You may be aware of the “Leave Animals Out of Legal High Testing” campaign.
Under the Psychoactive Substances Bill currently before parliament, party pills and other legal highs will have to be proven safe before they can be sold.
Thousands of people have signed a Petition calling for a clause in the Bill that “prohibits animal testing in any proposed legislation aimed at the regulation” of these substances. The Petition is being presented (along with oral submissions) to Parliament at 1pm Tuesday May 21.
Those of us who can’t be there will be leading the charge here in Auckland at the same time, demonstrating our support of the Wellington action. Please take some time out and join us – all dogs very welcome.
Meet at the carpark, first right at the roundabout, Pohutukawa Drive, entrance off Greenlane Road West, 12.30pm, Tuesday 21st May.
Any queries please email venville@gmail.com For more information on the campaign visit www.leaveanimalsout.org.nz
See further information on the issue below:
We would like to see a clause to be added to the Psychoactive Substances legislation that specifically prohibits animal testing, on the grounds that it is unethical to use animals for testing of recreational drugs and because there are non-animal tests that can be used instead.
The science is clear that there are alternatives to animal testing in many cases of research.
There is a whole host of options to test new drugs for safety:
- computer models that can predict how chemicals will impact human health
- laboratory analysis and cell experiments that can rule out a lot of the more dangerous substances
- there are also microchips and models made to mimic the operation of human organs like lungs, livers, or bone marrow to understand what effect certain substances will have.
They can do a lot of the work just as well as, or better than, testing on animals would. Importantly, if it is not specifically ruled out with a clause in the legislation, animal testing will be used by these companies as it is cheaper and most will contract out animal testing to India and China who have little or no animal welfare legislation for laboratory animals.
There are precedents for the ruling out of animal testing for other recreational drugs and products:
- The United Kingdom has banned animal testing for alcohol, tobacco, and cosmetics.
- Belgium, Estonia, Slovak Republic, Germany have also all banned testing tobacco and Canada.
- The European Union banned animal testing for cosmetics.
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