Public Health

Safe injection facilities for drug users have proven effective in Europe, Canada, and Australia. Now, harm reductionists and public health advocates are beginning a campaign to bring one to New York City.

The drug reform community was hoping for a public health person -- not a cop or soldier -- to be named as drug czar. A cop is what we got, but a cop from a liberal town. Will an (arguably) progressive police chief as drug czar be as good?

The Latin American Commission on Drugs and Democracy issued a report Wednesday calling for harm reduction, treating drug use as a public health issue, and decriminalizing marijuana. The report was an intervention aimed as much at Washington as at Vienna, where the UN meets next month to plot global drug strategy.

With a budget crisis and a change in New York leadership, a politically perfect storm for reform of the state's draconian drug laws seems to be brewing. With the Rockefeller drug laws finally be repealed, after 35 years?

Word is CNN's Dr. Sanjay Gupta has been offered the position of US surgeon general. A 2006 editorial he penned for Time magazine, opposing marijuana law reform initiatives on the ballot in two states, suggests Gupta may not be great news for drug reform.

Campus drug reform activists from around the country -- and beyond -- gathered last weekend in College Park, Maryland, for SSDP's 10th annual international conference. They lobbied, they listened, they learned, and now they're heading back home well-energized to apply the lessons they learned.

With "On Speed: The Many Lives of Amphetamine," historian of science Nicholas Rasmussen has written a fascinating and enlightening history of America's favorite stimulant, and the role of drug companies, the medical profession, and consumers in making it that way.

A leading Australian drug researcher has dared to suggest young people might be better off taking small doses of ecstasy rather than getting stinking drunk on a regular basis, and that has excited cries of blasphemy!

Meeting in Vienna last week, representatives of more than 300 non-governmental organizations concerned with various aspects of drug policy crafted a consensus document calling for a fundamental shift in global drug control.

Citing an alleged link between marijuana use and mental illness, the Australian Medical Association is calling for tougher marijuana penalties. That goes against its earlier position that criminal laws don't work as a deterrent and can in fact be harmful to drug users.