Aussies Spend $10.3 Billion on Drugs Each Year | NSW Launches Anti-Vaping Campaign | War in Ukraine Makes Life Harder For People Who Use Drugs
All the drug policy and related news from the past week in one place.
Hello!
Happy Saturday and welcome to issue #74 of Drugs Wrap, a weekly compilation of the top stories in drug policy from across Australia and around the world.
I didn’t manage to finish the wrap last week so this is a bit of a two week bumper edition. Hope you’re all okay with that.
There’s been a lot on, naturally, including the failed legislation in the Victorian Parliament to decriminalise drug use. The legislation, introduced by MP Fiona Patten of the Reason Party, was destined to fail however it has led to the Andrews Government exploring options for a ‘diversion’ trial that could be the basis of greater change down the line.
The war in Ukraine, now entering its fourth week, has made life far more difficult for the people in the country who use drugs. Those who rely on methadone to come off of drugs like heroin have found their supplies cut off. There are fears that Russian drug policy could be enforced in areas where they gain control which could put the lives of thousands of people at risk.
Finally, I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’ve been absolutely hooked on Power Trip, the podcast from Psymposia and New York Magazine. I detail more about it below but suffice to say that anyone who has any interest in the potential for psychedelics to benefit people through their therapeutic use needs to hear this show. The long march to legalisation, while necessary, absolutely needs to be tempered with critical appraisals like this.
Psymposia are also hosting a free webinar on the subject next week which you can attend. Details are at the bottom.
If you’re enjoying the wrap, feel free to pass it on to friends or colleagues and give it a follow on Twitter. You can also follow me for inane musings and throw a few dollars my way to help keep the wrap going.
You can also follow the Drugs Wrap Psychedelia playlist on Spotify for new ‘psychedelic’ music caught in the email filter.
Let’s get to it.
Australians Spending $10.3bn Year on Illicit Drugs
The Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission (ACIC) on Monday released the 15th report of its National Wastewater Drug Monitoring Program.
An estimated 15.7 tonnes of methylamphetamine, cocaine, MDMA and heroin was consumed in 2020-21, the fifth year of the Program.
Consumption of methylamphetamine is still dominant, well ahead of cocaine, the next biggest market of the four major drugs.
ACIC Chief Executive Officer Michael Phelan APM said the estimated street value of the four major drugs was $10.3 billion last year, up from $8.9 billion the previous year, due largely to general increases in street prices. Methylamphetamine accounted for 77 per cent of this expenditure.
Report 15 provides a 12 month and five-year overview of drug consumption in Australia which includes years where there have been COVID-19 restrictions in place.
The national consumption of methylamphetamine, cocaine, MDMA and heroin increased year on year in the first four years of the Program (2016-17 to 2019-20), followed by a marked reduction in total consumption in year five (2020-21).
The drop of approximately 4.7 tonnes from the previous year’s levels, represents a 23 per cent decrease in overall drug consumption across these markets.
A key driver of the national drug market reduction over the last year was COVID-19 movement and border restrictions, law enforcement interventions and supply and demand.
COVID-related border restrictions did not cause immediate major interruption to Australia’s drug markets, but wastewater data strongly indicates that the cumulative effect of these restrictions led to some substantial market interruptions.
‘People Don’t Choose to Become Addicts’: The Push to End Victoria’s War on Drugs
There’s been a bit of a flair up in the drug decriminalisation argument over the past few weeks which I’ll try and chart here.
Last month, the Reason Party submitted proposed legislation to the Victorian Parliament for an overhaul of Victorian drug laws that would decriminalise the personal use of drugs.
That legislation was voted down, however the Victorian Government has said that they will convene a working group with “police, health professionals, addiction specialists amongst others to give advice to the minister for health and the minister for police on possible infringement trial options."
Drugs won't become legal under a potential trial and would instead result in treatment notices being handed to users.
