A Katikati resident campaigning to rid the town of legal highs says the community is in support, and most want a complete ban.

Anne Bowling canvasses the township daily to gather signatures for her petition to ban the sale of psychoactive substances within the town's CBD.

Katikati resident Anne Bowling is petitioning for a legal high-free zone in her town's CBD.

'What's happening is people are responding – residents, ratepayers, youth, visitors to the town and our neighbours at Waihi Beach and Omokoroa – everybody is supporting the petition, but there's hardly been one person that's signed who hasn't said they don't want the drugs at all in our town.”

Anne has already gathered 600 signatures since she started the petition early last month, when the Western Bay of Plenty District Council put out its draft Psychoactive Substances Policy for consultation.

'The reason for it is because our community is so compact, you come to town for just about everything; and the area from the Uretara Bridge to Jocelyn St is the main hub of the community.”

Asked if Katikati residents want any legal highs in their town, Anne replies: ‘No they don't –absolutely not”.

'It really is ghastly situation. We are being made to accommodate something that we don't want.

'So I think it is fair that the town is allowed to have an area that represents what they don't want.”

In August last year, Anne hosted a public meeting attended by more than 200 people that supported the restriction on sale of legal highs in the town. Most wanted only one outlet to sell the legal highs.

'They also wanted 100 metres protection from sensitive sites. It was a very strong message from the meeting that they wanted this activity strongly controlled and kept to a minimum.”

Subsequently, Anne says the government clarified itsPsychoactive Substances Act giving councils the power to control the sale of legal highs and Western Bay council began drafting a plan to control sale of the drugs.

'I think this policy should be the beginning of the conversation about the situation in Katikati. In order to keep faith with what the people at the meeting wanted, I devised this petition, which asks for a family-friendly zone in the heart of the CBD.”

Anne says the she has great concern or Katikati's three op shops if legal high sales are permitted in the town centre.

'The council's policy has criteria for sensitive site is where vulnerable members of the community gather.

'Our three op shops are where members of our community go because they have no choice. And op shops are not in the policy considered to be sensitive site.

'If we succeed in the petition at council, those sites in the centre of all the activity of the town will be protected – and it will be a safe place for the community.”

Canvassing Katikati, Anne says she met a mother, who asked if her six-year-old could sign the petition, 'because she wanted him to learn right now that he must always say no to drugs – and I was quiet moved by that”.

Anne expects to complete the petition on March 14, in time to submit it to the council's submission process, which closes on March 19.

'If people say to me ‘I don't want this', I'm encouraging them to make an individual submission – and a lot of people have said they intend to do that.”

Copies of the petition are in Katikati shops, churches, schools and the WBOPDC library.

To view the Western Bay Council's draft Psychoactive Substances Policy, or make a submission, click here.