Petition of Coalition of NZ Natural Health Retailers: Amend the Therapeutic Products Bill's treatment of natural health products (Petition open to 30 April 2024)
CLICK HERE TO SIGN THE PETITION
In July 2023, the Labour led government passed the Therapeutic Products Bill. This replaces the 1981 Medicines Act. Many thyroid patients take a range of supplements and medications containing T3 which will now be subjected to an increasing amount of regulation from 2026. In it's current form, this bill will restrict access to supplements such as vitamin C, B12 etc and medications containing T3. Costs are also likely to increase. 16,000 submissions were submitted by the public with the majority opposing the bill. 6000 of these submissions were from large organizations. Few changes were made to the bill based on the submissions. The opposition government did not support the passing of this bill in its current form. The petition says:
“We are concerned the Therapeutic Products Bill will greatly reduce consumer choice and increase the cost of natural health products in New Zealand by requiring a medicines regulator to individually assess every natural health product and ingredient for approval, irrespective of a proven history of safe use. We ask that this legislation be amended to better support continued consumer choice and affordable access to a wide range of safe and effective natural health products.”