Sky News mouthpiece Peta Credlin has reliably come out linking decriminalisation to the Labor party in Victoria, saying that ‘liberalising hard drug use’ is the ‘holy grail’ of the ‘radical left’ and would be brought in covertly by an Andrews government. Hint: there’s an election soon.
Around these events, there has been some great writing, including this piece from Profssor of Addiction Studies at Monash, Dan Lubman in which he runs through alternative health-based approaches to drug policy instead of criminal ones.
While the legislation was never going to pass, it has re-ignited the conversation and pushed change forward, something that Patten has said was the main purpose anyway.
NSW Govt Considering Drug Law Reforms
In news not being attacked by Sky, the NSW government is considering changes to divert users away from drugs rather than sending them to prison.
NSW Attorney General Mark Speakman says he is ‘ambitious’ for drug diversion measures to be introduced "pre court" or within the the court system.
‘I think I've made my position crystal clear that we need a rethink on our approach to drugs’, Mr Speakman told budget estimates on Wednesday.
Diversion measures were a cheaper option than jailing drug offenders, the attorney general said.
It comes after the NSW government ruled out five key recommendations from a 2020 inquiry into ice use, including decriminalising drugs found in quantities for personal use.
The recommendation was ruled out by cabinet largely over the idea of ‘normalising’ drug use, Mr Speakman said.
‘We ruled that out but we have not ruled out other diversions’.
NSW Campaign Challenges Teens ‘Do You Know What You’re Vaping?’
NSW has launched a $300,000 anti-vaping campaign to apparently tackle the rise in teenagers picking up the nicotine-delivery devices.
In it, they compare vaping to inhaling insect killer while NSW Health Minister Brad Hazzard has said that anyone who switches from smoking cigarettes to vaping because of the health benefits is ‘wrong, wrong, wrong.’
Dr Colin Mendelsohn, Founding Chair Australian Tobacco Harm Reduction Association, has attempted to counter much of the misleading narrative being pursued by the state by breaking down the claims made by NSW Health.
‘Young people should not vape or smoke’, he writes.
‘They should also be given accurate evidence-based information to help them make informed choices’.
Life Success Remains High Despite Adolescent Drug Use
Young people who stop using cannabis or amphetamines before becoming adults experience life success at the same levels of those who have never used drugs, according to a University of Queensland study.
Emeritus Professor Jake Najman said the research was the first to consider persistent use, rather than the age of first consumption, when predicting adult life success in adolescent drug users.
‘We found no significant impact on adult life in study participants who started using cannabis, or cannabis and amphetamine before turning 21, but who stopped before they reached the age of 30’.
‘However, we found people who used cannabis and amphetamines at 30 had substantially lower levels of life success’.
DanceWize to Return to NT’s Biggest Music Festival
In great news for music fans attending this year’s Bass in the Grass music festival on 21 May, DanceWize will again be on site to offer free help and advice to festivalgoers.
NT Major Events Company has worked alongside the Association of Alcohol and other Drug Agencies NT (AADANT), NT Health, and the National Critical Care and Trauma Response Centre to bring DanceWize to the festival.
It follows a hugely successful Bass in the Grass 2021, which saw DanceWize involved for the first time. The evidence-based, peer alcohol and other drugs harm-reduction group will now return in 2022 to ensure music fans have the best experience possible.
