NZ and Australia are to conduct the world’s largest trial to find out whether ketamine can cure depression. Previous trials have shown ketamine “produces rapid antidepressant effects within hours”, says research leader UNSW Professor Colleen Loo, but the long-term effects aren’t yet known. […]

Some local news agencies have reported considerably higher death tolls, some as high as nearly 1,000, in counts that included drug suspects killed by unidentified attackers since Duterte emerged as the president-elect following the May 9 elections. […]

The Sydney doctor in charge of Sydney’s lone supervised injecting centre has decried as “hurtful” and “offensive” suggestions by the NSW deputy premier that the centre was trying to “tout” for business among pregnant women. […]

Decriminalisation of personal drug use and possession not only saves public money, it has significant public health benefits, according to a report prepared by the National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre at UNSW. […]

From severely overcrowded prisons to exhausted funeral parlour operators and parents turning their own children in to avoid vigilante bounty killings, people in the Philippines are scrambling to respond to the effects of President Duterte’s war on drugs, slightly more than a month after he took office. […]

Officials hope the new law will put a dent in Colombia’s drug trafficking business by creating a legal opportunity in an industry historically controlled by the black market. The authorities believe the new law will also help attract investment and give the economy a lift. […]

President Rodrigo Duterte is exploiting the rivalry of China and the US to wage a ‘war on drugs’ that is cover for a tide of extrajudicial killings. […]

In Australia we have known for decades that although treatment for drug addiction is sometimes expensive, it is always much less expensive than the costs of escalating incarceration. As Dan Satterberg, a prosecuting attorney from King County in Washington, says: “Jail is the most expensive and least effective way to deal with drug crimes.” […]

Debates about harm reduction follow the same pattern: relentless hostility, proof that it works, then more relentless hostility. This is the ‘drug problem’ problem. […]

In the two years since the first cannabis company ad was published in the New York Times, the Berlin Wall of prohibition has continued to crumble. Today, 25 states have some type of legal medical cannabis, a total that could climb after the 2016 election. Countries like Germany and Australia are taking active steps to introduce federal medical cannabis programs.…