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Australia’s first pill-testing trial cancelled – and ACT Liberals take credit
The Australian Capital Territory Liberal party has taken credit for blocking a pioneering pill-testing trial at an Australian music festival after organisers announced it will no longer go ahead. On Friday ACT Liberals congratulated the shadow attorney general, Jeremy Hanson, for “intervening” to block a pill-testing trial at the Spilt Milk…
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Spilt Milk pulls out of Australia’s first pill testing trial
Acting Minister for Health Shane Rattenbury told ABC Radio Canberra this morning he’d heard rumours and was concerned that pill testing wouldn’t go ahead.However, he said the Government had “made all the right steps”. “The ACT Government has approved pill testing and believes that’s it’s a valuable harm minimisation measure,” he…
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Richard Branson Advocates for Drug Decriminalization to Resolve the Opioid Crisis
Branson notes that it is “striking that in states that allow regulated use of medical marijuana, overdose death rates are lower. It confirms what my fellow Commissioners and I have been saying for years: that the most effective way to reduce the extensive harms of prohibition and advance the goals…
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Liberal MP Craig Kelly Wants Australia To Reconsider Its Drug Policy
Liberal MP Craig Kelly has said that Australia’s drug policies need to be reconsidered after it was revealed that in 2016 the nation recorded the highest number of drug-induced deaths in decades. Speaking to Perth’s 6PR radio station, the backbench MP from the Sydney seat of Hughes said that there were…
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ACT Government approves free pill testing at Spilt Milk festival
In a groundbreaking Australian-first, the ACT Government will allow free pill testing to take place at the Spilt Milk music festival in Canberra on November 25. […]
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Welfare drug testing punishes those ‘least able to change’, former AFP commissioner says
“All of my experience tells me that this won’t work,” Palmer told the ABC on Wednesday. “Really what it will do is create more damage, and most damage and most harm to those people who are most vulnerable and most in need of support and protection, which was my experience when…
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What Can Australia Learn from Portugal’s Approach to Drugs?
An Australian politician has called for the decriminalisation of drugs in the Northern Territory, which has already decriminalised cannabis, after witnessing the successes of Portugal’s drug policy. Jeff Collins, the Assistant Minister for Police, Fire and Emergency Services in Australia’s Northern Territory (NT), has called for an end to the…
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Rodrigo Duterte’s drug war a ‘deep concern’ for Foreign Minister Julie Bishop
Foreign Minister Julie Bishop says Australia is deeply concerned about a fresh wave of killings in the Philippines under President Rodrigo Duterte’s war on drugs, including 17-year-old high school student Kian Loyd delos Santos. […]
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Could pharmacists dispense heroin in injecting rooms?
Pharmacists could dispense heroin to illicit drug users under very limited circumstances as part of a suite of harm minimisation efforts, says Public Health Association chief executive Michael Moore. Mr Moore told the AJP that while supply and demand reduction are important, the experience internationally from countries such as Portugal demonstrate…
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Pharmacies in Uruguay have become the first in the world to start legally selling marijuana
This week, pharmacies have begun distribution of the drug, which is available to Uruguayan citizens and permanent residents only, who need to sign up to a database before they can buy it. […]
