• UN Fails to Solve ‘World Drug Problem’ at UNGASS

    While the UN Special Session failed to make significant progress, global partners and activists outside of the event laid groundwork for positive change and offered real hope. […]

  • The Deaths of Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran One Year on

    The bullets may have killed Andrew Chan and Maran Sukumaran, but it was Indonesia’s war on drugs that sent them to their deaths. At the time it happened, few outside the country could understand how Indonesia might shoot apparently reformed men. […]

  • On a downer

    At the 1998 UNGASS, delegates pledged to deliver “significant and measurable” reductions in demand for drugs by 2008. That meeting even used the slogan: “A drug-free world, we can do it”. The deadline has slipped, but the intention seems to remain the same. Who are they kidding? […]

  • What Ever Happened to New Zealand’s Lauded Drug Regulation?

    If we have learned nothing else from the drug wars, it is that a non-negotiable principle in any reform, must be that personal possession of any substance must never be an offence. But our ‘world leading’ kiwi drug ‘reform’ has succeeded in outlawing personal possession of all new psychoactive drugs – even those not yet invented. […]

  • The Guardian view on cannabis and psychosis: how do we protect teenagers?

    One of the effects of prohibition has been to drive up the THC content and thus the potency of what’s on sale, because this is maximises the ratio of profit to risk. Whether that is what consumers would choose if they could is another question. It’s not entirely fanciful to suppose that legal cannabis, intelligently taxed, would tend to be…

  • Rethinking the Global War on Drugs

    The United States will need to play a much stronger role in shaping new policies. It is in the untenable position of violating the existing treaties — now that four states have legalized the sale of recreational marijuana — while arguing that they remain a viable framework. Clearly, those accords need to be updated, heeding the experiences and lessons learned…

  • Did the global war on drugs just die in New York?

    A huge global drug summit has just wrapped up at the United Nations. Was it the turning point that many hoped for? The NZ Drug Foundation’s Cameron Price was there. […]

  • We Need A Joint Approach On Drug Reform

    There has been a shift. We are close to a tipping point, thanks to the consistent work of many stakeholders and activists who have spent years fighting these tough battles in the political minefield that is illicit drug policy. […]

  • Uniting calls for a re-think on drugs

    Uniting, the services and advocacy arm of the Uniting Church in Australia, Synod of NSW and the ACT, is calling for a re-think on illegal drug use. […]

  • ‘It Is Impossible to Arrest Our Way Out of This Problem,’ Canada Tells UN Drug Conference

    “We know it is impossible to arrest our way out of this problem,” Philpott told the United Nations General Assembly Special Session on drugs on Wednesday morning, which happens to be the counterculture holiday devoted to smoking weed.Philpott is Canada’s health minister, and she’s become an unlikely champion for marijuana policy reform at the UN. […]