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...
When Can Legal Costs Be Ordered Against Police in the NSW Local Court?
Two cannabis activists who beamed a cannabis message onto the sails of the Opera House have not only had the charges brought against them dropped, the New South Wales Police Force will need to pay for their legal costs. The...
NSW Government is Fine with Placing Young Lives at Risk This Mardi Gras
The use of condoms and greater access to them was a prominent issue in 1980s Australia, as the HIV/AIDS epidemic was worsening, as was the need for clean needles and syringes for people who inject drugs, which again had the aim of...
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,...
Selling Nicotine Vapes Without Prescription is a Crime in NSW
Raids on around 60 retail stores in Sydney have led to the seizure of approximately 30,000 suspected nicotine-containing e-cigarettes, also known as nicotine vapes, as well as tobacco products suspected of being sold without paying tax, with an estimated value...
The Offence of Unlawfully Possessing a Prescribed Restricted Substance in NSW
Whilst most people know that there are criminal laws against possessing recreational drugs like MDMA, heroin and cannabis in New South Wales, it is perhaps less commonly known that possessing some pharmaceutical medicines without a valid prescription can also amount...
Dozens of Festival Deaths “Potentially Preventable” With Pill Testing, Study Finds
A just released research paper inquiring into the circumstances of drug-related deaths at music festivals in this country, has found that 64 such fatalities transpired at events across Australia over the period from July 2000 until the end of 2019. Produced...
Melbourne Mass Drug Overdose Provides the “Mandate” to Rollout Pill Testing
Eight festivalgoers were in critical condition following a mass overdose incident at Melbourne’s Hardmission Festival last Saturday night. And so widespread was the negative impact upon those who’d taken the same bad batch of pills that event medics had to...
