Shosha has started selling cream canisters again, after removing the product from their shelves on 16 May due to concerns about recreational use. The vape store has put measures in place to make sure that their customers are using them for “hospitality/baking/catering purposes” after “advice from [their] lawyers”, said Shosha’s Operations Manager Nabhik Gupta.
Purchasers will have to sign a form confirming that they will not be inhaling the contents of the cream canister and show ID matching the name on the form. The boxes of canisters will be labelled with “not supplied for inhalation”, said Nabhik.
Shosha stopped selling cream canisters on 16 May. They began selling them again eleven days later, on 27 May, with these new requirements in place.
“We recently started selling the cream chargers again for hospitality/baking/catering purposes with a due diligence plan and under advice from our lawyers,” Nabhik said. “The Ministry of Health is aware of this and we are following their guidelines.”
Back in May, Nabhik said that Shosha would no longer sell cream canisters after realising “that some customers have used [the canisters] for recreational purposes”. He said they “accept[ed] that the prudent course is to remove nitrous canisters from retail Shosha stores altogether”.
Cream canisters, also known as nangs, contain nitrous oxide which can be inhaled recreationally. Selling cream canisters is illegal unless the purchaser has a legitimate purpose, like using a whipped cream machine.
In June 2007, the Ministry of Health did undercover raids to investigate the sales of cream canisters in Canterbury. This led to Cosmic Corner (now Cosmic) being fined $2500 for selling nangs to undercover Ministry of Health officers.