Legalising and Regulating Cocaine Would Be a Sensible Lifesaving Reform
Cocaine Inc, a new podcast series based on a joint investigation by The Times and News Corp, which covers the trade in illegal cocaine across six different countries that, as the narrator explains, is “an industry where the profits are...
The Drug Offenders Program: Shane Prince SC and Jim Finnane on Early Intervention
The hardline approach taken to psychoactive drugs has pushed their use underground, which causes barriers to seeking help for those who develop problematic use, as they’re admitting to a crime, while the funding of an ever-increasing habit can also become...
The Slow Drip Death of the NSW Festival Industry: A Targeted State Approach
The Australian festival industry is still struggling post-pandemic shutdown. Main stayer Groovin the Moo had to cancel its annual regional tour last February, while Victoria’s three-decade-old Falls Festival had to cancel its last New Year’s Eve event, with dozens more...
Is the NSW Police Force Actively Impeding Drug Law Reform?
The Uniting Church NSW.ACT launched Fair Treatment, a campaign calling for drug decriminalisation to be rolled out in the two jurisdictions in which it operates. And Sir Richard Branson was in Sydney to support the launch. The Virgin entrepreneur went...
Harm Reduction Coalition Aotearoa’s Dr Julian Buchanan on Legalising All Illicit Drugs
Drug law reformists in the state of New South Wales are currently grappling with a government that has reneged on preelection promises regarding changes to the jurisdiction’s drug laws, with a slated NSW drug summit to deliberate upon drug decriminalisation,...
Former NSW DPP Nicholas Cowdery Calls on NSW Government to Reform Drug Laws
“We should all be accustomed by now to government promises - before and after elections - being broken or modified and this seems to be just another example,” former NSW Director of Public Prosecutions Nicolas Cowdery said, regarding the go-slow...
Premier Minns, Queensland Is Rolling Out Pill Testing to Save Lives. Why Isn’t NSW?
Queensland has just embarked on the path of making pill testing, or drug checking, services legally available to constituents, which allows them to ascertain the content of the illicit substances in their possession, in order to have a clearer understanding...
New South Wales Introduces Fining Scheme for All Prohibited Drugs
The Minns government launched the Early Drug Diversion Initiative (EDDI) on 29 February 2024 with little fanfare, which is a shame because it does mark a long-pushed-for improvement on the zero-tolerance law enforcement approach to personal drug possession that had...
NSW and Victorian Labor Continue to Stall on Pill Testing, Despite Yet Another Death
Shortly after being airlifted to Melbourne’s Alfred Hospital, 23-year-old Antony Maugeri died of a suspected drug overdose last weekend, after having attended the Pitch Arts and Music Festival in southwestern Victoria. The death is a reminder that the last time...
Criminal Charges Against Cannabis Campaigners Dropped, Despite Police Attempts to Convict
Cannabis legalisation campaign Who Are We Hurting activists, Alec Zammit and Will Stolk projected dancing cannabis leaves onto the Sydney Opera House at 4.20 am on 20 April 2022, as a cheeky stunt, much like others they’ve conducted in the past,...
