Category Archives: Drugs

Company advertising and selling bubblegum-flavoured cannabis vape products in Australia under investigation

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Exclusive: Ethically Enhanced website sold Hubba Bubba-flavoured vapes containing cannabidiol, as owner of bubblegum brand considers legal action

A company advertising brightly packaged Hubba Bubba-flavoured cannabis vape products to Australians through sponsored TikTok posts and selling them without checking for ID or requiring a prescription is being investigated by the country’s drug regulator.

The Therapeutic Goods Administration confirmed it was investigating the content and owners of the Ethically Enhanced website, which sells vapes containing cannabidiol under the name Temple CBD Australia. A TGA spokesperson said the regulator would now “determine the most appropriate regulatory action”.

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US charges 28 members of Mexico’s Sinaloa cartel including El Chapo’s sons

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Charges filed against cartel leaders, alleged chemical suppliers, lab managers, traffickers and others in fentanyl investigation

The US justice department has charged 28 members of Mexico’s powerful Sinaloa cartel, including sons of notorious drug lord Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, in a sprawling fentanyl-trafficking investigation.

The attorney general, Merrick Garland, announced the charges on Friday alongside the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) chief, Anne Milgram, and other top federal prosecutors. The charges were filed against cartel leaders, as well alleged chemical suppliers, lab managers, fentanyl traffickers, security leaders, financiers and weapons traffickers.

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Melbourne’s new combined addiction and mental health treatment centre ‘a no-brainer’

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The creation of a facility such as the Hamilton centre was a key finding of Victoria’s mental health royal commission

When Benn Veenker first confided in his GP about his struggle with depression and alcohol, he was holding back the full extent of his addictions.

“I was so scared of being able to say to somebody, ‘I can’t get through a day without drinking’,” he remembers.

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Pat Dodson takes leave from Senate – as it happened

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This blog is now closed.

Former Tasmanian Liberal premier condemns party’s opposition to voice

Tasmania is the last Liberal state government left in the country and its former premier has taken to social media this morning to speak out against the federal party’s decision to oppose the voice to parliament.

Should the Liberal party maintain its opposition to the voice it will simply accelerate its increasing irrelevance.

I have asked for Cyber Security NSW to issue advice to NSW government employees, to implement this change as soon as possible.

I will no longer be using TikTok.

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Mexican president bemoans ‘rude’ US fentanyl pressure in plea to Xi Jinping

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Andrés Manuel López Obrador asks China to curb exports of opioid after lengthy denunciation of similar calls from US

Mexico’s president has written to his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, urging him to help control shipments of fentanyl, while also complaining of “rude” US pressure to curb the drug trade.

President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has previously said that fentanyl is the US’s problem and is caused by “a lack of hugs” in US families. On Tuesday he read out the letter to Xi dated 22 March in which he defended efforts to curb supply of the deadly drug, while rounding on US critics.

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FDA approves overdose-reversing Narcan for sale without prescription

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Move seen as a key strategy to control the US overdose crisis, which has been linked to more than 100,000 deaths a year

The US Food and Drug Administration on Wednesday approved selling naloxone without a prescription, setting the overdose-reversing drug on course to become the first opioid treatment drug to be sold over counters in the US.

It is a move some advocates have long sought as a way to improve access to a life-saving drug, though the exact impact will not be clear immediately.

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Amsterdam tells young British men who want a ‘messy’ weekend to stay away

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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.

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Rishi Sunak to ignore independent advice and ban laughing gas in UK

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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.

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Mysterious death of New York fashion designer ruled as homicide

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Kathryn Marie Gallagher’s July 2022 death linked to ‘drug-facilitated theft’ after medical examiner’s findings of intoxication

The death of a rising New York fashion designer last year could be linked to a spate of “drug-facilitated theft” crimes in the city, authorities have revealed.

A mystery has surrounded the death of Kathryn Marie Gallagher, 35, since she was found dead in her apartment on Manhattan’s Lower East Side on 24 July last year.

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Rise of slimming jabs could lead to overseas trips to remove excess skin, UK surgeons warn

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Exclusive: Surgeons raise concerns that people using jabs are unaware of risks of redundant skin

From unbearable side-effects to cravings curbed: readers on weight-loss jabs

A surge in the number of people using slimming jabs to lose weight could lead to a rise in patients travelling abroad for tummy tucks or other surgery to remove excess skin, surgeons have said.

Drugs such as liraglutide and semaglutide, which could help people reduce their weight by more than 10%, have been approved for use on the NHS for certain groups of people with obesity, although supplies of the latter under the brand name Wegovy have yet to arrive in the UK.

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Five NSW men charged after methamphetamine worth $15m allegedly found on ‘black flight’ from PNG

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Plane intercepted at airstrip in rural Queensland after police allege aircraft was flown under the radar with 52kg of meth on board

A “black flight” allegedly carrying more than $15m worth of methamphetamine from Papua New Guinea has been halted by Australian federal police in rural Queensland allegedly on its way to New South Wales.

