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The Trump administration is finalizing a long-awaited plan that it says will solve the opioid crisis, but it also calls for law enforcement measures — like the death penalty for some drug dealers — that public health advocates and congressional Republicans warn will detract from efforts to reverse the epidemic. […]

Human Rights Watch had not just Cambodia, but also Myanmar and the Philippines in its sights – for the suspected genocide of the Rohingya population and the extrajudicial killings carried out in President Rodrigo Duterte’s war on drugs, respectively – when it urged Australia to raise their concerns about human rights violations during the Asean meet. […]

The Trump administration finally has an ambitious, detailed plan for combating the opioid epidemic, one that includes some evidence-based reforms that public-health experts have been recommending for years — and, also, the death penalty for low-level drug dealers. Or, at least, so Politico’s summary of the yet-to-be-finalized plan suggests. […]

A drug harm reduction advocate says an “early warning system” needs to be set up to prevent drug harm in New Zealand. Wendy Allison is director of Know Your Stuff – a group that lets people test their drugs at music festivals. She put out an alert about N-Ethylpentylone three weeks before the mass hospitalisation. […]

Removing newborn babies from women who are suffering from addiction helps neither mother nor child, says a doctor at the forefront of a movement to keep them together. The stress of that separation, Dr. Ron Abrahams believes, has been confused for withdrawal symptoms in the past. […]

We need to extend treatment services to effectively cover substances like synthetic cannabis, while implementing an early warning system to enable urgent action when particular drugs are becoming a problem. We need to make it easier for agencies at the coal face of dealing with the consequences of addiction to drugs to liaise with each other. […]

There will be a day when our demands for justice and our calls for compassion stretch to those whom movement politics have largely left out over the past half century. A day when we do not ask, “What did they do to themselves to end up here?” And instead ask, “How did we let this happen?” […]

When people feel valued rather than judged, regardless of whether they continue to take drugs, they begin to value themselves more. Once people feel safe and cared for, it’s much easier to make changes that otherwise frighten them. As with needle exchange and heroin prescribing, frequent safe infection facilities users are more likely to seek further help, not less. […]

This centralised decision to implement alternatives to the existing sanctions is a good omen for drug reformers. By encouraging the suspension of investigation and prosecution of drug users, and promoting the implementation of measures focusing on education, treatment and social reintegration, the European Union is alluding a decriminalisation of drug use in its member states. […]

After a half-century of being “tough on drug dealers and drug users,” drug overdose deaths nonetheless continue climbing to record levels. Heroin and fentanyl are cheaper and more available than prescription drugs on the street, and the war on drugs has filled our prisons, affecting the lives and futures of millions of the innocent as well as the guilty, as the U.S. […]

While the question of cannabis reform has become a question of ‘when’ rather than ‘if’, the focus now needs to be on accelerating the process and ensuring legalisation is done right. Securing that is, as Dr. Wodak suggests, “an issue for our generation.” Many of us will have to deal with the social costs that stem from drug use being painted as deviant. […]

Latent or explicit, the view of addiction as a moral failure is doing real damage. The stigma against addiction is “the single biggest reason America is failing in its response to the opioid epidemic,” Vox’s German Lopez concluded after a year of reporting on the crisis. To overcome this stigma, we need to first understand it. […]

Social workers and drug policy experts have expressed concern over the NSW government strategy to give criminal background checks to public housing applicants. Many say that housing is a key part of recovery, and that this won’t help those people get off drugs. […]

Since President Trump has repeatedly expressed his desire to execute U.S. drug dealers, his administration is looking into a new policy allowing just that. The potential policy, which is being studied by the Department of Justice and the White House Domestic Policy Council, could include making the trafficking of large quantities of fentanyl a capital crime, as well as other ultra-severe penalties for drug offenders. […]

The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting a different outcome. John Ryan from the Penington Institute weighs in on Australia’s never-ending, never-winning war on drugs. […]

Social workers operating in Sydney’s inner city public housing estates have slammed a new policy that denies homes to those with a history of serious drug offences, saying it sets a “troubling precedent” that further marginalises people trying to leave their past behind them. […]

