News
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How Duterte’s war on drugs feeds on his country’s worst fears
Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte’s bloody crackdown on drugs is pushing the country’s most vulnerable people even further towards the margins, says Global Commission on Drugs executive secretary Khalid Tinasti […]
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Breaking Free From Prohibition: A Human Rights Approach to Successful Drug Reform
Drug education, addiction prevention and addiction treatment should be informed not by ideological belief or moral crusade but by evidence-based research. These services must promote harm reduction and human rights. We should not be in the business of preventing drug use, in the same way, that we shouldn’t seek to…
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Canada: Federal prisons to offer clean needles to injection-drug users
Federal penitentiaries in Canada will soon offer clean needles to inmates who are likely to inject drugs while behind bars, answering a decades-long call by harm-reduction advocates who say the overdue initiative prevents the transmission of blood-borne illnesses and to withhold it would be in violation of Charter rights. […]
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One of the World’s Most Prestigious Medical Journals Just Called for Legalizing All Drugs
In an editorial last Thursday entitled Drugs Should Be Legalized, Regulated, and Taxed, Fiona Godlee, editor in chief of the British Medical Journal, notes that under drug prohibition, the global trade “fuels organized crime and human misery,” and asks, “Why should it not instead fund public services?” […]
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BMJ: Drugs should be legalised, regulated, and taxed
When law enforcement officers call for drugs to be legalised, we have to listen. So too when doctors speak up. Last month the Royal College of Physicians took the important step of coming out in favour of decriminalisation, joining the BMA, the Faculty of Public Health, and the Royal Society…
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Canberra’s first pill testing trial shouldn’t be the last
If pill testing results in just one person thinking twice before making a poor decision that may end their life and devastate many others, surely this is a strategy we can all get behind. We will wait for the results of the trial, but the early indications are that it…
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Drug testing dole recipients will only make addiction worse, but the government won’t hear it
The Federal Government has used this proposal to dog whistle community prejudices towards addicts, seeking to make political mileage out of it, all the while saying they’re acting in peoples’ best interests — it is nothing short of disgraceful. […]
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Coroner speaks out over lack of injecting rooms in Sydney’s west
A NSW coroner has scolded the law’s treatment of illicit drug users, venting her frustration over the lack of supervised injecting rooms in western Sydney. Deputy State Coroner Harriet Grahame made the frank remarks on Tuesday during an inquest into the 2016 deaths of six opiate users, which also heard…
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Six opioid deaths in the spotlight in coronial inquest
A controversial pill-testing pilot at a recent Canberra music festival will be examined to see if it can be used to prevent opiate deaths in NSW, a coronial inquest has heard. Counsel assisting the coroner, Peggy Dwyer, said the results of pill testing at Groovin the Moo – an initiative…
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Drug testing at festivals given thumbs up by young music fans
A number of young people at a music festival in Victoria have shown support for an Australian-first pill-testing trial, and say they want more drug checks. […]