People want to know what is in their drugs, that is now clear, and they respond sensibly and appropriately when given the chance. Of course we can “just say no”, don’t take them but what if they persist? The answer is “just say know”. […]

The Police Federation spokesman on drugs policing, Simon Kempton, has called for a rethink on drugs policy, saying prohibition has “never worked”. Sgt Kempton, who works for Dorset Police, said the government should consider the Portuguese approach, where the possession of drugs has been decriminalised since 2001. […]

“The court believes the testimony of Maria in that she was an innocent carrier,” Exposto’s lawyer Tan Sri Shafee Abdullah said. “She was tricked into carrying the bag because of what we now call the internet scam, internet romance.” […]

It appears that different parts of Australia are choosing considerably different approaches to drug policy. It remains to be seen if Premier Marshall’s approach will be successful at reducing methamphetamine use among schoolchildren, but existing evidence suggests that it will not. […]

The trial of pill testing at a recent music festival in Canberra was declared ‘‘a great success’’ by ACT police chief Justine Saunders. Testing illicit substances for life-threatening impurities has long helped harm minimisation elsewhere, but the trial was unprecedented in Australia. […]

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte’s bloody crackdown on drugs is pushing the country’s most vulnerable people even further towards the margins, says Global Commission on Drugs executive secretary Khalid Tinasti […]

Drug education, addiction prevention and addiction treatment should be informed not by ideological belief or moral crusade but by evidence-based research. These services must promote harm reduction and human rights. We should not be in the business of preventing drug use, in the same way, that we shouldn’t seek to prevent people from having a cup of coffee, glass of…

Federal penitentiaries in Canada will soon offer clean needles to inmates who are likely to inject drugs while behind bars, answering a decades-long call by harm-reduction advocates who say the overdue initiative prevents the transmission of blood-borne illnesses and to withhold it would be in violation of Charter rights. […]

In an editorial last Thursday entitled Drugs Should Be Legalized, Regulated, and Taxed, Fiona Godlee, editor in chief of the British Medical Journal, notes that under drug prohibition, the global trade “fuels organized crime and human misery,” and asks, “Why should it not instead fund public services?” […]

When law enforcement officers call for drugs to be legalised, we have to listen. So too when doctors speak up. Last month the Royal College of Physicians took the important step of coming out in favour of decriminalisation, joining the BMA, the Faculty of Public Health, and the Royal Society of Public Health in supporting drug policy reform. […]