Pitched on the grass at the Secret Garden Party festival in Cambridgeshire was a tent run by The Loop, a not for profit drug and alcohol service. For those few days it was the first ever de facto decriminalised space for possession of drugs in the UK. […]

As long as we persist in keeping drugs illegal, the violence, especially in our inner cities, will continue, and there will be an endless supply of new non-violent offenders as well as those who take violent action. Only legalization can change the dynamic. […]

There is no evidence to support President Widodo’s position. The death penalty does not deter crime. Carrying out executions will not rid Indonesia of drugs. It is never the solution, and it will damage Indonesia’s standing in the world. […]

Tony Trimingham said earlier this year that “families want services that assist rather than punish and criminalise people in a way that creates lifelong penalties”. Nowhere is our punitive, counter-productive approach to drug use more perfectly encapsulated than the hypocritical, expensive police operations run at music festivals like Splendour in the Grass. […]

In a statement, Amnesty International urged “the country’s authorities to halt all executions and to take immediate steps to ensure that the cases of all those under sentence of death are reviewed by an independent and impartial body”. […]

Some suspiciously hard, grey pills were made of concrete and several samples of “cocaine” and “ketamine” were in fact ground-up anti-malaria tablets. Even the real drugs varied dangerously in potency: the strongest ecstasy pills were five times as potent as the weakest. […]

If we can acknowledge that addiction is like a disease in some ways and very much unlike a disease in other ways, maybe we can stop trying to label it and pay more attention to the best means for overcoming it. […]

“For the first time we’ve been able to offer the testing service to individual users as part of a tailored advice and information package provided by a team of experienced workers. This can help people make informed choices, raising awareness of dangerous substances and reducing the chance of drug-related problems.” […]

Next month’s summit, the initiative of a group of MPs from across political divides, will consider how a harm-minimisation approach could be extended to today’s major drug challenges, including the rising availability and use of ice. […]

Advocates of minimising the dangers of drugs are frustrated that tens of thousands of young partygoers at one of the biggest events on the music festival calendar this weekend have no organised drug testing available to them. […]