And can politicians please stop listening to Tasmania Police on pill testing? They are not health experts. They live in cloud cuckoo land when it comes to drugs although privately every police officer you speak with thinks the current “just say no” approach to drugs is a huge failure. […]

A draft of the legislation was revealed today, which sets out what the service would look like. The Bill calls for two pill-testing services to be trialed for two years: a free mobile pill-testing facility to be used at festivals and a fixed-site lab for drug analysis. Both sites would be reviewed after one year and have the potential for…

On Monday the Greens will unveil plans to introduce legislation for a two-year trial, including a mobile pill-testing facility to attend music festivals and a fixed-site laboratory that could test drugs all through the year. The legislation will be known as “Daniel’s Bill” after Daniel Buccianti, who died of a drug overdose at the Rainbow Serpent festival in 2012. […]

As countries look for ways to implement UN recommendations to avoid criminalising people for using drugs, they will need to consider different options carefully. They will, as Ireland has found, need to adapt them to their own legal, social and drug use contexts. They can do so with a fair amount of confidence that removing the harms of punishment is not likely to…

Former Australian Federal Police Commissioner Mick Palmer has slammed the country’s “zero tolerance” approach to drugs and has once again thrown his support behind pill testing. Mr Palmer told SBS News on Tuesday it’s time to find a “new way of doing business. If we continue to do what we’re doing, it’s abject nonsense, we’re failing with the best intentions…

Drug laws should be designed to minimise damage. This might sound obvious. But the UK’s drug laws – along with those of most other countries – arguably do not have this effect. Indeed there is a strong argument that in many respects the blanket prohibition, under criminal statutes, of substances from cannabis to heroin along with the myriad synthetic substances…

Dr Wodak said the country was a global “laggard” in terms of drug policy reform. He said the arguments for pill testing had already been won but young people were dying at music festivals due to political inaction. “But we’re not seeing the political change,” Dr Wodak said. “The problem is we talk and they die.” […]

A motion calling on the state government to explore a pill testing trial this summer will be considered by the Labor party. Murchison Independent MLC Ruth Forrest will move the motion to be debated in the upper house when Parliament resumes this week.  Labor Franklin MHA Alison Standen said Labor would consider the detail and merit of any motion or bill…

If politicians are going to preach and actively support policies that are “tough on drugs”, as our political leaders continue to do, Australians deserve the respect of an honest conversation with the (statistically) 37 Federal MPs who may have used illicit drugs last year, and the 98 who have used them in their lifetime. […]

“I think the social attitudes are changing towards pill testing and the harm minimisation approach,” acting Hobart Lord Mayor Helen Burnet said. “Hobart City Council is not condoning illicit drug use, nor the wrongful use of any drug or alcohol,” she said. “(But) this kind of risk-taking behaviour does occur, and there have been too many deaths at festivals over…