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…

“This decision shows great leadership,” said Australian Lawyers Alliance spokesperson, Greg Barns. “The Council is sensibly responding to the strong medical evidence that shows pill testing will save lives, and to the growing wave of support for this approach.” However, the ALA is disappointed that the state government is refusing to re-consider its position on pill testing. […]

Ms Ross-King also saw a demonstration by proponent David Caldicott showing how pill testing works. She believes that if pill testing was available her daughter would have used it, and she does not think widespread testing would encourage drug taking. “They just say this will harm you. And they say that straight up, there’s no green light from what I’m…

Legalising pill testing won’t green light illicit drugs or normalise their use, a drug addiction academic has told a NSW inquest. Ahead of her attendance at the annual north coast Splendour in the Grass music festival, Deputy State Coroner Harriet Grahame on Friday heard from three expert witnesses on the impacts of legalising such services. […]