Search results for: “what is harm minimisation”

  • ‘Lots of parents scared’: mother of music festival reveller who died takes control

    The grieving mother of festivalgoer Alex Ross-King is appealing to parents to ‘‘have a conversation with your kids that accepts reality’’ in a social media campaign about harm minimisation and drugs. Jennie Ross-King, whose 19-year-old daughter died after consuming almost three MDMA capsules, said the campaign was aimed at arming parents with information she wished…

  • Another Young Life Lost at a Music Festival: It’s Time for Pill Testing

    Over the coming months, music festivals will face much higher scrutiny than ever before, particularly in light of findings of last year’s coronial inquest. The NSW government remains under increasing pressure to change its current tactics for policing drugs at music festivals, particularly its stance on pill-testing as a harm minimisation measure, which it has…

  • Defence of strip searches is ‘frightening’, says ex-AFP chief

    Mr Palmer urged Mr Fuller to be ready to debate the issue, welcoming the opportunity to argue it, along with aspects of harm minimisation with the commissioner or the premier either publicly or privately. Mr Fuller declined to participate. […]

  • Pill Testing: Premier and Police Commissioner Have Their Heads in the Sand

    Pill testing has been trialled in Europe successfully for many years. In particular the Drug Information and Monitoring System operation in the Netherlands has proven itself to be a system that can assist with not only harm minimisation through drug testing, but also by collecting valuable data that can better inform festival planning and more…

  • “Gladys Berejiklian is clearly putting politics before lives”: Why I support pill testing

    To refute the benefits of harm minimisation in terms of pill testing is not just dangerously irresponsible, it is quite frankly, embarrassing.  Premier Gladys Berejiklian is clearly putting politics before the lives of (mostly) young Australians by blocking pill testing.  Let alone ignoring the recommendations of the Deputy Coroner.  This is irrefutable.  […]

  • ACT government warns feds against interfering in ‘will of the people’ over cannabis bill

    ACT Chief Minister Barr on Monday replied to the letter from federal Health Minister Hunt, saying the government did not dispute that cannabis could have adverse health effects, but that harm minimisation principles had informed the reform. “It is the government’s view however that the outright prohibition of cannabis is of limited, and often negative,…

  • Health Minister Greg Hunt rejects pill testing

    “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…

  • Coroner to watch Splendour pill test demo

    Ms Grahame is expected to receive a private police briefing at 9am before meeting with harm minimisation group Red Frogs. She will later have a front-row seat as David Caldicott – an emergency medicine specialist and the leader of Australia’s only sanctioned pill testing trials – demonstrates how drug checking works. […]

  • I hate drugs, but teenagers are dying while we maintain a supposed moral veneer

    In the present debate about harm minimisation, it’s the NSW deputy coroner, Harriet Grahame, who’s willing to identify what so many – least of all the NSW premier – just will not. In March, releasing findings from a previous inquest into deaths related to opioid drugs, Grahame recommended “decriminalising personal use of drugs, as a…

  • Parents of young man who died at a music festival hope coronial inquest will lead to pill testing

    Josh’s parents have now started a foundation called Just Mossin to raise awareness of safety at music festivals. They’re hoping the music festival coronial inquest will lead to more harm minimisation strategies like pill testing. “Change is what’s needed. We don’t believe we have all the answers to it, we hope that the coronial inquest…