Rabbits Eat Lettuce festival, near Warwick, held Australia’s first multi-day festival clinic last weekend
The organisers of Queensland’s first festival pill-testing service say many drugs sold as MDMA turned out to be other substances including one recently dubbed “Canberra ketamine”.
The Rabbits Eat Lettuce festival, near Warwick, held the first multi-day festival clinic in Australia on the weekend, after two patrons died at the same event in 2019.
Continue reading...Prime minister says he told Li Qiang, the Chinese prime minister, at G20 that Chinese interference with the work of parliament will ‘never be tolerated’
Simon Clarke, who was the levelling up secretary during the Liz Truss premiership, has defended the government’s decision not to explicitly label China as a threat. In posts on X, or Twitter as many of us still call it, he said:
There are legitimate reasons why it is difficult for ministers to say China is a threat – that’s the nature of international relations. What matters more than words is that our policy choices change to reflect the undoubted danger of China’s actions.
Here I think the Government’s record stands up pretty well. You have the soft power of our new Pacific trade bloc membership in the CPTPP (which notably does not include China) and you have the hard power of the new AUKUS alliance - itself a response to Chinese aggression.
Continue reading...Neuropsychologists and psychiatrists argue the evidence for broad-scale implementation of psychedelic drug use is insufficient
The decision by Australia’s drugs regulator to allow authorised psychiatrists to prescribe psychedelic drugs is “questionable, if not concerning”, and likely driven by the influence of lobby groups instead of health experts, mental health researchers say.
As of 1 July, authorised psychiatrists have been able to prescribe medicines containing psilocybin for treatment-resistant depression, and MDMA for post-traumatic stress disorder. The decision by the Therapeutic Goods Administration followed public consultation, a report from an expert panel and advice received from a medicines advisory committee.
Continue reading...Andrews government bought a Flinders Street site for $40.3m in 2021, but it has sat empty since
Victoria risks falling behind the rest of the world if it fails to expand on the success of its safe injecting room in Richmond, according to the head of an international harm minimisation group.
The executive director of London-based Harm Reduction International, Naomi Burke-Shyne, is in Melbourne for the organisation’s annual conference and has called on the Andrews government to provide a promised second safe injecting facility in the CBD.
Continue reading...In bid to reduce nuisance behaviour ads will be triggered if people search online for terms such as ‘stag party Amsterdam’
The city of Amsterdam is geo-targeting a campaign to tell young British men wanting a “messy” weekend to stay away.
Research has suggested these Britons aged 18-35, and Dutch men of a similar age, tend to cause most nuisance in the red light district, with stag parties, pub crawls and all-night drink and drug benders making life unbearable for residents.
Continue reading...Police will also have greater drug testing powers as part of crackdown on antisocial behaviour
The sale of nitrous oxide, or laughing gas, to the public will be banned and the police will be given enhanced drug-testing powers as part of Rishi Sunak’s attempt to crack down on antisocial behaviour “with urgency”.
The levelling up secretary, Michael Gove, said the proposals would stop parks being turned into drug-taking arenas, and would help ministers stamp out antisocial behaviour.
Continue reading...Explainer: doctors say the drugs can help patients work through psychotherapy for PTSD – a condition that will affect one in five people in their lifetimes
From July, psychiatrists will be able to prescribe MDMA (ecstasy) and psilocybin (found in magic mushrooms) for mental health disorders.
There have long been predictions that psychedelics could “transform” psychiatry, and many clinical trials around the world have had promising results.
Continue reading...Suella Braverman pushing plan to change law on nitrous oxide as part of crackdown on antisocial behaviour
The Home Office is preparing to introduce a long-mooted ban on the sale or possession of nitrous oxide, one of the most popular recreational drugs among young people, as part of a wider crackdown on antisocial behaviour.
The plan is being pushed by the home secretary, Suella Braverman, according to officials, and would lead to people found with laughing gas, which is usually inhaled from balloons filled via small metal cylinders, facing prosecution.
Continue reading...The once-banned drug is now on sale at market stalls, beach clubs and even hotel receptions. But the laws in this ‘pot paradise’ are blurry
A distinctive sweet smell wafts through Fisherman’s Village night market on the Thai island of Koh Samui, drifting up between the sticky mango rice stalls and bucket cocktail vans. The Samui Grower cannabis stall is doing swift business tonight. A table is laid with glass jars, each displaying a different flowering green bud, with labels saying things like ‘‘Road Dawg’ hybrid THC25% 850TBH/gram”.
Elsewhere on the island, at Chi beach club, tourists lie on couches puffing ready-rolled joints and munching pizzas topped with green cannabis leaves. On Instagram, the Green Shop Samui offers a marijuana menu of fantastically named buds: Truffle Cream, Banana Kush and Sour Diesel, alongside hemp cookies and cannabis herbal soap.
Continue reading...Truth commission’s report, touted as a chance to heal after half a century of bloodshed, called for a ‘substantial change in drug policy’
The punitive, prohibitionist war on drugs helped prolong Colombia’s disastrous civil war, the country’s truth commission has found, in a landmark report published on Tuesday as part of an effort to heal the raw wounds left by conflict.