Victorian Upper House MP Fiona Patten, said the criminalisation of drug use prevented detailed information on the health effects from being distributed “This was a death that could have been avoided,” she said. “A young man at 22, who was clearly experimenting with different drugs, but was doing so without any information. […]

The state parliament of Victoria, of which Melbourne is the capital, is due to table a report on drug law reform this month. Victorian Upper House MP Fiona Patten, who lobbied for the inquiry in 2015, said the criminalisation of drug use prevented detailed information on health effects from being distributed, according to the news outlet. […]

The push for a Footscray safe injecting room has received backing from Maribyrnong Council. The council has pledged to monitor the success of a two-year trial in North Richmond and is open to creating its own centre in the future, a view shared by health organisations and social workers. […]

It’s not just about allowing someone to use drugs more safely—it’s about building a trusting relationship with users, humanizing them and encouraging them to seek treatment when they’re ready. […]

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte is skipping a regional summit in Australia this month, his spokesman said Monday, as he faces international censure for Manila’s deadly drug war. Duterte’s decision to snub the meeting comes after he said he would not cooperate with United Nations investigators looking into alleged extrajudicial killings during the narcotics crackdown, which has left thousands dead. […]

Controversial plans to drug test welfare recipients are back on the agenda after the coalition party room endorsed new proposed laws. The Turnbull government had originally hoped to drug test 5000 Newstart and Youth Allowance recipients across three trial sites in NSW, Queensland and Western Australia from January

Experts from the Finnish government’s leading health agency have called for the decriminalisation of all drug use, igniting a debate that has drawn in top politicians and police authorities. The call was made by two senior members of Finland’s National Institute for Health and Welfare which operates under the Ministry of Social Affairs and Health. […]

On February 27th, A Current Affair launched an extraordinary attack on people who are prescribed methadone. The program deliberately used stigmatising language to describe people utilising a prescribed, evidence-based medical treatment. Methadone use was described as “deadly epidemic” that is “putting everyone at risk”, without presenting the plethora of evidence of the benefits of methadone treatment. […]

President Emmanuel Macron has taken steps to reform drug laws amid concerns that France has seen a continuous rise in drug use despite having some of the strictest narcotics laws in Europe. But is the country ready for a radical new approach? […]

Britain’s “utterly failing” drug laws must be overhauled to help curb the number of inmates in overcrowded prisons, the Green Party will say, as party activists battled through harsh weather conditions to attend its spring conference in Bournemouth. […]

More than 100 drug suspects have been killed since Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte ordered the police to rejoin his “war on drugs”, an official said Saturday (Mar 3). Duterte was elected in 2016 on a promise to eradicate drugs, and launched an unprecedented campaign in which – rights activists allege – as many as 12,000 people have been killed. […]

“Some countries have a very, very tough penalty — the ultimate penalty,” Trump said at a White House summit on the opioid crisis. “And, by the way, they have much less of a problem. If you shoot one person, you get life in prison,” he added. “These people kill 1,000, 2,000 people and nothing happens to them.” […]

Protesters gathered at the Philippine embassy in D.C. Wednesday to call for an end to the drug war and freedom for a leading Duterte critic. Since President Rodrigo Duterte took office in June 2016, police and mysterious “vigilantes” have killed more than 16,000 alleged drug users and sellers in a massive wave of extrajudicial killings condemned by human rights organizations, the Catholic Church, and political figures around the globe. […]

This disgraceful piece ignores official guidance, veers away from interviewing any health or medical expert and alarmingly and possibly deliberately uses the term ‘meth’ for convenience and further shock effect. The potential consequences of such a story could be patients reluctant to seek treatment and further misinformation being peddled in the community for what has been proven to be an effective treatment for drug addiction and harm minimisation. […]

Fatou Bensouda, the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), announced that there would be a preliminary examination on extrajudicial killings in the context of police anti-drug operations. This is an important step forward for the many victims, advocates and international supporters who argue that justice is not possible within the Philippines when the highest levels of government have promised to protect the police from repercussions. […]

People were coming to the Denver Public Library to find a private place to inject drugs such as heroin away from the eyes of police. The needles were found in books, furniture, and on the lawn, and a dead man was found in the bathroom in February 2017. The Library, searching for a humane solution, took action. […]