The light aircraft landed at an airstrip in the central Queensland town of Monto to refuel on Tuesday when officers swooped and made five arrests.

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Fake eyelash remover used as party drug delisted from Amazon after Sydney WorldPride ban

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Police confiscated bottles of drug known as GBL, which can be sold under a loophole for industrial purposes

A fake eyelash remover has been removed from sale on Amazon and was banned from parties during Sydney WorldPride due to people using it as a party drug.

Warnings were placed outside the entrances to events such as the Bondi Beach party, which was host to 12,000 revellers during recent WorldPride celebrations, telling revellers not to bring in the cosmetic product, with an image of the product with a red cross next to it.

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Australia spends billions ‘failing to police’ cannabis that earns black market $25bn a year, Greens say

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David Shoebridge says legalising the drug would bring in $28bn in tax revenue in first decade

Australia’s cannabis industry could be earning the black market $25bn a year and, rather than policing it, we could be gaining revenue from it by legalising it, Greens senator David Shoebridge has said.

“Law enforcement is spending billions of public dollars failing to police cannabis, and the opportunity here is to turn that all on its head by legalising it,” he said.

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Cocaine smuggling and production at record high since pandemic retreat

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New UN report says there has been a 35% spike in 2020-21 in the production of coca, the drug’s base ingredient

South American drug cartels have capitalised on the retreat of the Covid-19 pandemic to produce and smuggle record amounts of cocaine around the world.

Production of coca, the drug’s base ingredient, spiked 35% in 2020-21, surpassing pre-pandemic levels, according to a new report from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).

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Two Americans kidnapped in Mexico found dead, officials say

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Two killed, third person injured and fourth unharmed after quartet traveling for cosmetic surgery were seized in Tamaulipas

Two of four Americans kidnapped in northern Mexico have been found dead, authorities said on Tuesday, while their two compatriots were found alive, bringing to an end the frantic search that had captivated media attention on both sides of the border.

The governor for Mexico’s northern Tamaulipas state, Américo Villarreal, confirmed the news at a press conference on Tuesday afternoon, adding that one person who had been found watching over the victims was in custody.

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Bags containing 2.3 tonnes of cocaine wash up on Normandy coast

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Drug with street value of £133m found in two batches of watertight packages

Sealed bags containing a total of 2.3 tonnes of cocaine have washed up on the northern French coast in the past few days, a source with knowledge of the find has said.

The drug was found in two batches of watertight packages on the Normandy coast, one on Sunday and one on Wednesday, the source told Agence France-Presse on Thursday.

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‘They were shot in the head’: morgue gives up truth of Rodrigo Duterte’s drug war

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Crusading pathologist Raquel Fortun finds evidence of multiple murder at the direction of ‘a madman’ in the exhumed remains of young Filipinos

It was in an old university stockroom, with wooden tables salvaged from a junkyard, that Raquel Fortun began to investigate the merciless crackdown launched under the former Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte.

Fortun, one of only two forensic pathologists in the country, has now spent more than 18 months examining the exhumed remains of dozens of victims of the so-called “war on drugs”, revealing serious irregularities in how their postmortems were performed – including multiple death certificates that wrongly attributed fatalities to natural causes.

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US agency to reverse Covid-19 policy for frequently abused prescription drugs

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Patients using Adderall, OxyContin and other medicines with ‘high potential for abuse’ will be required to physically visit a doctor

The US Drug Enforcement Administration has proposed rules that would again require patients to visit doctors in-person to obtain prescriptions for certain medications that are frequently abused.

The announcement seeks to reverse policy changes made during the Covid-19 pandemic which allowed doctors to prescribe controlled drugs such as Adderall and OxyContin through virtual tele-health appointments.

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Police seek men rescued clinging to esky off WA coast after over 300kg of cocaine found ashore

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Authorities are requesting public assistance to locate the three men who told authorities their boat capsized while fishing

Three men are being sought after police found about 365kg of cocaine off Western Australia’s south coast.

The men were found clinging to an esky in the ocean off Albany on 1 February, telling authorities their boat had capsized while they were fishing.

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Australian approval of MDMA and psilocybin a ‘baby step in the right direction’, medical experts say

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Psychiatrists cautiously welcome decision as Australia becomes the first country to officially recognise psychedelics as medicines

Psychiatrists have cautiously welcomed the ability to prescribe MDMA and psilocybin, saying it’s a “baby step in the right direction”.

The Therapeutic Goods Administration announced on Friday that, from July, approved psychiatrists would be able to prescribe MDMA (ecstasy) for post-traumatic stress disorder and psilocybin (found in magic mushrooms) for treatment-resistant depression.

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