A Queenstown Lakes company hopes its suspended licences for trading in synthetic drugs will be reinstated.
The Ministry of Health's new Psychoactive Substances Regulatory Authority last week suspended seven interim licences issued to B and K Healtheries Ltd for importing, manufacturing, selling and researching psychoactive substances. The company had also gained product approval for its product marketed as ''Kush Pink''.
Authority manager Dr Donald Hannah said the licences were suspended because of the authority having ''encountering difficulties in obtaining further information from the applicant in order to be satisfied that the Act is being complied with''.
Dr Hannah would not disclose what additional information it had requested from the company, but B and K Healtheries spokesman David Bridgman said it was ''just procedural stuff'' and there was ''no big drama involved'' in the suspension.
Mr Bridgman said there had been some initial communication delays regarding the request for more information as B and K Healtheries had not received a letter sent by the ministry and had problems with its phones, which prevented the ministry making contact.
However, the information had now been provided by the company within the ministry's prescribed deadline.
''We've responded to their questions in what we believe is a very positive manner. I think there was some misunderstandings involved from their end and we're now waiting for them to go through the response that we gave and come back to us.
''There's lots and lots of things to get it organised and proper and straight up and down and that's the process that the guys [involved in the company] are going through right now.''
The suspension required B and K Healtheries to immediately stop trading in psychoactive substances or products and inform all wholesalers and retailers who had been distributed Kush Pink to do the same while the issues were being resolved.
However, there was no product on the market at the time of the suspension notification, Mr Bridgman said.
B and K Healtheries is still registered to a Wanaka address where former company director Kasey McMahon previously lived. Ms McMahon recently resigned as the sole director and was replaced by Jason Mark.
Mr Mark was a security consultant living in Queenstown at present, while the licence applicant, Michael Forsyth, was an offshore fisherman based in Nelson, Mr Bridgman said.
All three were previously involved in selling Kush Pink, before the ministry's new legislation came into force.
The Wanaka property, on State Highway 6, would remain the company's registered address while the application process was under way, but mail was being forwarded to its Queenstown post box, Mr Bridgman said.
If the licences were approved, he did not yet know where the company would manufacture its products.
''It could be in Wanaka. It could be wherever we end up when the process is sorted.''
Dr Hannah said the authority did not discuss the potential future status of individual licences that had been suspended.
For any suspension to be reinstated the authority would need to be satisfied the information supplied by an applicant met the requirements of the Act, he said.
