Te Puke community leaders and residents are banding together to fight a store's stubborn stance on continuing to sell synthetic cannabis.

Te Puke store Puff 2 Go is facing a protest planned for next week after the R18 store selling the legal highs opened in Jellicoe Street two weeks ago.

Mark Boyle is concerned with Puff 2 Go selling tested synthetic cannabis. Photo: Bruce Barnard.

Last month the Psychoactive Substances Bill was passed into law placing tougher restrictions on the sale of so-called ‘legal' highs in communities. It includes a ban on sales from dairies, grocery stores, petrol stations or anywhere alcohol is sold.

As part of the law no legal highs are allowed to be sold to anyone under 18-years-old. Stores caught selling to under-18s face up to two-years in prison or a fine of up to $500,000.

Since then a public protest rallying against the store is being organised for next Wednesday at 4pm.

The public are encouraged to write protest letters and make placards before meeting in the old New World supermarket car park, on Oxford Street at 4pm.

Concerned resident Mark Boyle has met with the shop owners twice in the last two weeks and says although realising the agitation and ill feeling, the store owners are not changing their minds.

'People are expressing their concern and asking him to stop selling it and I think that's how the community should handle it,” says Mark.

'Continued lobbying has value. Provided this lobbying is done in a sensible way it will reinforce the point that our community does not want the sale of this product to continue.”

Puff 2 Go owners Lindsay Zuo and Jin Woo Hwang closed the shop for two days while police ensured business is conducted legally before being given the green light.

'We are being monitored by the government and wouldn't do anything wrong,” says Lindsay.

'This product is not all bad. I know it's helping people for pain relief and most customers use it to relax.”

The store offers 10 different legal high products, which Lindsay says is a small part of their business. Lindsay is adamant the dangerous part is not the product itself, but how people use the product.

'At least give this regulation a try before waving the flag saying you are against it.”

Te Puke High School chaplain Dane Attwood says legal highs are like nicotine and he wants to eradicate all of the synthetic products from the town.

'We pick up kids as young as 13 with nicotine in their back pockets and obviously nicotine is not sold to under 18's either,” says Dane.

Lindsay and Jin Woo also own the main street Mayfair Dairy, operating for the last four years.

Dane believes the couple only opened Puff 2 Go to sell legal highs – an accusation the store owners deny.

'As a community we would like to see the shop closed, one for that reason and just because that substance itself is not good in the community.”