NSW Labor Is Continuing to Refuse Major Drug Law Reform Despite Election Promises
According to veteran NSW drug law reformist Dr Alex Wodak, it’s “an open secret that most of the NSW cabinet now support major drug law reform”. This suggests that the recent 2024 NSW Drug Summit was “designed to not recommend...
NSW Government Finally Agrees to Trial Pill Testing at Music Festivals
The Minns government announced on Thursday, 19 December, that it “will commence a music festival-based pill testing trial in early 2025”, with the aim of reducing “risks and harms associated with illicit drug use”, and with this, the decade-long refusal...
NSW Fails to Embrace Harm Minimisation, Preferring to Continue the Futile War on Drugs
This week’s New South Wales Drug Summit gave many people hope that our state would finally move away from the failed war on drugs and embrace drug minimisation measures such as decriminalisation and pill testing. But drug law reform experts...
Verdict Is In: The 2024 NSW Drug Summit Was Designed to Be an Abject Failure
“Nothing worthwhile ever comes out of an echo chamber,” said NSW premier Chris Minns, as he opened two days of NSW Drug Summit proceedings on Gadigal land at Sydney’s ICC on 4 December 2024. “We want different perspectives. We want...
Duopoly Killjoys Cannabis Bill, as Historic First Vote Takes Place in Federal Parliament
NSW Greens Senator David Shoebridge is the first federal parliamentarian to have brought on a parliamentary vote on the question of legalising cannabis before Australian parliament, and there is a hell of a lot of people in the community that...
NSW Parliamentary Inquiry Recommends Immediate Steps Towards Decriminalising Cannabis
Despite NSW premier Chris Minns’ stated refusal to progress drug decriminalisation laws in this state, the NSW parliamentary committee inquiry into the impact of the regulatory framework for cannabis in NSW, has recommended steps towards the decriminalisation of the illegal...
Taking Pollies on a Journey: Uniting’s Emma Maiden on the Promise of the NSW Drug Summit
The long-sought-after 2024 NSW Drug Summit will open this Friday in the southwestern regional town of Griffith, prior to moving on to the Northern Rivers town of Lismore for a day of hearings next Monday, and over the 4th and...
NSW Police Are Strip Searching Around 100 Civilians at Public Train Stations Annually
New South Wales police officers accompanied by drug detection dogs randomly searching commuters at train stations have been part of life in Sydney since NSW parliament passed laws coming into effect in February 2002, that permitted the warrantless use of...
Moving Away from War Against Drugs Brings Enormous Benefits
The global failure of the decades-long war on drugs has resulted in a myriad of issues for jurisdictions that continue to plough resources into enforcement and retain a model which sees addiction as a criminal law problem rather than a...
“The Majority of Strip Searches Are Illegal”: An Interview with Redfern Legal Centre’s Sam Lee
The NSW Police Force conducted 2,487 strip searches in the field across this state over the financial year 2022-23. And of these searches 13.8 percent were conducted upon First Nations people, despite the Indigenous community only accounting for 3.4 percent...
