Grow your own medicine.
According to a government website, there are up to 55 companies in New Zealand engaged in the production of pharmaceuticals or their ingredients. The high cost of developing and bringing a drug to market, compounded by the scarcity of capital in NZ, has led to the industry sector being in a stagnant state, and declining over the long term. The majority of drugs used by the New Zealand public come from China, India or the USA, plus a few other minor players. We are currently living in a time of global unrest due to a number of factors including a global recession, high inflation, shortage of resources across food, fuel, manufacturing, and shipping, political unrest in many countries and between superpowers, the threat of a nuclear war and the long-term effects, both on health and the economy, of the covid-19 pandemic response. Any of these factors becoming critical could mean that the pharmaceutical medications on which so many of us rely may no longer be shipped to New...