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Matt Bowden is an accomplished musician from New Zealand who successfully lobbied for a change to drug laws in his home country. The drug law amendments allowed for safer drug alternatives to be sold legally to adults only, with restrictions around manufacture standards, dosage, advertising and marketing. He is dubbed by international media from New Zealand newspapers through to the BBC as “The Godfather of Legal Highs,” but is now focussing primarily on making progressive rock music.

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“I'm a musician working in my spare time to negotiate an end to the so-called ‘war on drugs.’ I am best known for taking a stand as an activist in the corporate sphere, but to me this is simply the role of the artist in society - to precipitate change in perception and policy - at least that’s how I roll.”

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"I am not a big advocate for the hedonistic lifestyle I don't encourage people to use excess alcohol or other drugs, life is better without either in my opinion. For me personally, expressing or communicating acceptance and love for each other or especially to the Creator / God / Higher Power through music is the best way to get high. However, I have had a number of deaths in family and close friendships related to illegal drug use that could have been prevented if we destigmatised our attitude toward people who choose drugs other than alcohol. The way we're dealing with the drug issue has to change. That is what motivated me to start developing harm reduction solutions.

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"Every human culture going back to the dawn of time have used substances to change the way we feel in social settings, the reasons we choose one substance over another are often genetic, and laws which unfairly favour the traditional European drug alcohol over drugs used by non-European societies are not only culturally insensitive, but also genetically biased and therefore racially discriminatory. My stand is in pointing out that this is not only wrong, but also dangerous and dysfunctional.”

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Matt has spent ten years in a suit and tie with short hair delivering this message to politicians, media and policy writers worldwide, and is still available for consultation by media or public servants, provided they have first familiarised themselves with some background information from this site.