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The Detail, Emile Donovan speaks to Mitchell, and to Mark Honeychurch from the Society for Science-based Healthcare, about the lax regulations and enforcement of natural medications in New Zealand. Our rules around medications and supplements is a matter of language. If you re selling a product which claims to have a therapeutic purpose - as in, something that will cure or correct an ailment - it falls under the Medicines Act of 1981, and must meet stringent requirements. In order to sell a pill which you say nullifies headaches, you have to prove it does, in fact, nullify headaches. However, if you re hawking a supplement which you claim is an innovative combination of ingredients which can boost the body s ability to stave off common ailments and reduce the likelihood of headaches, regulation is much thinner on the ground.
Fallen politician Jami-Lee Ross has turned his hand to selling "health" supplements with dubious benefits. It's an industry that's thinly regulated and barely policed.
Company records show Ross founded a company called Praesidium Life late last year with Michael Kelly, an Auckland-based naturopathy entrepreneur. Kelly is also chairman of Advance NZ, the political party Ross formed in 2020. Ross and Kelly are both directors of Praesidium Life; interests associated with each man own the entirety of the company s shares, with Kelly holding a controlling interest. Ross has been largely absent from politics since the election, but remains involved with Advance NZ. Its policy platform largely rejects mainstream science, and advocates treating natural and holistic medicine as equal to allopathic medicine. Documents show Praesidium Life has trademarked the word Praesidium for use with a nutritional supplement product. A recently registered website describes the supplement as “the natural solution to electromagnetic radiation”. It is not currently being sold, but is described as “coming soon”.