Critics of such sites raise legitimate concerns about normalizing drug use that could be fatal. But so far, the wealth of available evidence shows two things: Most of America’s past policies have failed catastrophically, and the regions that have tried these sites have saved people. States and other cities should follow the lead of Seattle and Philadelphia to open safe injection sites. […]

An Australian politician has finally drafted a law which seeks to provide access to medicinal cannabis and is broad enough to get real product into the hands of patients who desperately need it. Leader of the NSW Opposition in the Legislative Council Adam Searle introduced the Medicinal Cannabis (Compassionate Access) Bill 2018 into the state’s upper house on February 15. […]

A study of the six months before and after the programme’s implementation has shown overwhelming reductions in post-incarceration overdose deaths, lowering them by 61 per cent, from 26 overdose deaths of recently-incarcerated people before the program started to just nine after implementation. This accounts for a 12 per cent drop in the state’s overall overdose death rate. […]

Outspoken UK drug expert David Nutt argues for regulated access to any drug less harmful than alcohol, including cannabis and Ecstasy.

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Americans are sick of dying in the ‘war on drugs,’ and will stand on the right side of history with or without you. Cannabis will no longer be a government tool for enslaving and oppressing people of color, nor for foisting pain and undue cost upon us all. […]

” Prohibition and punishment has never stopped anyone from ruining their lives, all it has ever done is to make the vulnerable the prey of the criminals and added a terrible burden to that of addiction through the loss of reputation and opportunity by their treatment as criminals by our society and our judicial system.” […]

Drug Foundation executive director Ross Bell said a new approach was needed with Kiwis being some of the biggest meth users in the world. When the issue was tackled only through law enforcement and the criminal justice system, courts got clogged up, Bell said. “If you talk to cops they say you can’t arrest your way out of this problem.” […]

According to Canadian brain researcher, Dr. Matthew Hill, “I’d say the whole idea of cannabis being a gateway drug is a debunked thing at this point. …I don’t think there’s any evidence to support that,” said Hill, who is an assistant professor at the Hotchkiss Brain Institute at the University of Calgary. […]

The country’s first supervised drug injecting centre will be operated by Merchants Quay Project. The new facility will provide access to clean, sterile injecting equipment and have trained staff on hand to provide emergency care in the event of an overdose. Staff will also provide advice on treatment and rehabilitation. Proponents of such centres argue that they also help alleviate the problems associated with injecting on the street, including drug-related litter. […]

On February 6, legislators in Caribbean nation’s House of Representatives voted to approve the Misuse of Drugs (Amendment) Bill. The bill, which has support from Prime Minister Gaston Browne, seeks to decriminalise the possession of less than 10 grams of cannabis for all adults, and allow Rastafarian people to legally use cannabis during religious rituals and ceremonies. […]

Employers in the state will no longer be able to discriminate against employees for using marijuana or marijuana by-products outside after new laws went into effect, and the state’s Labour Department has removed the drug from its list of substances that employers can test applicants for, according to the employment law firm Littler Mendleson PC. […]

The war on drugs is really a war on us. It is time to decriminalize all drugs and stop arresting people simply for using or possessing a certain substance. We are all using drugs, most non-problematically. How can we allow the police to target, arrest and lock up our brothers and sisters in cages for something we are all doing? […]

Victoria’s public rehab services are struggling with the demand, and private centres are fairing little better. Councils like Geelong and Shepparton have recently knocked back plans for private facilities in the face of staunch public opposition. In the midst of increasing addiction rates, many taxpayers refuse to see their money going into rehabilitation services. […]

Last month, six people were sentenced to death for drug trafficking by a Malaysian court. Two are Malaysian and the rest are Indian nationals – another country that maintains the death penalty for drug offenses. While Malaysia has taken steps to make the death penalty for certain drug offenses non-mandatory, slow implementation of the law and the retention of the death penalty means that many more will executed in the name of the war on drugs. […]

“In a country with the highest teen pregnancy rates in the region, Durana is a teen mother. She has lost her coparent and breadwinner to a state-sanctioned drug war that has claimed the lives of thousands of mostly young men.

