Videos and recounts of the crackdown are horrific: 900 militarized police officers viciously stormed through the area, arresting people suspected of using drugs. They evicted people who had been accessing voluntary treatment services, destroyed tents and temporary housing that had become people’s homes, and even blocked health professionals from providing relief to those harmed in the operation. […]

Russia’s abrupt, public shutdown of substitution therapy in Crimea in 2014 is one of the oddest and cruellest stories of the annexation. Russia claimed it incorporated the peninsula to protect local Russian-speakers from what it called a nationalist, fascist government that had come to power after months of demonstrations in Kiev forced President Yanukovych to flee. […]

The argument to criminalize “street drugs,” and severely punish their sellers and users, is largely based on the assumption that a “tough on crime” approach will reduce addiction and abuse of these dangerous substances. Criminalizing drug use consistently fails to address the health problems of addiction, and drives the drug trade underground where crime, violence and death flourish. […]

“The police and the Coalition government aren’t testing drivers for the drugs like benzos and cocaine that tend to be taken by middle and upper class Australia. This is despite the fact we can see they are serious contributors to road accidents. Instead the police focus is on drugs like cannabis and MDMA that are more commonly taken by young…

There’s a better way. It’s called harm reduction. This approach focuses on reducing the negative effects of drug use rather than on punishing people who use drugs in an often-futile attempt to make them stop. Harm reduction options like supervised injection facilities or drug consumption rooms have successfully prevented fatal overdoses and connected people to treatment in cities such as Vancouver,…

“We realised the key is to convince local people who are being manipulated [by local politicians.] We try to convince people how harm reduction is good for them, even if they don’t use drugs, [and to recognise that] people who use drugs are part of the community”. […]

People who use drugs have come up with innovative strategies that help them reduce harm, including using marijuana to decrease crack use and mixing heroin with methamphetamine to moderate the effects of meth or prolong the duration of heroin’s effects, according to presentations at the 25th International Harm Reduction Conference (HR17) last week in Montréal. […]

The ink hasn’t quite dried on all the contracts, but the Loop will be providing drug testing at four or five commercial festivals. Add up all the guests at these events, and Fiona Measham believes some 500,000 people will have access to a potentially lifesaving service. All this is a result of consultations with police and local authorities, as opposed…

It is abundantly clear that the aim is not to “stabilise lives and encourage people to participate in treatment”. If the Turnbull government genuinely wanted to help people into treatment it would direct what will undoubtedly be the very high costs of this program towards treatment. […]

Targeting and excluding people who use drugs is a terrible response to what is at its core a public health issue. This idea rests on the discredited view that illicit drug use is a “moral evil” as opposed to something 42 per cent of Australians have done at least once, and that getting tough is the appropriate response. […]