Australia has provided wide-ranging training, support and assistance for Philippine police who are at the centre of president Rodrigo Duterte’s highly contentious crackdown on drugs that has left thousands of Filipinos dead. […]

The Philippines’ president Rodrigo Duterte has waged a violent war on drugs since he came to power in June, forcing many users to register with the authorities and join rehabilitation centres – though there are few programmes to help them. Reuters photojournalist Erik de Castro visited the centres […]

Helping people with drug and alcohol problems is not the soft option, it is the smart option. Providing resources for family and treatment services achieves far better outcomes for the community than even more punishment ever will. […]

“It’s a mush of reasonable ideas—of course people depend on one another and care for one another—that got its own pathological label and, without a shred of data, was turned into a ‘diagnosis.’ […]

“People who use drugs are not inherently evil or criminal. They are mothers, fathers, sons, daughters, sisters, brothers, and grandparents. They care for their families and communities. People who use drugs are human beings, just as valuable and important in contributions to society as all other citizens.” […]

Formal analytical testing of the market — with pill testing at music festivals as the sharp end of a broader early warning system that involves hospitals, ambulance, and static testing points — could not only save lives, it may even change the way how young Australians use drugs. […]

The point is this: What good is it to test for the drugs after the person has been hospitalised or, as in this case, died? Testing the drugs before Stephens took them, could have saved his life. […]

Support for marijuana legalization has hit an all-time high in the U.S., according to two recent national polls, raising the possibility that legal weed could pass in all nine states where it’s on the ballot in the Nov. 8 election. […]

“In my country there is no law that says I cannot threaten criminals,” he added. “I do not care what the human rights guys say. I have a duty to preserve the generation. If it involves human rights, I don’t give a shit. I have to strike fear.” […]

It’s time for Australia to get back into the business of acting on evidence when it comes to drugs and to lead in this region. If you want our kids to be safer then we cannot simply push out more of the same and expect things to change. […]