Towns fume over hijacked names for legal highs

The legal highs have their namesake towns up in arms. Photo / Alan Gibson

A new range of legal highs is cashing in on the names of three North Island towns - and at least one of their outraged community leaders is planning to complain.

The recently introduced herbal smoking product Tokearoa High has been joined on shop shelves by two other "high-strength blends", Te Puke Thunder and Opotiki Blue.

Each of the two-gram packets, distributed by party pill stockists Convenience Marketing, features the brand name printed over a prominent marijuana leaf.

Te Puke Thunder has long been known as a strain of marijuana that originated in the town in the early 1970s - it has its own entry on the online encyclopedia Wikipedia - but Opotiki's mayor can't see why the company chose his seaside Bay of Plenty town's name for its product.

"I don't think anybody here would be happy about that," Mayor John Forbes said.

"We have issues like any other community with drug and alcohol abuse, and I don't think it's necessary."

Mr Forbes was proud of the fact that Opotiki had no outlets selling legal highs such as Kronic, and said he would have appreciated the company asking his council for permission before using the town's name.

"We don't want to go and copyright our name, but that would have just been polite."

He told the Weekend Herald he would now consider lodging a complaint - something Western Bay of Plenty District Mayor Ross Paterson won't be bothering with in Te Puke's case.

"They'd poke their nose at the council and do what they think is right, and in this case I don't agree with them."

Mr Paterson said the Te Puke Thunder name was a "poor way of advertising".

"It's sensationalising something that's not ideal within our community. The majority of ratepayers in Te Puke would see this as a complete waste of time.

"It's another one of these scam things that come through occasionally with people trying to raise their profiles off it."

Te Puke ward representative Paul Thomas said Te Puke Thunder was a name that had been bandied around for years, but his community would be "certainly disappointed" the town's name was being used to sell the products.

"It's certainly something we can do without. It's just a shame that people get into this type of promotional thing ... Maybe it's time it was taken off the racks."

Tokoroa High School principal William Ford did not know his school's name had been parodied, but said he was "extremely unhappy" about the products.

"I don't think that's right. It's just dreadful that they've done that."

Convenience Marketing did not return calls.

Kronic spokesman Ben Thompson said the products were not linked to his company, Light Years Ahead, but he would not comment on their choice of brand names.

Party pills king Matt Bowden, who has made millions of dollars importing the chemicals used to make synthetic cannabis, was reluctant to comment on another company's branding but said: "I wouldn't do it."

"I think people in these towns might object, but there's nothing they can do about it unless they trademark the town."