This Week in Weed
D.C. Lawmakers Approve Ban On Pre-Employment Cannabis Testing For Most Workers
Moss Cass: Pot-Smoking Cabinet Minister Who Helped Change Australia
A Day to Celebrate the Women in Our Industry, but We Still Need Greater Representation in the Boardroom
Bruce Linton: ‘The Cool Part of Cannabis is There’s No Harvard Book On It’
TGA Confirms March Start for Import Reforms but Transition Period still uncertain
What the Cannabis Industry Can Learn from the Vape Sector
Costa Rica Green Lights Medicinal Use
New Yorkers With Cannabis Convictions Will Get First Retail Licenses
Construction Begins on $160m Cannabis Farm
Medicinal Cannabis Being Used by Tens of Thousands of Australians as Access Becomes Easier
Congress Overrides DC Voters, Keeps Sales of Cannabis Illegal in District
Mike Tyson’s Cannabis Line has Released a Line of Ear-Shaped Edibles
Bid to Increase Veterinary Access to Medicinal Cannabis Hits Buffers
Study Suggests Occasional Cannabis Use May Reduce Resting Heart Rate
Around the World
A Precautionary Approach to Touch in Psychedelic-Assisted Therapy
Amid the non-stop hype and ‘miracle cure’ claims that comprise the vast majority of media on psychedelics, there has been a notable change in tone over the past few weeks. This is perhaps due in no small part to the revelations in New York Magazine’s Power Trip podcast, the most recent three episodes of which get right to the heart of the psychedelic renaissance.
If you’ve not heard them yet, I highly recommend you do. They uncover that the foundations that much of the current fervour around the drugs - that I myself have participated in - are built on very shaky ground indeed. Multiple critical articles have emerged over the past few weeks, some in direct response to this reckoning, and it remains to be seen what the fallout of this work will be. I hope however that psychedelics and their applications in the treatment of mental health conditions will be allowed to be written about in such unquestioning terms by prominent journalists and academics again.
‘This Is Crack 2.0’
The extension of a Trump-era order cracking down on fentanyl copycats is reigniting what advocates call another war on drugs.
In 2018, the Trump administration issued an emergency order that would make it easier to prosecute people for selling so-called fentanyl analogues. Even as the Trump administration began embracing criminal justice reforms and opioid treatment elsewhere, the temporary order was part of a wider law-and-order crack down on new variations of the substance that had been flourishing in illegal drug markets.
The move was small, but significant, giving federal prosecutors across the country sweeping new authority to charge people for federal drug crimes, triggering onerous mandatory minimums without the usual scientific process to determine whether the novel new drugs people peddled were even dangerous.
Yet, it wasn’t just a Trump phenomenon: On Thursday, Congress reauthorised the fentanyl copycat order for the sixth time — and the fifth time since Joe Biden’s inauguration — with broad bipartisan support, extending it to the end of this year.
Instead of opposing the stricter enforcement, Biden favors making the order permanent — a move civil rights groups, public health researchers, criminal justice reform experts and other critics argue would further embolden federal law enforcement authorities and disproportionately affect low-income defendants of colour.
War Deepens Suffering for Ukraine’s Drug Users
In Ukraine, harm reduction included giving methadone substitution to ease people off drugs such as heroin. There are more than 1,300 such patients registered in Kyiv alone.
Now, as Russia wages war in Ukraine, those suffering addiction are feeling the impact on their health. Pharmacies are mostly closed and many are unable to access their medication.
Russia, on the other hand, does not accept methadone as a treatment, instead seeing it as just another noxious narcotic. When Russian forces took the Crimean Peninsula from Ukraine in 2014, they shut methadone clinics.
People on methadone reverted back to heroin and, within a year, out of approximately 800 registered methadone patients, at least 80 people had fatally overdosed, killed themselves or died of other narcotic causes.
Meanwhile in the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics, pro-Russian rebels forced people experiencing addiction to dig trenches at gunpoint, and there were reports of dealers being taken into the countryside and executed.
NZ Government To Introduce Roadside Drug Testing From 2023
Random roadside drug testing will come into force in New Zealand from next year as part of an effort to deter drug-impaired driving. Drivers who test positive will be fined and stopped from driving for a minimum of 12 hours.
It comes after Parliament passed the Land Transport (Drug Driving) Amendment legislation on Tuesday. More than 100 people were killed in crashes in 2020 where a driver was found to have had drugs in their system.
Testing is set to begin in early 2023, and will be similar to the approach to alcohol breath testing. The new law establishes new blood criminal limits for 25 drugs. The drug driving regime will be reviewed after three years.
