would have to register with the Government, a process which was "up to two years away," before their products could pass the regime.

"We are probably three to five years away from any products being approved."

Napier Mayor Bill Dalton, a vocal opponent of legal highs who locked horns with Mr Dunne on their regulation last year, said Napier City Council was one of the first in the country to put restrictions on where the "dreadful stuff" could be sold.

The sale of the highs was limited to a small area in the CBD, which included Adult Selections on Dickens St, where the products were pulled from shelves last year.

He said the council would "vigorously oppose" anybody who applied to sell legal highs.

"If there's any way in the world we can keep them out of our city, we will. We will make it as difficult as possible for someone who is such a poor citizen as to sell this dreadful stuff to our young people."

Hastings Mayor Lawrence Yule said: "If we had our way, we would like to be able to ban them, but effectively we can only limit their location."

He said legal highs returning to the streets of Hastings "could be years away," due to the new testing regime in the act.

"The biggest test is whether the products are actually safe. Yes they can [apply for a licence] but they've actually got no products to sell."

Napier and Hastings Adult Selections stores owner Steve Batty, asked if he planned to apply for a licence to sell legal highs, said: "There's lots to consider before I even make an answer. The regime for testing hasn't been sorted yet."

Napier mother Chantelle Brown, who organised high-profile protests against legal highs last year, and whose son has been affected by the drugs, said: "There will be more protest action before they will get anywhere near the shelves.

"If the Government have no conscience of the effects of legal highs on communities, then they should go and give it to their own children and see how they like the effects on their own."