The constantly evolving use of social media and dating apps to try and score drugs shows how futile attempts to stop drug use at music festivals are. Is it time to accept it’s always going to happen and get on board with harm minimisation approaches? […]

After seeing too many young people admitted to his ER with overdoses, Dr David Caldicott has become one of Australia’s leading advocates for safer drug use. I called David up after one of his shifts, and thankfully he pulled over his moped to have a chat with me. […]

Russia has become the world’s most aggressive defender of maintaining the war on drugs, outdoing even countries such as Iran. Iran, for instance, supports things such as needle exchanges for heroin users; Russia does not. And Russia’s hard-line stance on the drug war is bad for us. […]

Human rights groups say police data showing that Mr Duterte’s crackdown has claimed the lives of 293 suspected users and pushers in police operations between July 1 and July 24 does not include those slain in extrajudicial killings by vigilantes. […]

“Any executions that are still to take place must be halted immediately. The injustice already done cannot be reversed, but there is still hope that it won’t be compounded,” said Rafendi Djamin, Amnesty International’s director for South East Asia and the Pacific. […]

Pitched on the grass at the Secret Garden Party festival in Cambridgeshire was a tent run by The Loop, a not for profit drug and alcohol service. For those few days it was the first ever de facto decriminalised space for possession of drugs in the UK. […]

As long as we persist in keeping drugs illegal, the violence, especially in our inner cities, will continue, and there will be an endless supply of new non-violent offenders as well as those who take violent action. Only legalization can change the dynamic. […]

There is no evidence to support President Widodo’s position. The death penalty does not deter crime. Carrying out executions will not rid Indonesia of drugs. It is never the solution, and it will damage Indonesia’s standing in the world. […]

Tony Trimingham said earlier this year that “families want services that assist rather than punish and criminalise people in a way that creates lifelong penalties”. Nowhere is our punitive, counter-productive approach to drug use more perfectly encapsulated than the hypocritical, expensive police operations run at music festivals like Splendour in the Grass. […]

In a statement, Amnesty International urged “the country’s authorities to halt all executions and to take immediate steps to ensure that the cases of all those under sentence of death are reviewed by an independent and impartial body”. […]