Hernández’s Arrest Won’t Stop the Drug War
As then-Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández’s term came to a close in January, many Hondurans hoped he would soon be extradited to the United States, following the path of his brother, Tony Hernández, a former Honduran legislator who was sentenced to life in prison in the United States on drugs and weapons charges last year. But most people doubted it would actually happen: The now-former Honduran president, notorious for corruption, has remained a close U.S. ally throughout it all.
Yet Hernández, who reportedly bragged while president that he would shove drugs “right up the noses of the gringos by flooding the United States with cocaine,” had hardly begun his post-presidential life before he was arrested and taken prisoner at a police special forces base, where he now awaits likely extradition to the United States.
UNs 65th Commission on Narcotic Drugs
The United Nations’ 65th Commission on Narcotic Drugs has been meeting this week with 135 live-streamed talks and sessions on everything from the fight to end AIDS, to prison reform, and narcotics production.
The Commission has been considering a number of resolutions and the scheduling of six substances and precursors under international drug control conventions.
Executive Director Ghada Waly highlighted the need to address the ‘triple crises of conflict, environment, and COVID’ magnifying the impact of the world drug problem.
‘People in need of treatment for drug use disorders face new obstacles resulting from movement restrictions and diminished resources; such obstacles are preventing those in need of controlled medicines from accessing pain relief.’
‘At the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, we are committed to stepping up our efforts to help people in crisis, everywhere’.
You can read a list of the draft resolutions here.
1971: COUNTING THE COSTS
The UK’s harm reduction non-profit Transform Drug Policy has written an extensive article charting the financial and human costs of the war on drugs in the country. It has now been 50 years since the start of that policy, bought about with the Misuse of Drugs Act in 1971.
The act has never been subject to a formal government evaluation or review. More than three million criminal records have been issued under it, with people sentenced to more than 680,000 years in prison since 1986. Drug use has risen dramatically, while drugs have become cheaper, more potent and more available.
Elsewhere in the UK, a leading higher education think tank, HEPI, has launched a landmark report calling for an overhaul of the failed zero-tolerance approach to drug use in universities.
The Cocaine Trade is Booming, and Smugglers Have Their Eyes on a New Market
Europe is becoming an increasingly popular market for Latin American transnational criminal groups. According to a Sinaloa Cartel operator, a kilo of cocaine in Europe is worth double what it goes for in the US. And cocaine is not the only ‘merchandise’ that Mexican cartels are sending to Europe, the operative said.
The Psychedelic Selection
It’s Time to Start Studying the Downside of Psychedelics
Psychedelics And Virtual Reality Treatment Developed By Monash University, Funded By Incannex
Women (Finally) Getting More Attention for Treatment with Psychedelics
Make Room for ’Shrooms
Therapeutic Psychedelics: Mental Health ‘Magic Bullet’ or Expensive Trip?
Scholarship Fund Aims to Improve Diversity, Inclusion in Psychedelic Medicine Training
Demand Grows for UK Ministers to Reclassify Psilocybin for Medical Research
A Ketamine Clinic Treads the Line Between Health Care and a ‘Spa Day for Your Brain’
Oregon’s Psychedelic Mushroom Regulators Accused of Conflict of Interest
Keywords From Hallucinogenic Experiences Can Help Find Parts of the Brain Affected by Drugs
California Psychedelics Investors Are Closely Monitoring Oregon’s Psilocybin Market
Watch: Psychedelic Power Tripping: From Practitioner Abuse to the Shroom Boom Webinar | Psymposia
Watch: Responsible Legal Regulation: A Pathway to Good Governance and Planetary Health Webinar | Health Poverty Action
I would like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land on which I live and work, the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation, and pay my respects to elders past and present. Sovereignty was never ceded.
Thanks for reading, have a great weekend, and I look forward to sharing all the latest with you next Friday.
Have a story you would like to share in next week’s wrap? Get in touch.
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