Advocates are still keen to bring pill testing to Groovin the Moo in Canberra next year, saying their plan to trial testing at Saturday’s Spilt Milk festival was “vandalised” by the Liberal Party. […]

Ahead of the Philippines’ hosting of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations summit, more than 270 nongovernment organizations and individuals renewed calls for a United Nations-led investigation into the thousands of deaths associated with President Rodrigo Duterte’s war on drugs. […]

Helen Clark will join other former heads of state on the prestigious Global Commission on Drug Policy. The former prime minister will be working alongside former United Nations secretary general Kofi Annan, and prominent business people and cultural leaders such as Sir Richard Branson. […]

The ACT government has ruled out an injecting room for the territory “at this time” but will be interested in the outcomes of a Victorian trial. “Notwithstanding this, we are committed to expanding access to evidence-informed drug harm minimisation measures, and will continue to monitor emerging evidence,” the spokesman said. […]

HRA Survey Media Release – Nov 2017 […]

The government’s controversial plan to drug test welfare recipients is under fire yet again, with the United Nations’ rapporteur on human rights calling the policy a “cheap shot” that will “stigmatise” the country’s poorest and most vulnerable. Special rapporteur Philip Alston also queried why the government was targeting only the poor with drug testing measures, and not tackling drug use among…

While plans for an Australia-first trial of pill testing at next month’s Spilt Milk music festival in Canberra have been shelved, the idea is unlikely to go away.  It is also clear that the old ‘just say no’ approach to drugs is, at best, not enough because there will always be those tempted to do exactly what they’re told not to do. […]

The Australian Capital Territory Liberal party has taken credit for blocking a pioneering pill-testing trial at an Australian music festival after organisers announced it will no longer go ahead. On Friday ACT Liberals congratulated the shadow attorney general, Jeremy Hanson, for “intervening” to block a pill-testing trial at the Spilt Milk festival in Canberra. […]

Acting Minister for Health Shane Rattenbury told ABC Radio Canberra this morning he’d heard rumours and was concerned that pill testing wouldn’t go ahead.However, he said the Government had “made all the right steps”. “The ACT Government has approved pill testing and believes that’s it’s a valuable harm minimisation measure,” he said. […]

Branson notes that it is “striking that in states that allow regulated use of medical marijuana, overdose death rates are lower. It confirms what my fellow Commissioners and I have been saying for years: that the most effective way to reduce the extensive harms of prohibition and advance the goals of public health and safety is to get drugs under…