You sound like a new and/or small business owner without the resources behind you that a large company can employ.
We have been operating for years and this matter is very out of the ordinary.
I'm not saying anything like that. There are new laws coming out each year and you need to know about laws that are likely to affect you. Sounds like you need a business mentor to advise you on how to manage legal/compliance issues. It is not as bad as it sounds unless you are operating in a high risk area like chemicals/medicine/etc.
It is easy to manage legal/compliance guidelines once we know what they are (at the moment there is none at all) the problem i'm having is knowing where i stand in the way of how often i should be checking for IF legislation is introduced and if there is an easier / cheaper way to go about doing it. (i know i can look for new laws myself but i can't take the risk of not seeing something i should have)
The problem is that we have been selling a product for at least 3 years now and other companies have been doing so for longer. It seems kids have now caught on to some less legitimate uses for the products and we have received a lot of attention because of this, there have been some calls in the media to have legislation made about the regulations surrounding the sale of these products but as no one is going to write our company a letter letting us know that for example we now must check for permits/identification when selling the product what safeguard do i have?
There are many ways to find out what laws are likely to impact you, ranging from googling to trade/prof magazines to government websites like Fair trading/ASIC, up to paying for legal advice/retainer. You need to work out what is best for you.
When first adding the products to our inventory we paid a legal professional to check everything was ok - AND IT STILL IS TO THIS DAY
The problem is there could be new legislation introduced at any time and i dont know how i am expected to stay up to date with this, the first legal professional i paid to look at it said technically it is up to me to check daily and although i can fight it they could prosecute us the same day the new legislation is introduced