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Speaker 1: Ranges to New Zealand's medicinal cannabis export rules have been

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Speaker 1: approved by Cabinet to help growers, manufacturers and exporters. Exports

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Speaker 1: will now only have to meet the standards of the

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Speaker 1: importing jurisdiction rather than New Zealand's standards. It will also

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Speaker 1: streamline the licensing process for growers and update testing and

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Speaker 1: laboratory requirements. Sally King is the executive director of the

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Speaker 1: New Zealand Medical Cannabis Council. Who's with me this morning, Sally,

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Speaker 1: good morning, Sorry I did that thing again, Sally, good morning.

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Speaker 2: Hello Marianna Ryan, how are you very well?

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Speaker 1: Thank you? Tell me why have we been requiring companies

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Speaker 1: thus far to meet New Zealand standards rather than just

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Speaker 1: the country that we're exporting to.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, Look, it's one of those examples of over regulation

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Speaker 2: that is being untangled. It's a very good thing. I

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Speaker 2: think it was an unintended consequence of the speed at

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Speaker 2: which the regulations were back in twenty eighteen twenty nineteen, right,

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Speaker 2: And the effect of that was that, you know, a

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Speaker 2: whole new industry and sector with regulations written within one year.

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Speaker 2: There were always going to be a few snaffoos.

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Speaker 1: Right, Okay, so it was a snaffoo, we've fixed it.

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Speaker 1: That's great. How much we do we actually export and

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Speaker 1: where do we export it to?

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Speaker 2: Mainly maybe to Australia and we don't We don't export

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Speaker 2: much medicinal cannabis at all at the moment. It's been

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Speaker 2: far too difficult. There's probably been less than ten consignments

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Speaker 2: since so far. But with the change, it's rarely going

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Speaker 2: to open up the opportunity for New Zealand cultivators and manufacturers.

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Speaker 1: Where do you think we will target? And are we

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Speaker 1: going to target whoever has the loosest standards?

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Speaker 2: No? No, not necessarily. New Zealand has a reputation because

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Speaker 2: of it's really rigid or restrictive regulation for having really

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Speaker 2: good quality product here. So we're on the right, we're

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Speaker 2: on the right standard already. Where we will be first

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Speaker 2: targeting is probably Australia, but equally Europe. We have had

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Speaker 2: some confinements CENTERP into Germany and into Europe as things

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Speaker 2: shift there and we'll see a lot more of that.

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Speaker 1: Just finally, can you paint us a picture, Sally, of

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Speaker 1: what we're actually exporting? Is it a cannabis leaf?

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Speaker 2: You know?

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Speaker 1: Put in a box that someone can get high from.

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Speaker 1: What exactly is it?

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Speaker 2: Well, up until up until last week, the only thing

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Speaker 2: you could export in this system was cannabis leaf, dried leaf,

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Speaker 2: and that was for further processing elsewhere. These regulations are

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Speaker 2: real game changes because they allow for some extracts, some

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Speaker 2: initial extracts, to also be exported. In all cases, therefore,

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Speaker 2: what we call cannabis ingredients, they're going to be further

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Speaker 2: processed or manufactured, or alternatively, we can manufacture it complete

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Speaker 2: propriate you know, GMP reading material. So the biggest opportunity

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Speaker 2: will be though with the ingredients.

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Speaker 1: Sally, thank you very much for your time. Best of

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Speaker 1: luck with that. It sounds like snapoo, and I'm glad

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Speaker 1: it's being fixed. That's Sally King. With us for more

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