Therapeutic Products Bill

The closing date for submissions is 11.59pm Sunday, 05 March 2023

The Chair of the Health Committee has called for public submissions on the Therapeutic Products Bill. Therapeutic Products are medicines, medical devices, natural health products, and pharmaceutical ingredients. The bill seeks to provide for the regulation of therapeutic products in a way that is comprehensive and balances the risks and benefits of the products.

At present, the Medicines Act 1981 is the main legislation for enabling access to safe medicines and medical devices. Natural health products are regulated by the Dietary Supplements Regulations 1985 under the Food Act 2014. The bill would repeal most provisions of the Medicines Act, except those relating to pharmacy ownership, and revoke the regulations made under the Act. It would also revoke the Dietary Supplements Regulations. 

Changes that the bill proposes include:

• ​requiring therapeutic products to receive a market authorisation before they could be imported into, exported from, or supplied in New Zealand
• providing for the regulation of a range of controlled activities
• establishing a Therapeutics Products Regulator

This bill is available online from the ‘Related links’ panel.

What do you need to know?

• Submissions are publicly released and published to the Parliament website. Only your name or organisation’s name is required on a submission. Please keep your contact details separate, as if they are included on the submission they will become publicly available when the submission is released.
• If you wish to include information of a private or personal nature in your submission you should discuss this with the clerk of the committee before submitting.
• If you wish to speak to your submission, please state this clearly.

Further guidance on making a submission can be found from the ‘How to make a submission’ link in the ‘Related documents’ panel.

If you have any questions about your submission or the submission process please contact the Committee Staff through the contact details provided on this page.