This government has an opportunity to take up Peter Dunne’s legacy and move away from the failed prohibition advocated by Brown. Drugs are consumed by the most vulnerable members of our community. We owe them a duty of care. […]

Australian ecstasy has the highest rate in the world of unexpected ingredients, says drug law reform proponent Shane Rattenbury. Mr Rattenbury recently encouraged colleagues in the ACT’s cabinet to consider pill testing not just at music festivals such as Split Milk, but on an everyday basis within the community. […]

The report from Mexico’s interior department, the country’s National Women’s Institute and the UN Women agency said the annual femicide rate was 3.8 per 100,000 women in 1985 before it began a steady decline to 1.9 in 2007. From there it rose sharply to peak at 4.6 per 100,000 in 2012, tapering off in the following years and then rising again last…

There are more options for treatment or diversion out of jail or prison, but people are still getting arrested. Sentencing reforms mean some people won’t do as much time as they did in the past, but people are still getting arrested. And the drug war industrial complex, with all its institutional inertia and self-interest, rolls on. […]

Dozens of children have been killed by Philippines law enforcement in the last 18 months, claims Amnesty International. The group is urging the International Criminal Court to look into these deaths and bring justice to the youths wrongfully killed in President Rodrigo Duterte’s anti-drug crusade. […]

As Melbourne prepares for its first trial of a Medically Supervising Injecting Centre (MSIC) next year, Sydney drug treatment expert Dr Alex Wodak AM is urging expanded harm-reduction facilities in this city to counter changes in the drug trade.   […]

In July this year, tiny Uruguay became the first country in the world to legalise the sale of marijuana across its entire territory. “The most important thing has been the change of paradigm,” says Gastón Rodríguez Lepera, shareholder in Symbiosis, one of the two private firms producing cannabis for the government’s Institute for the Regulation and Control of Cannabis. […]

The president of the Australian Medical Association, Michael Gannon, welcomed the change of plan. “This has been tried in other parts of the world. There’s not a scrap of evidence that it reduces drug use in welfare recipients,” Dr Gannon said. “There’s no evidence at all that its useful in helping people get back to work.” […]

“This is not some wildcat renegade effort. It’s well planned and it’s being done by knowledgeable people based on this long experience elsewhere. That’s why we have the confidence to do this and intend to brave the storm of whatever the opposition might be.” […]