Police and Crime Commissioner Jones believes that the UK’s approach to drugs needs to change. He said: “In my policing career I have never met anyone who has caused violence through cannabis, as opposed to the hundreds of violence cases I have seen related to alcohol, which is a legal substance. […]

Few are better placed to comment on the impact of pill testing at the coal face than Dr David Caldicott from the ANU College of Health & Medicine and Pill Testing Australia. Twice, he has been part of a team that provided government-sanctioned on-site facilities at Groovin the Moo festival. “We knew it would work because it’s worked everywhere else it’s been…

The upfront cost of drug safety testing is relatively minor; indeed, a simple reallocation of public money currently spent on drug detection dogs would more than fully fund it. It would also save costs of emergency services and hospitalisations.  Drug safety testing is a proven harm reduction measure. Drug detection dogs increase drug-related harm. […]

The underlying reasons for a new policy direction are critically important and, on that, many well-intentioned newcomers to the chorus are somewhat off key. The central cause for drug law reform is not its relevance to health or the present public health catastrophe. It is a matter of correcting a social injustice. […]

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 she’d known before the Central…

A NSW coroner has called for a second medically supervised injecting room in Sydney, saying politics shouldn’t stand in the way of “sound health policy” after a young man died of a heroin overdose in a hospital toilet. Deputy State Coroner Harriet Grahame said Amaru Bestrin, 25, who cleaners discovered more than 10 hours after he locked himself in the…

The evaluation confirms that the Australian front of house pill testing model developed by Pill Testing Australia reduces the harm for people that may engage in drug use at festivals. It also vindicates our own belief and confidence in the model we can deliver. Media-Release-10th-Dec-2019-2Download […]

Dr Caldicott said health policy should be based on research, not opinion. “Telling young people not to take drugs is about as useful as telling them not to have sex before marriage,” he said. “We obviously need to do something new because we have a whole generation of young people ignoring what they are being told and a wide variety…

The criminalisation of illicit drugs is causing more harm than good, a prominent former judge has said, calling for criminal offences relating to personal drug possession to be abolished. […]

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 steadfastly refused to consider. […]