• We need to talk about drugs in a radically different way

    It is now time for Australia to have a conversation not about how we respond to drugs, but how we respond to people. In Canberra we are leading the way on this critically important change. […]

  • Festival drug deaths make the case for pill testing

    It is not about giving a drug the stamp of legitimacy; it is about creating an opportunity for a crucial conversation on risk at the right place and the right time. […]

  • The simple question MPs opposed to pill testing should ask themselves

    How long can political leaders continue to delude themselves that their stern warnings prevent young people from taking drugs at youth music events? How long can they continue to claim, against the evidence, that saturation policing assisted by sniffer dogs substantially reduces the availability of drugs at these events? […]

  • Doctors’ body call for pill testing trial

    The nation’s peak medical body has called for pill testing trials after two young people died of suspected drug overdoses at a major Australian music festival. Australian Medical Association president Tony Bartone said law enforcement couldn’t be the only approach to solving the illicit drug issue. Testing could do more than verify whether illicit substances were in festival attendees’ pills, he said.…

  • ‘It’s saving lives’: community rallies to support Melbourne’s drug-injecting room

    There have been 8,000 visits and 140 people had been treated for potentially life-threatening overdoses, according to recent figures. “This was [set up] to save lives, every indication is this facility is saving lives,” the mental health minister, Martin Foley, said as he revealed the statistics late last month. […]

  • Two people die after attending Sydney’s defqon.1 festival

    Harm minimisation group Sniff Off said it was “disgusting” Ms Berejiklian was “using the tragic loss of these two young lives to push her absurd ‘just don’t do drugs’ message, when it is the NSW government’s extreme overpolicing measures that allowed deaths like this to occur in the first place”. “Installing police with drug dogs at festivals only causes people…

  • Report into legal cannabis short-sighted

    Liberal Democrats Senator David Leyonhjelm has described the decision by a Senate committee to recommend against passage of his Bill to remove Commonwealth restrictions on recreational cannabis as short-sighted. “An estimated 35 per cent of Australians admit to having used marijuana at some point in their lives, so it is pretty clear the policy of prohibition is not working. […]

  • Splendour in the Grass: Greens push for ‘police discretion’ as drug-takers avoid criminal record

    New South Wales Greens MP David Shoebridge said targeting individual drug users at festivals is a waste of police resources which would have no meaningful impact on drug supply. “What we should be doing is having the police cooperating with festival organisers and having pill testing and we could be saving people’s lives.” […]

  • Overdose is a policy issue, not an individual one

    With the growing use of drug-induced homicide charges in the US, people are reporting fears to call 911 once again. Whereas people feared arrest for drugs and paraphernalia before, now the charge could be homicide. (It also cannot be stressed strongly enough that, if not for supply side enforcement, our illicit heroin supply would not have been adulterated with fentanyl.…

  • More than 8000 people used drug testing facilities at UK festivals this summer

    In a breakthrough summer for the service, and with consent from the Home Office, “front of house” drug testing facilities were available at seven festivals in England, run by not-for-profit organisation The Loop. Figures have shown more than 8000 people had drugs tested anonymously, and were subsequently given results about purity levels, any contamination, and drug safety advice. […]