Sydney needs to operate safe rooms for users, write Matt Noffs and Alex Wodak. It is an indictment of our failed approach to drugs that the injecting centre in Kings Cross is, after 15 years, the only one in the country. Australia's once bold drug policy is now stuck. Our law enforcement leaders tell us that Australia cannot arrest and imprison our way out of our drug problems. Yet as Australia struggles with increasing problems from ice use, we haven't been prepared to try innovative approaches that appear to have worked overseas. [continues 704 words]
ACROSS the US, heroin users have died in alleys behind supermarkets, on city pavements and in the bathrooms of fast-food joints because no one was around to save them when they overdosed. An alarming 47 000 American overdose deaths in 2014 60% from heroin and related painkillers such as fentanyl has pushed elected leaders from coast to coast to consider what was once unthinkable: government-sanctioned sites where users can shoot up under the supervision of a doctor or nurse who can administer an antidote if necessary. [continues 1060 words]
Across the United States, heroin users have died in alleys behind convenience stores, on city sidewalks and in the bathrooms of fast-food joints - because no one was around to save them when they overdosed. An alarming 47,000 American overdose deaths in 2014 - 60 percent from heroin and related painkillers like fentanyl - has pushed elected leaders from coast to coast to consider what was once unthinkable: government-sanctioned sites where users can shoot up under the supervision of a doctor or nurse who can administer an antidote if necessary. [continues 1493 words]
Across the United States, heroin users have died in alleys behind convenience stores, on city sidewalks and in the bathrooms of fast-food joints - because no one was around to save them when they overdosed. An alarming 47,000 American overdose deaths in 2014 - 60 percent from heroin and related painkillers like fentanyl - has pushed elected leaders from coast to coast to consider what was once unthinkable: government-sanctioned sites where users can shoot up under the supervision of a doctor or nurse who can administer an antidote if necessary. [continues 1415 words]
Across the United States, heroin users have died in alleys behind convenience stores, on city sidewalks and in the bathrooms of fast-food joints - because no one was around to save them when they overdosed. An alarming 47,000 American overdose deaths in 2014 - 60 percent from heroin and related painkillers like fentanyl - has pushed elected leaders from coast to coast to consider what was once unthinkable: government-sanctioned sites where users can shoot up under the supervision of a doctor or nurse who can administer an antidote if necessary. [continues 1392 words]
Citing a Surge in Overdose Deaths, Many Begin to Discuss Using Supervised "Shoot-Up Rooms" Across the United States, heroin users have died in alleys behind convenience stores, on city sidewalks and in the bathrooms of fast-food joints - because no one was around to save them when they overdosed. An alarming 47,000 American overdose deaths in 2014 - 60 percent from heroin and related painkillers like fentanyl - has pushed elected leaders from coast to coast to consider what was once unthinkable: government-sanctioned sites where users can shoot up under the supervision of a doctor or nurse who can administer an antidote if necessary. [continues 1491 words]
Across the United States, heroin users have died in alleys behind convenience stores, on city sidewalks and in the bathrooms of fast-food joints - because no one was around to save them when they overdosed. An alarming 47,000 American overdose deaths in 2014 - 60 percent from heroin and related painkillers like fentanyl - has pushed elected leaders from coast to coast to consider what was once unthinkable: government-sanctioned sites where users can shoot up under the supervision of a doctor or nurse who can administer an antidote if necessary. [continues 1491 words]
The Supervised Injection Rooms Are Considered for "Out of Control" Problem. Across the United States, heroin users have died in alleys behind convenience stores, on city sidewalks and in the bathrooms of fast-food joints - because no one was around to save them when they overdosed. An alarming 47,000 American overdose deaths in 2014 - 60 percent from heroin and related painkillers like fentanyl - has pushed elected leaders from coast to coast to consider what was once unthinkable: government-sanctioned sites where users can shoot up under the supervision of a doctor or nurse who can administer an antidote if necessary. [continues 834 words]
Across the United States, heroin users have died in alleys behind convenience stores, on city sidewalks and in the bathrooms of fast-food joints - because no one was around to save them when they overdosed. An alarming 47,000 American overdose deaths in 2014 - 60 percent from heroin and related painkillers like fentanyl - has pushed elected leaders from coast to coast to consider what was once unthinkable: government-sanctioned sites where users can shoot up under the supervision of a doctor or nurse who can administer an antidote if necessary. [continues 646 words]
Across the United States, heroin users have died in alleys behind convenience stores, on city sidewalks and in the bathrooms of fast-food joints - because no one was around to save them when they overdosed. An alarming 47,000 American overdose deaths in 2014 - 60 percent from heroin and related painkillers like fentanyl - has pushed elected leaders from coast to coast to consider what was once unthinkable: government-sanctioned sites where users can shoot up under the supervision of a doctor or nurse who can administer an antidote if necessary. [continues 1465 words]
