2011 Australia 60 minutes’ Liz Hayes came to New Zealand to compare what we were doing with the failed war on drug efforts in Australia. This was my 3rd 60 minutes.
To be honest when they asked if I was comfortable I was getting really uncomfortable. I disliked the idea of smoking products, disagreed with the way the products were being sold in every corner store, and wrestled with the idea of being a figurehead for an industry talking about qualty control when most players had no idea what it was, but our intelligence was that there were compounds on the market overseas which were lethal and by doing what we were doing with some toxiciological evaluation and pre-market human trials we were preventing products coming to our country which would kill people.
Unfortunately, the politicians were still banning products here every time there was a bit of adverse media and it was getting really difficult to develop new compounds and safety test them fast enough, and near impossible to control the market.
It turned out in the end that we were right, when we were eventually put out of business and black market took over in New Zealand we did see many tragic deaths from a dangerous drug that came in from overseas exactly as I had predicted.