The National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre welcomes scholarly, rigorous debate on the matter of drug law reform in Australia. The Sydney Morning Herald's 21 May cover story (‘Two thirds opposed to easing of drug laws’) engages with this very topic.
With the release of the 2011 Illicit Drug Reporting System (IDRS) national report just around the corner, it’s an ideal time to recognise some of the heartening changes uncovered by the 2011 survey.
Among them are the shifts observed in the injecting behaviour of injecting drug users. Those reporting sharing of injecting equipment other than needles (such as spoons, filters, tourniquets and swabs) was significantly lower in 2011 than in 2010, dropping from 39% of those surveyed to 25%.
Baby boomers to Gen X and Gen Y: 'We didn’t do that many drugs when we were your age'.
It turns out this is actually true.
A paper on the Cannabis Withdrawal Scale by researchers from the National Cannabis Prevention and Information Centre (NCPIC) has been named one of the top 10 addiction articles of the past year.
The scale, developed by NCPIC’s Professor Jan Copeland, Dr David Allsop and Dr Melissa Norberg in collaboration with Professor Alan Budney from the University of Arkansas, helps clinicians monitor the course and severity of cannabis withdrawal symptoms and determine which interventions would help patients quit successfully.
Plagued by mountains of debt? Get rid of the credit cards, implement a plan to get back into the black and all will be well again.
Actually, that's a myth.
A wealth of papers and presentations continue to bust the myths around alcohol, drug use and mental health
Myth: Heroin users miss out on exercise
We should all be concerned about our laws on illegal drugs because they affect all of us – people who use drugs; who have family members using drugs; health professionals seeing people for drug-related problems; ambulance and police officers in the front line of drug harms; and all of us who pay high insurance premiums because drug-related crime is extensive.
