Drug Driving Laws Are “a Great Wrong”: An Interview With Former Magistrate David Heilpern
David Heilpern is something of a legend in the NSW Northern Rivers. The former Lismore magistrate is known throughout the region for the just decisions he handed down in relation to residents who’d been caught out by the unjust laws...
What is the Cannabis Cautioning Scheme in New South Wales?
With Indigenous deaths in custody firmly in the spotlight across Australia, attention is also being drawn to the inherent racism present at every level of the Justice system, and now it has been revealed that New South Wales Police disproportionately...
NSW Drug Driving Laws Are Unfair and Do Not Deter
This state’s unfair drug driving laws were a major reason why former Lismore magistrate David Heilpern retired. Over the last half decade or so, the judicial officer had built up a reputation across the Northern Rivers region for his just...
Legalising Cannabis Is Way Overdue: An Interview With Australian Greens Leader Adam Bandt
As of last Sunday, the personal possession and use of cannabis has been legal in the ACT for four months. In fact, you can even grow a couple of plants at home to consume yourself, and it won’t even raise...
Aussie Cannabis Patients Left in the Cold, As Coalition Attempts to Rush Exports
“Patients in Australia needing access to medical cannabis have been slapped in the face yet again” by the “corporate-friendly” Morrison government, “who cares nothing about the suffering of our people,” said the Medicinal Cannabis Users Association of Australia (MCUA). The...
What is the Offence of Drug Supply in New South Wales?
It has been reported that at around 1.15pm, Thursday 3 April 2020, a 37-year old man from Lane Cove in the lower northern suburbs of Sydney attended a hotel on Elizabeth Street in the Sydney CBD to deliver a box...
Ice Inquiry Makes Recommendations, But Government Has Its Head in the Sand
In its final report, the NSW Special Commission of Inquiry into the Drug “Ice” outlines that the use of methamphetamine and other similar drugs “requires compassionate responses consistent with human rights approaches, rather than punitive responses that can compound the...
Good People Break Bad Laws: Illicit Drugs
Not a lot of people who’ve grown up under drug prohibition consider that going back a little over a hundred years ago, the substances we commonly associate with being outlawed were for the most part legally available. The first rumblings...
Drug Alerts: Warning the Public About Toxic Batches of Illicit Drugs
According to ex-Victoria police sergeant Greg Denham when a dodgy batch of ecstasy caps - which ultimately resulted in the deaths of three people - were being distributed around Melbourne’s Chapel Street in early 2017, the police were aware of...
“A Local Solution to a Local Problem”: An Interview With Uniting MSIC’s Dr Marianne Jauncey
UNSW criminology lecturer Dr George Dertadian released his findings last week from a study that utilised national coronial overdose death data, which pointed to southwestern Sydney as an ideal candidate for a second safe injecting facility. Dertadian found that between...
