In the second part of our Czech Republic special, Filip Blaha guides us through the possible consequences of new regulations targeting psychoactive substances, and the potential for further vaping restrictions in the country. Make sure to check out our previous episode where Filip breaks down these new regulations in detail!
Transcription:
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Joanna Junak: What criteria will be used to classify psychoactive substances? And how might this classification affect users and market for these products?
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Filip Blaha: Yeah, so basically, in addition to the one list of the arming banned substances, there will be created two more lists for the new substances entering the market. One will be created for the substances with uncertain consequences of usage and they will be added to the list and kind of research for two years till the government, Ministry of Health Care and also the Office for the Drug Policy want to know more about the consequences of using those substances and also the fertilist which will kind of automatically regulate the substance with no consequences and with uh lesser risk of the harm for the consumption so in addition to the banned substance list there will be created two more one for for the research of the substances and the third one for the regulating regulated market for the new substances with the lessly risk substance
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Joanna Junak: And do you think restricting access to these substances to specialized stores might effectively combat black market sales?
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Filip Blaha: Yeah, so overall, I think the situation is better than the legislation that's been applied till now, which means basically automatically banning any new substances which can be slightly psychoactive. so i think this reform could kind of tackle the issues with the black market because our new substances rush just rushing uh this concerning the hhc and others to the market because uh in past whenever government banned any m derivative uh either was it HHC or DHC plus or anything that just new substances reason and it was very inflexible to for government to just ban new and new substances. So I think this approach could compare to the just purely restriction could tackle the black market. However, the one of the very obvious impacts on the business, whenever you restrict any selling of any product, you will harm the retailers and producers. However, I think even for them, even before that ban, they were applying a lot of self-regulation, especially towards the adults. So I think this is some kind of acceptable compromise between all stakeholders concerning government, consumers and producers and retailers.
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Joanna Junak: A quick question about vaping products. What are the current debates surrounding the regulation of cigarettes and flavored e-cigarettes?
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Filip Blaha: Yeah. So, as I mentioned, there were some kind of plans of the Ministry of Health to ban all flavors and that's been postponed to the uncertainty. Hopefully, it will never be revived again. However, concerning the ban of the one-time usage of cigarettes, there is a strong debate about it, how to restrict it. And recently, some expert groups are kind of developing legislation about the packaging, also the colors of the one usage cigarettes and the place where it could be sold. So there are debates about kind of regulating those because as it is clear from some government analysis, those are the products, tobacco products, which are one of the most consumed among the adults and underaged consumers. So this been on the government's eyes for some time. And it's very likely that the government will, you know, the end of this year or the next one, will take some steps to kind of regulate it. I'm not sure if it will result in complete ban, but there will be certainly some regulation of the marketing, also the coloring and packaging of those products.
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Joanna Junak: And in conclusion, when can we expect the regulations to come into force?
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Filip Blaha: Yeah, so I think the last week the legislation concerning the psychoactive substances has been signed by the president's office, so it will come into action I believe on the beginning of the 2025 or even sooner at the end of this year because all the legislation process has been basically completed so it will come into the action very soon.
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Joanna Junak: Thank you, Filip. That's all for today. Tune in next time here on GFN TV or on our podcast. You can also find transcriptions of each episode on the GFN TV website. Thanks for watching or listening. See you next time.