Buprenorphine: Helping Prison Inmates to Stay Away from Illegal Drugs
Last year, New South Wales Corrective Services injected about 900 prison inmates a month with a view to keeping them away from illegal drugs. Injecting inmates with an opioid called Buprenorphine, or ‘Bupe’, is intended to help inmates who have...
Managing Problematic Behaviours: An Interview With Smart Recovery’s Josette Freeman
As it’s often said, the first step to recovery is admitting to yourself that you have a problem, while the second step is reaching out. And for many people, what springs to mind initially is 12 step recovery programs, such...
Reining in Police Powers: Shoebridge on His Drug Dog and Strip Search Bill
Over the last two years, unlucky commuters at Sydney’s Central Station have been confronted with NSW police officers accompanied by drug dogs. Deployed at peak hour, these officers have been equipped with screens, allowing them to strip search citizens if...
Berejiklian’s Drug Supply Regime Will Enhance Police Powers and Erode Individual Rights
Let’s face it, Gladys Berejiklian loves waging the war on drugs. When five young people died at NSW festivals over the summer of 2018/19, instead of implementing life-saving pill testing, she legislated for more ineffective prohibition laws, and attempted to...
Legalising Cannabis Would Assist Australia Out of Its Deep Recession
Australia is going through its greatest economic recession since the Great Depression. The Australian Bureau of Statistics released figures in early September that showed over the 12 months to June the economy had contracted by 6.3 percent. The downturn was...
Drug Supply Prohibition Orders: Targeting Those Who Have ‘Served Their Time’
The Berejiklian government has introduced a bill that establishes a pilot scheme that allows NSW police to place those who have been convicted of drug supply or drug manufacture under enhanced surveillance after they’ve served their sentences. Introduced on 20...
Don’t Bring the Drug Dogs Back: An Interview With Sniff Off’s Xiaoran Shi
On the evening of 10 September, the Sniff Off Facebook page alerted its close to 85,000 followers that police officers with a drug dog had been spotted at Blacktown Station. The post noted that this was the first time a...
The Offence of Supplying a Prohibited Drug in New South Wales
The New South Wales Police Force continues its target drug offences, raiding the homes of those suspected of being involved in supplying prohibited drugs and arresting several people over the past few days. Strike Force Bozos In March 2020, police...
Upholding the Rights of People Who Use Drugs Post-COVID
The onset of COVID-19 has drawn attention to many of the inequities that our social systems operate under. And the authoritarian response of governments to the pandemic has further highlighted some of the flawed assumptions that underpin the war on...
Canadian Activists Hand Out Free Drugs to Highlight Overdose Crisis
Drug User Liberation Front members appeared at an intersection in the Canadian city of Vancouver on 24 June and handed out free clean cocaine and opiates to highlight the issue of rising overdoses during the COVID-19 pandemic, as a result...
