News
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NZ: Pass both bills: Medical cannabis campaigners to MPs
“Let the people have their say,” said medicinal cannabis patient Rebecca Reider. “The Government bill would force most cannabis patients to remain criminals. Patients are desperately hoping the Swarbrick bill will pass. If MPs have concerns they should let it get to select committee so those concerns can be answered.”…
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NZ: ‘They’re not doing it because they want to smoke weed’
“The people who are trying to access this medicine are not a bunch of hippies and stoners – they’re not doing it because they want to smoke weed, they’re doing it because they don’t want to be in pain. “And an extension of that, the people who will be cultivating…
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Act now before more lives before lives are lost to drugs
The time has come for Victorians to take a stand to prevent serious harm and death from illegal drugs and that’s exactly what Buninyong MP Geoff Howard is doing about pill-testing at events like music festivals. Mr Howard believes pill-testing at events like Rainbow will help prevent hospitalisation or even deaths…
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Government discussions on pill testing long overdue, says MP at Rainbow Serpent
President of Harm Reduction Australia Gino Vumbaca said government and society should not be afraid of the evidence that shows the benefits of pill testing. “We are not condoning drug use, but we are living in the real world,” Vumbaca said. “The pragmatic view is that there will be people who do…
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Safe Injection Facilities Save Lives
The evidence for increased safety is compelling. At Insite, a safe-injection site in Vancouver, there was a 35 percent reduction in fatal overdoses in the area around the facility, compared with a 9.3 percent reduction in other parts of the city that may have had other interventions. People who used Insite…
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Pill testing push, Vic man still critical
Greens leader Richard Di Natale said Premier Andrews needed to “get his head out of the sand” and acknowledge that young people would experiment with drugs. “When Australia was confronted with the HIV epidemic in the ’80s, we were one of the first countries on earth to provide injecting drug…
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Pill testing is proven. I Am Hardstyle shows how much we need it
This debate has been raging for decades, but the time to act is now. Festival season is in full swing and although the police presence usually verges on the military, with vigorous searches and barking police dogs greeting revellers as they enter, at every festival young people will be taking…
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No pill testing: Daniel Andrews stays firm on state policy
Premier Daniel Andrews says he will not reconsider his opposition to recreational drug testing despite a mass overdose on Friday night at a Festival Hall rave. But Yarra Drug and Health Forum executive director and former police officer Greg Denham said drug testing would certainly reduce the risk, particularly when…
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Hooked for 30 years: the changing faces of Australia’s drug misuse
“We have to redefine [drug use] and shift from a law enforcement problem to a health and safety problem,” Wodak said, arguing Australia’s harm-minimisation policies have not pushed the pendulum far enough away from punitive responses. […]
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8 Things We Now Know That Happen (and That Don’t Happen) When We Legalize Marijuana
The prophets of doom warned of all manner of social ills that would arise if marijuana were legalized. From hordes of dope-addled youths aimlessly wandering the streets to red-eyed carnage on the highway, the divinations were dire. And they were wrong. In a report released Tuesday the Drug Policy Alliance…