No one wants another summer of deaths at music festivals. Not the organisers, the health experts, the government, the festival-goers. Nor the parents left to wonder and worry when their children go to these events. But how to prevent it? The best efforts of police, teams of sniffer dogs and the threat of arrest have failed to make a dent in Australia's love affair with "party drugs". We are many years into the relationship and use has not decreased. Meanwhile, the potency of ecstasy has shot up and new psychoactive substances are coming onto the market, increasing the risks for those taking illicit substances and making it harder for medical personnel to work out the best treatment for sufferers. [continues 414 words]
Sydney Awash With Cocaine, Ice, Ecstasy Organised crime groups have become so successful at importing drugs into Australia that the wholesale price being paid for ice, cocaine and ecstasy has dramatically fallen in the past 18 months. The NSW Crime Commission says the illegal drug trade remains the main source of income for organised crime in Australia and at present illicit substances are in "plentiful supply". Fairfax Media has learnt that the wholesale price paid by Australian criminal groups to import cocaine from overseas was as high as $280,000 a kilogram three years ago. Eighteen months ago it had dropped to $240,000 a kilogram and now sells below $200,000 and as low as $180,000. The cost for a kilogram of ice has fallen in the past 18 months from $220,000 to as low as $95,000 and ecstasy had dropped from $65,000 to $37,000. [continues 449 words]
THE emotional circus surrounding the executions of Bali Nine drug masterminds Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran is wrong on so many levels. One lowlight was the grandstanding 11th hour intervention by a group of actors telling Tony Abbott to "show some balls". But nothing was as bad as the unscrupulous opportunism of the drug reform lobby. No sooner had the shots been fired on Nusakambangan Island than the drug liberalisers started capitalising on acute media-driven sympathy, declaring the executions were proof the "war on drugs" is futile. [continues 717 words]
NSW has been hit by an ice-berg. Rates of ice use and detection are crashing through the roof and have now reached pandemic proportions. Experts have compared the crisis to the crack cocaine scourge that hit the United States in the 1980s. It's a problem that's careering out of control, and the Liberal State Government doesn't have a clue what to do about it. Trust me, I know -- because I've seen this crisis first-hand. As a criminal lawyer (who mostly deals with legal aid clients) much of my work involves defending people who are struggling with drug addiction and/or mental health issues. [continues 710 words]
The war on drugs has raged for decades with organised crime the only winner. Catherine Armitage reports. Retired Salvation Army officer Brian Watters was startled to see Mick Palmer's name on the recent Australia21 think tank report which declared the war on drugs a failure and called for a national debate on ending drug prohibition. When Major Watters was made prime minister John Howard's key adviser on combating illicit drugs, Palmer, then Australian Federal Police commissioner, was his deputy. [continues 2174 words]
DRUG Free Australia may not be a household name but its leaders claim a role in repelling further moves towards what they see as the evil of drug decriminalisation. It fears the "tough on drugs" regime of the Howard government is unravelling, with the abandonment of the school drug education strategy and declining use of community advertising campaigns. Unhealthy attitudes towards illicit drugs were "now moving upward again", the executive officer of DFA, Jo Baxter, said. Lighter-touch laws for cannabis use in places such as South Australia and the ACT had gone too far towards a drug culture of "normalisation". [continues 151 words]
It's been an interesting month in the world of medically supervised injecting facilities. In Melbourne last week Yarra City Council voted to urge the Victorian state government to consider the opening of one in the inner city suburb of Richmond. In Sydney, the Medically Supervised Injecting Centre had its 10th birthday. And in Canada, where a "sister" service operates in Vancouver, the Supreme Court began deliberating on whether it is the federal government or the provinces that has the right to run the facility. [continues 724 words]
Fernando Henrique Cardoso is not alone in recommending that the war on drugs should end. What he fails to realise is that the insatiable demand for drugs by cashed-up Western nations looking to alter their collective state of consciousness is so great that to acknowledge its extent is political poison. Add to this the burgeoning industries that have sprung up to counter the criminalisation of drugs. These would cease to make a nice living were illicit drugs off the banned list. Dr Raymond Seidler Kings Cross [end]
About Christmas 2000 Australia experienced an unprecedented reduction in the supply of heroin. The price of heroin rose from $218 a gram to $381. The purity of heroin fell from 60 per cent to 20 per cent. To that point many people thought that if heroin became more expensive, dealers' profits would increase and heroin users would commit even more crime to fund their purchases of heroin. What happened was that heroin use and crimes such as theft and robbery fell like a stone. [continues 761 words]
THE Kings Cross safe injecting centre made no difference at all to overdose death rates in its local area in its first five years of operation. Statistics show death rates from drug overdose in the area around the injecting room are no less than in other areas across NSW. The findings into the $2.5 million-a-year facility are contained in an unreported independent evaluation that studied autopsy rates. The report assessed overdose deaths from heroin, morphine and other opioids in those postcodes - 2010 and 2011 - near the injecting centre and concluded that deaths rates fell at the same rate they did elsewhere in NSW. [continues 307 words]
