Addiction Treatment

Cambodia's "drug treatment" centers are the scene of torture, rape, and abuse, said Human Rights Watch in a scathing report Monday calling for them to be shut down. Oh, and they don't do much drug treatment, either.

At least seven heroin users have died from dope contaminated with anthrax in Scotland, and one in Germany. Harm reductionists and public health experts are demanding that government respond with more than "quit using."

New York City and national media have been abuzz all week over a city health department pamphlet that provides harm reduction tips to injection drug users. But despite the offensive led by a right wing tabloid and a handful of professional drug warriors, harm reduction won the battle -- but what about the larger war?

The Vancouver NAOMI study showed that heroin maintenance worked for some hard-core addicts not amenable to methadone or other forms of drug treatment. But now, plans to build on NAOMI with further research in Vancouver and Montreal have hit a snag, with the Quebec provincial government refusing to pay its share.

The Drug Policy Alliance's 2009 International Drug Policy Reform Conference took place in Albuquerque last weekend. It was quite a show. Here's a scene report.

The Drug Policy Alliance's 2009 International Drug Policy Reform Conference got underway Thursday in Albuquerque, and it looks like the biggest yet. Here's an initial report from the conference opening. Look for much more next week, too.

Nearly a quarter of a million American veterans were behind bars in 2004, many of them for drug abuse-related offenses, a new report finds. While the military, the Veterans Administration, and other agencies are taking some steps to help them, there is much more that could -- and should -- be done.

In an address to an international health conference in Vietnam, the UN's top health rights official slammed forced "rehab camps" and called for decriminalizing drug use. As many as half million people could be locked up in punitive, old-school mass detoxification camps.

Faced with high levels of methamphetamine use, the New Zealand government is moving to require prescriptions for cold and flu medications containing pseudoephedrine, and just in time for the swine flu. It's got some other anti-meth measures coming, too.

It's been 20 years since Janet Reno established the first drug court in Miami. Now, there are more than 2,100 of them, but the nation's leading criminal defense attorneys' group says they are distorting justice and need serious reforms.