The New South Wales Drug Diversion Scheme is an Abject Failure
The drug diversion scheme that NSW premier Chris Minns quietly implemented in February, has been found not to be adequately working in terms of diverting people from the criminal justice system and towards a more health-based approach. Known as the...
Sure, Minns Promised a Drug Summit, But That Was When Seeking Election
Guess what? NSW premier Chris Minns hasn’t been the progressive politician he’d attempted to portray he would be during the 2023 election campaign. Indeed, it’s hard to believe, after a year of his leadership, that is the same guy, who...
Legalising and Regulating Cocaine Would Be a Sensible Lifesaving Reform
Cocaine Inc, a new podcast series based on a joint investigation by The Times and News Corp, which covers the trade in illegal cocaine across six different countries that, as the narrator explains, is “an industry where the profits are...
The Drug Offenders Program: Shane Prince SC and Jim Finnane on Early Intervention
The hardline approach taken to psychoactive drugs has pushed their use underground, which causes barriers to seeking help for those who develop problematic use, as they’re admitting to a crime, while the funding of an ever-increasing habit can also become...
The Slow Drip Death of the NSW Festival Industry: A Targeted State Approach
The Australian festival industry is still struggling post-pandemic shutdown. Main stayer Groovin the Moo had to cancel its annual regional tour last February, while Victoria’s three-decade-old Falls Festival had to cancel its last New Year’s Eve event, with dozens more...
Is the NSW Police Force Actively Impeding Drug Law Reform?
The Uniting Church NSW.ACT launched Fair Treatment, a campaign calling for drug decriminalisation to be rolled out in the two jurisdictions in which it operates. And Sir Richard Branson was in Sydney to support the launch. The Virgin entrepreneur went...
Harm Reduction Coalition Aotearoa’s Dr Julian Buchanan on Legalising All Illicit Drugs
Drug law reformists in the state of New South Wales are currently grappling with a government that has reneged on preelection promises regarding changes to the jurisdiction’s drug laws, with a slated NSW drug summit to deliberate upon drug decriminalisation,...
Former NSW DPP Nicholas Cowdery Calls on NSW Government to Reform Drug Laws
“We should all be accustomed by now to government promises - before and after elections - being broken or modified and this seems to be just another example,” former NSW Director of Public Prosecutions Nicolas Cowdery said, regarding the go-slow...
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...