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In 2016, the opioid epidemic claimed 1,374 lives in New York City. That’s roughly four drug overdose deaths each day. One death every seven hours. It’s a harrowing statistic that continues to soar, and New York City officials are floating an idea that so far has not been tried in the United States: sanctioned locations where drug users can shoot up under the supervision of medical staff ready to revive them if they overdose. […]

Bernie Sanders has a better idea. The independent Vermont senator and 2016 Democratic presidential contender on Wednesday announced a petition calling on Congress to “end the failed war on drugs.” “The criminal justice system is not the answer to drug abuse. Addiction is a health problem and we should start treating it that way,” Sanders wrote. […]

Human rights organizations lauded the decision of the International Criminal Court to conduct a preliminary examination of the killings under President Rodrigo Duterte’s war on drugs. Human Rights Watch called the ICC’s action as a “rebuke” of the government’s efforts to deny the existence of extrajudicial killings in the country. […]

A recent report by the Global Commission on Drug Policy (GCDP) – a group of drug policy reformers including political and business personalities such as Kofi Annan, Richard Branson and Nick Clegg – challenged the stigma surrounding widely held preconceptions about problematic substance use. Many prejudiced views are embedded in the everyday language we use around drugs. […]

A study published by the Journal of the American Medical Association in 2014 found that the ten states that legalized medical marijuana between 1999 and 2010 saw significantly fewer opioid deaths compared to states that completely outlaw pot. And in a report published just this week by the RAND Corporation, the 2014 findings were confirmed — though the new study found that the reduction in opioid deaths was the strongest in states that permitted medical marijuana dispensaries to open up. […]

International Criminal Court (ICC) prosecutors have opened a preliminary examination into Philippines president Rodrigo Duterte’s “war on drugs”, which has led to the deaths of thousands since it began in July 2016. Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda said on Thursday the examination was a review of whether crimes against humanity had been committed and whether the Hague-based court might have jurisdiction to eventually bring suspects to trial. […]

We spend millions searching for and incarcerating people for growing and selling a bit of dope. Who are we to tell someone what they should or shouldn’t do with their lives, so long as they do not directly affect the lives of others? Why not spend all that money actually helping people if they have a drug problem? […]

The San Francisco Health Commission on Tuesday voted unanimously to support the opening of safe injection sites, which will offer intravenous drug users a clean spot to inject drugs, despite the fact that this drug use is against the law and could draw the ire of the Trump Administration. This vote comes after years of hard work from activists in the liberal city who have steadily argued that it’s important to have these sites, which would have proper hygiene supplies, a trained staff, needle disposal boxes, and access to drug counseling, SF Weekly reported. […]

In a continuing effort to stem the tide of male bovine excrement from its polluting effect on our stream of rational consciousness, let’s all understand that, regardless of what opposition politicians claim, neither bill legalises cannabis. They both merely add an exemption from prosecution. […]

There is no reason why New York, a global economic powerhouse, should not be able to provide its residents with the same opportunities that are being afforded to individuals in states that are generating millions of dollars in revenue from legalization. New York State has the potential to generate billions of dollars in all types of tax revenues from the legalization of marijuana. […]

Doctors are concerned access to codeine – which is only available by prescription from today – has been cut off with no viable alternative. Canberra emergency doctor David Caldicott said the use of medicinal marijuana was an obvious solution for pain relief, which he believes is safer and more effective. […]

Philippine National Police have killed nearly 50 people suspected of using or selling drugs in the past two months, just months after President Rodrigo Duterte’s promised a less deadly so-called war on drugs. […]

The continuing arrests are part of a long pattern. From 2000 to 2010, an astounding 7,216,000 arrests were made in the U.S. for simple marijuana possession. How many lives were ruined as a result? How many people lost their jobs? Their right to vote? How many of those people lost their college financial aid? […]

Australians can look at the US and see the sad legacy of the War on Drugs for what it is: Jails full of low level drug offenders, hospitals full of opioid addicts who’ve been revived with Narcan for the third time in a day, private addiction centres getting rich off human tragedy. […]