The report, titled “There is a future if there is truth” was the first instalment of a study put together by the commission that was formed as part of a historic 2016 peace deal with the leftist rebels of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc).
Continue reading...Analysis: whether Britain should recognise Afghanistan’s new regime, and how soon, is a fraught question for officials
With the Taliban now firmly in control of most of Afghanistan, British government figures have been wrestling with what that means for everything from counter-terrorism to the drugs trade and aid.
How soon should Britain’s battlefield foes be recognised as the de facto rulers of Afghanistan? What attitude should the UK take to the burgeoning resistance coalescing around former Afghan government figures as the threat of renewed civil war looms?
Continue reading...The city’s plan to reduce overdose deaths needs support from Canada’s government – but Justin Trudeau is likely to be reluctant
Vancouver has set the stage for a showdown with Canada’s federal government by moving to become the first city in the country to decriminalize street drugs – setting itself on a collision course with Justin Trudeau, who has so far declined to pursue the option.
The city’s council voted unanimously last week to ask the federal government in Ottawa for an exemption to the country’s criminal code, which, if granted, would remove the threat of criminal sanctions for possessing small amounts of street drugs for personal use within a city.
Continue reading...Morgan Goodridge was one of 900 British Columbians to die of an overdose this year, more than four times the number killed by coronavirus
Kathleen Radu thought her son was getting better.
After three stints in private drug treatment programs, Morgan Goodridge was stable again. His prescription drug-replacement treatments seemed to be working. He had just bought his first car, and hadn’t used street drugs in five months.
Continue reading...As more troops self-medicate with psychedelic drugs to help with PTSD, a group of experts lobby for proper clinical trials
A growing number of soldiers suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder are turning to “magic mushrooms” and LSD to treat their condition. But drug laws make it almost impossible to establish whether they work.
Now a new body, the Medical Psychedelics Working Group, a consortium of experts, academics, researchers, policy specialists and industry partners, is to begin lobbying for a change in the law so that scientists can conduct clinical trials.
Continue reading...Exclusive: experts have queried methods of Narconon, which has given talks in UK schools
Amazon has agreed to channel funds to a controversial drug rehabilitation charity linked to the Church of Scientology, the Guardian has learned.
The web giant will make donations to Narconon – which runs programmes for drug addicts based on the teachings of the Scientology founder, L Ron Hubbard – when supporters buy products through the site, with shoppers able to pledge 0.5% of purchases to selected charities under Amazon’s “Smile” feature.
Continue reading...Gunmen massacred up to nine members of a family, most of them believed to be children, in Mexico on Monday. These victims’ ages, and reported US citizenship, propelled the story into the headlines. But this is a country where nearly 100 people are murdered each day, one every 15 minutes, and many deaths go unmarked.
Donald Trump, via Twitter, called on Mexico to “wage WAR on the drug cartels”. That disastrous strategy, first unleashed in 2006 in response to an explosion of violence, only exacerbated the problem – fracturing cartels into smaller factions battling for power. Two hundred thousand deaths later, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, popularly known as Amlo, took power vowing to use “hugs not bullets” to bring peace.
Continue reading...President Rodrigo Duterte’s violent crackdown has left 20,000 dead, and in a devout country, he has repeatedly hurled insults at bishops, the pope – and even God. But only a handful of Catholic activists are brave enough to speak out. By Adam Willis
One of the most famous victims – and a rare survivor – of Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte’s war on drugs is a 30-year-old pedicab driver named Francisco Santiago Jr. In September 2016, while cycling through central Manila, Santiago was abducted by a Philippine national police (PNP) officer posing as a passenger. Santiago’s name was not on the “kill list” of the PNP’s now-infamous drug-sting operation known as Oplan Tokhang, or “Operation Knock and Plead”, but he had become a target, nonetheless.
After he was taken to a police station and beaten for the better part of a day, Santiago was led back into the streets and shot multiple times, suffering wounds to his chest and arms. Thinking him dead, one officer approached Santiago and placed a pistol next to his hand. Santiago waited, barely breathing as blood pooled around him, until he heard the hurried sounds of journalists arriving at the scene. He sat up, pleading for his life and waving his blood-soaked arms in surrender. By the next morning, local newspapers had already assigned Santiago a new name: Lazarus.
Continue reading...Twenty seven per cent rise to 1,187 deaths puts country on par with US in terms of per capita fatalities
Scotland’s drug-related death toll has increased by 27% over the past year to reach a record high of 1,187, putting the country on a par in terms of the fatality rate per capita with the United States, where synthetic opioids like fentanyl have devastated drug-using populations.
The death rate is now more than three times that of England and Wales, and has more than doubled since 2008, when there were 574 deaths.
Continue reading...The musky aroma hits you from the car park at the headquarters of Canopy Growth, the world’s largest cannabis company.
Inside this nondescript warehouse – an abandoned Hershey’s chocolate factory in Smiths Falls, Canada – awaits the stuff of a stoner’s wildest dreams. Myriad rooms teem with row upon row of bushy marijuana plants at various stages of maturity, under intense lamplight, swaying in the breeze of dozens of fans.
Continue reading...