Government Continues Festival Crackdown and Ignores Pill Testing
Over the long weekend, 25 people aged between 16 and 25 were hospitalised after taking illicit drugs at music festivals around Sydney. This, of course, follows on the deaths of five young people in drug-related circumstances at festivals over the last five months....
Youths Demand Pill Testing to Stop Deaths: An Interview With SSDP’s Sofia Devetak
Decades ago, the Just Say No campaign was launched by Nancy Reagan, wife of then US president Ronald Reagan. Comprised of the simple idea that telling children to say no to illicit substances would somehow stop drug use, the campaign...
Keep Poppers Legal: An Interview With the Nitrite Group’s Paul Kidd
The Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) released an interim decision last year that would see amyl nitrite and other alkyl nitrite inhalants banned. This means these substances popularly referred to as poppers would be moved into schedule 9 of the Poisons Standard along...
Pill Testing Saves Lives, and Does Not Lead to Increased Drug Use
In the wake of a spate of recent deaths at Australian music festivals, the mainstream media is starting to report on the potential benefits of pill testing - and politicians from the major parties are starting to listen. The main...
Curbing Rising Strip Searches: An Interview With the Safe And Sound Campaign’s Samantha Lee
Over the last half decade, reports have indicated that the use of strip searches by NSW police following a positive indication from a drug detection dog has been become more routine. This is especially disconcerting as sniffer dogs get it wrong two-thirds...
Police Claim to Have Disrupted Drug Importation Rings
Yesterday, a 70-year old man came before Fairfield Local Court charged with commercial drug supply and participating in a criminal group after the NSW Police Force’s State Crime Command executed search warrants upon four homes across Sydney when they detected...
NZ to Implement Pill Testing, While Aussie MPs Bury Their Heads in the Sand
NZ police minister Stuart Nash said last week that he thinks independent pill testing tents are “a fantastic idea and should be installed at all our festivals”. He added that a “more compassionate and restorative approach” to illicit drugs should be...
NSW Police Treat Strip-Searches As Routine Procedure
Date of original publication 5 January 2019 The use of strip searches by the NSW Police Force (NSWPF) has recently skyrocketed. Over the last four years, strip search use has risen by close to 47 percent, with 3,735 carried out...
Man Imprisoned for Buying Drugs on Dark Web
A former A-grade Darwin rugby league player has been sent to prison for supplying drugs in the form of hundreds of MDMA tablets sent through the ‘dark web’. The Supreme Court found that 27 year-old plumbing assistant and under-eights coach,...
Representing Festival Interests: An Interview With the Australian Festival Association
Safety at music festivals is an issue that’s been of utmost concern recently. Indeed, over the last four months of the current festival season, five young Australians have died at events due to suspected drug overdoses. In response to the...
