What Drug Diversion Programs Are Available in New South Wales?
If you have been charged with a drug offence or your offending is related to drug-related issues, you may be able to avoid traditional criminal justice processes through caution or diversion schemes. Here’s what you need to know. Cannabis Cautioning...
Mark Standen: Corrupt Crime Commission Czar
A young schoolboy who aspired to be a Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) pilot could not have dreamed his adult life would be entangled with Dutch drug cartel godfathers, semi-trailer drug manufacturing operations, millions of dollars in cash. But budding...
The Offence of Supplying a Prohibited Drug Causing Death in New South Wales
The Queensland government recently approved pill testing services in the state. The move follows the success of fixed site drug services in the ACT, and a number of successful trials involving mobile pill testing at music festivals. And while other...
NSW Greens to Legalise Recreational Cannabis, and Overhaul Drug Driving
The shift towards legalising and regulating the adult use of cannabis is picking up momentum across the planet. And this global trend incorporates a few key truths: that the plant is fairly innocuous, criminalising people for its use is redundant...
NSW Police with Drug Dogs Saturate Global Mardi Gras: An Interview With Greens MLC Cate Faehrmann
The Australian prime minister marching in the Sydney Mardi Gras this year marked a stark shift in societal values as compared with the first time the event was staged in 1978, which saw the NSW police violently set upon the...
Queensland Set to Introduce Pill Testing
Queensland has been criticised in recent years for its increasingly punitive approach to crime - policies such as suppressing divergent thinking and prosecuting young alleged offenders rather than seeking to embrace free thought, address the underlying causing of crime and...
NSW Government Continues to Reject Pill Testing, Despite Deadly Consequences
Commonwealth bank employee Kiernan Ngo became the latest person to die at a NSW music festival in drug-related circumstances, following the 26-year-old having presented at Bankstown Hospital at 1.30 am on 12 February, after he’d attended the Transmission event at Sydney...
Authorised Psychiatrists Will Soon Be Allowed to Prescribe MDMA and Psilocybin
The Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) announced on 3 February that two popular recreationally used illicit substances, MDMA and psilocybin, will be available to specifically authorised psychiatrists to prescribe to patients for certain mental health conditions. Better known as party drug ecstasy, MDMA...
Ecstacy and Magic Mushrooms to be Approved for Treatment
In a major win for those suffering from chronic depression and post-traumatic stress disorder, the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) has added Psilocybin - or magic mushrooms – and 3,4-Methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA, or ‘ecstacy) to Schedule 8 (Controlled Substance) of the Poisons...
The Law, Defences and Penalties for Drug Possession in New South Wales
Possessing a prohibited drug is an offence under section 10 of the Drug Misuse and Trafficking Act 1985 (NSW). To establish the offence, the prosecution must prove beyond reasonable doubt that: You had possession of a substance, The substance was...