San Francisco will retroactively apply California’s marijuana-legalization laws to past criminal cases, District Attorney Gascón said Wednesday — expunging or reducing misdemeanor and felony convictions going back decades. The unprecedented move will affect thousands of people whose marijuana convictions brand them with criminal histories that can hurt chances of finding jobs and obtaining some government benefits. […]

Drug checking can then decrease harm on a larger scale by being an early warning system for healthcare professionals and disseminating the information broadly so it reaches more than just the individual who had their pill tested.” […]

Legislation introduced this month in both the Senate and Assembly would expand the legal uses of medical marijuana in New York to include opioid addiction treatment. […]

For those who argue that cannabis is a gateway drug, they’re right. It’s a gateway to finally treating people who use and misuse ALL drugs that are currently illegal with compassion. Because it is not just those who are terminally ill who need our compassion and understanding. […]

“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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“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 it for them and preparing their oils and their ointments and stuff to relive their pain, they’re not Tony Montana, they’re not trying to make money out of this enterprise they’re trying to relive the suffering of the people that they love.” […]

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 of people who really don’t know what substances they are putting in their mouths. […]

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 take drugs and we should minimise the risk that can occur to them. […]

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 were also much less likely to share needles than individuals who shot up in unsupervised places. […]

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 users with clean needles,” Senator Di Natale told reporters on Monday. […]

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 ecstasy pills and MDMA to enhance their experience. […]

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 there was a bad batch. […]

“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. […]

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 takes a long look at just what has happened in the states have legalized weed. […]

Victorian Greens MP Colleen Hartland, who has been campaigning for pill testing to be made available at festivals and dance parties, said the overdoses once again highlighted the need for such a service. “What happens in Europe is people can anonymously give over their drugs, they are tested, and then an authority such as the health department or a police department actually issues timely warnings to people so they know that that particular drug is really dangerous.” […]

Emergency department doctor David Caldicott, who has been pushing for a drug testing trial in the ACT, said it was another example of how testing of drugs at the point of consumption could save lives. He warned while the best way to avoid harm was to avoid drugs, opioid addicts faced the most risk. […]

While in an ideal world no one would use dangerous and potentially deadly drugs, many people do. So it’s better to give these drug users space where they can use with some sort of supervision in case something goes wrong. It’s a harm reduction approach. And here’s the thing: Studies show that it works. […]

Today we’ve learned the New South Wales police detection dog unit – the largest in the country – costs more than $9 million per year. That’s not including the wages of the 6-12 officers who accompany the dogs on operations. Drug sniffer dogs have long been controversial, but the criticism has mostly focused on whether the dogs are any good at finding drugs, rather than the actual cost of the unit. […]

In the wake of Norway’s decision to decriminalise drugs, politicians from all parties should use this opportunity to take a different approach to our drug policy. By opting for legalisation, we can take the market out of the hands of criminals and raise some money for treating vulnerable users while we’re at it. […]

Even as Justin Trudeau prepares to deliver on his promise to legalize recreational marijuana, Liberal MPs are pushing the government to eliminate criminal penalties for simple possession and consumption of all illicit drugs. […]

Tens of thousands of drug users have visited the facilities, thousands have overdosed and, researchers say, no deaths have been reported. Studies show that a substantial number of drug users who visit safe injection sites end up in treatment, which is routinely offered to them. Research also has shown that the facilities help contain hepatitis C and HIV infections and are a cost-effective way to save lives. […]

The push to legalize drug checking at music festivals in Australia is gathering momentum, with a new study reporting nearly 90 percent of participants said they would use such a service, if it were available, before taking illicit drugs. Despite vigorous efforts from campaigners, health experts and the federal Greens party, pill testing is still not permitted in Australia. […]

The introduction of medical marijuana laws in the United States has led to a significant drop in violent crime. The decrease is strongest in areas closest to Mexico, where counties near the border experienced a 12.5 percent drop in violent crime, including murders, robberies and violent assaults.

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Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte’s murderous “drug war” entered its second year in 2017, resulting in the killing of more than 12,000 drug suspects, Human Rights Watch said today in its World Report 2018. Duterte has responded to increased criticism of his anti-drug campaign by impugning, harassing, and threatening critics of the government and human rights defenders. […]

Former Prime Minister Helen Clark says people who use drugs are unfairly painted as criminals, and instead wants an evidence-based system based on treatment, social services and safe spaces. Clark is one of several prominent members – including former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan and a dozen former heads of state – of the Global Commission on Drug Policy, which advocates for less punitive drug laws. […]

Doctors have warned that fam­ilies are turning to drug dealers because the process of obtaining medicinal cannabis legally is too arduous, despite the Turnbull government legalising its export earlier this month […]

According to the study, Is Legal Pot Crippling Mexican Drug Trafficking Organizations? The Effect of Medical Marijuana Laws on US Crime, when a state on the Mexican border legalised medical use of the drug, violent crime fell by 13% on average. Most of the marijuana consumed in the US originates in Mexico, where seven major cartels control the illicit drug trade. […]

Terms such ‘drug user’, ‘drug abuser’, ‘addict’ and ‘junkie’ should be avoided as they are derogatory and dehumanise people who take drugs, fuelling harmful drug policies which affect their health and human rights. These views are voiced in a new report launched on 9 January by the Global Commission on Drug Policy – a leading advocate speaking to the failures of the international drug control regime and the repressive laws it has inspired. […]

Unlike other Europeans who scorned aboriginal medicine in favor of Western medicine, Aubert studied traditional Maori medicine and incorporated it into her healing practice. Aubert also recognized the medicinal properties of cannabis, and is believed to be the first New Zealander to ever cultivate the plant in the country. The prospective saint created numerous medicinal formulations, many of which contained cannabis extracts, and sales of these popular products provided the majority of the income for her convent. […]

On Thursday, Attorney General Jeff Sessions opened a new front in the War on Weed, rescinding Obama-era policies that discouraged federal prosecution of pot crimes in legal-weed states. Given that study after study suggests marijuana availability is linked to lower overdose death rates, reduced use of opioids for chronic pain, and lower rates of opioid addiction, a stranger, more ill-advised policy is hard to imagine. […]

The fear of drugs has translated into messages for prevention that promote complete abstinence and state that all drugs are equally bad. However, providing information which is incomplete and often even incorrect lessens any chance of trust between the authorities and young people. A better way forward would be to offer honest information, 9 encourage moderation in youthful experimentation, and provide knowledge on safer practices. […]

Why are the local media so interested in publishing stories updating their readership of the latest results of the national methamphetamine wastewater analysis competition? It provides the media with an opportunity to perpetuate the so called “ice epidemic” and associated moral panic. It is worth noting that the ACIC data does not mention cannabis, giving methamphetamine a much higher profile than it deserves. […]

Speaking at a lunch hosted by the Global Commission on Drug Policy, of which he is a member, Clegg said: “I experienced coalition with the Conservatives, and I couldn’t find a sensible Conservative who didn’t privately entirely agree that the law is a complete ass and everything should be changed. […]

This is a crisis caused by drug prohibition—an unintended consequence of nonmedical drug users accessing the black market in drugs. Policymakers should stop harassing doctors and their patients and shift the focus to reforming overall drug policy. A good place to start would be to implement harm reduction measures, such as safe syringe programs, making Medication Assisted Treatments like methadone and suboxone more readily available, and making the opioid antidote naloxone available over-the-counter, so it can be easier for opioid users to obtain. […]

“Needle and syringe programmes are an important harm-reduction intervention,” says Kathryn Leafe, the current executive director of the NZ Needle Exchange Programme. “Harm reduction is based on empathy and a non-judgmental approach, working with people where they are at and however they understand their drug use.” This is the “support don’t punish” model. […]

Harm reduction organisation Know Your Stuff has been testing drugs at festivals across the country and say they have been seeing gradually more people take up their service. […]

Jeff Sessions is leaving decisions about marijuana enforcement to his U.S. attorneys. They could impose huge disruptions on the legal, regulated marijuana business, which is bad enough, but they can’t bring back pot prohibition. Sessions is fighting a lonely, rear-guard battle not even supported by his own party or the president he serves. […]