Does the drug policy interpretation and implementation, reduce, remediate or facilitate recovery from substance use, or does it endorse, enable, equip or empower continuing drug use? Drug USE, the very thing that causes #harm.

Every 'permission model' harnessed by pro-drug actors to further entrench the normalisation of drug use is only ADDING to potential harms. 

The continuing misuse of important #harmreduction strategies that tacitly endorse and enable #drug use is an active undermining of the first and highest priority pillars of the National Drug Strategy – Demand and Supply Reduction. 

It is staggeringly hypocritical to state that we must prioritise the reduction of both demand and supply of drug use, then release yet another publicly endorsed vehicle to spit in the face of both these vital prevention vehicles. #DemandReduction #preventdontnpromote drug use. 

Also see

• What Every Australia Needs to Know About Ecstasy Deaths and 
• Pill Testing Goes Against National Drug Strategy  - Interview and 
• Scoring the Pill Test

A Prescription Model for Vapes: The way we ‘do’ medicines policy in Australia 

Abstract: On 2 May 2023, the Australian Federal Government announced a suite of reforms aimed at ensuring the effectiveness of the prescription model of regulation of vaping (or e-cigarette) products in Australia. These reforms are intended to protect Australians, particularly young people, from the harms of vaping and nicotine dependence. The ensuing public debate on the issue has often created the impression that the options under consideration are to either retain ‘recently introduced’ prescription regulation or to ‘revert to’ a retail supply approach. However, the sale of nicotine vapes by retailers such as tobacconists and convenience stores has never been lawful in Australia. The reforms do not seek to change the way nicotine vaping products are regulated, but rather to ensure that the existing prescription model can be effectively enforced and can function as originally intended. This paper describes the historical context and rationale for strengthening prescription regulation of vapes in this country.

Key points: 

• Reforms before the Australian Parliament aim to strengthen the prescription model for the regulation of vaping (e-cigarette) products 
• The prescription model has been in place for some years but has not operated effectively because of an anomalous regulatory distinction between nicotine and non-nicotine vaping products, which has hindered its enforcement 
• A failure to enact these reforms would not legalise the retail supply of vapes in Australia but would delay measures to improve enforcement efforts 
• Successful implementation of the prescription model for nicotine vapes could help to prevent future nicotine addiction, facilitate the effective use of vaping products and prevent illegal sales, setting a global benchmark for regulating vaping products to protect public health

Conclusion: Vaping products in Australia have not been singled out for particularly harsh regulatory treatment. Rather they have been regulated in the same way as every other therapeutic good in Australia. Australia’s prescription model has not failed because ‘prohibition doesn’t work’; rather the prescription model has not had the opportunity to operate effectively because the anomalous regulatory distinction between nicotine and non-nicotine vaping products has prevented it from being properly enforced. The current reforms are about ensuring the prescription model works as intended. Failure to support the current Bill would not legalise the retail supply of vapes in Australia. However, failing to pass the Bill would delay the introduction of measures that could otherwise start within a matter of weeks to improve enforcement efforts across all levels of government.

(Source: Public Health Research & Practice (A Journal of Sax Institute)

Harm Reduction is the final last-ditch pillar in the Australian National Drug Strategy. Its intent was to create strategies to assist those caught in the tyranny of addiction to stay alive whilst they exit drug use. Intent and implementation can often be two different things, it depends on who is interpreting and overseeing the policy vehicle. Harm Reduction is important, but it should never undermine or worse, sabotage the other two priority pillars of the National Drug Strategy – Demand and Supply Reduction. The imperative of good policy practice to deny or delay uptake and to help people exit life diminishing drug use has always been the intent and focus of drug policy, but what does the research science say is happening?

Also see 

• Tasking the National Health Strategies for Community Well-being 
• What Filters are Needed to Help Intepret and Deploy Drug Policy

China’s Role in Synthetic Opioid Trafficking: Efforts to Reduce the Supply of Precursor Chemicals at the Primary Source.

[Ever since the ‘Opium Wars’,  (https://youtu.be/7UScdK82aAo?list=PLTMqlfT-1C1x7ekCSxIhF6HMjHBqMAK6n&t=8) when opium was not only legalised and commercialised on a global scale, but actually became currency; the Chinese people have not forgotten the exploitation they experienced at the hands of the ‘West’.  One cannot help but wonder if this is not somehow a process of exacting ‘pay-back’, as well as the long standing strategy of ‘communist’ or otherwise totalitarian regimes endeavour to ‘drug the party west’ into oblivion – i.e. Red Cocaine)

Introduction and Background: The reemergence of illegally manufactured synthetic opioids has complicated the United States’ already difficult illegal drug supply- and demand-reduction efforts. Even as demand persists for heroin and diverted prescription opioids, fentanyl and other synthetic opioids have made their way into the illegal drug supply, confounding traditional efforts to raise prices by reducing the quantity of drugs available to users. It is essential to understand the challenges at hand so that appropriate approaches to solutions can be developed. The United States could be doing more to help reduce supply and should devote resources to efforts expected to produce the greatest return on investment. Of course, it is also necessary to make equal perhaps even greater demand- and harm-reduction efforts, but in this testimony, I will only focus on China’s role on the supply side of the equation.

Conclusion: The Commission on Combating Synthetic Opioid Trafficking final report and technical appendixes contain 78 enabling action items, many of which are directed at Congress and involve China. The action items are binned into five pillars: 

1. policy coordination and implementation,
2. supply reduction, 
3. demand reduction and public health, 
4. international cooperation, and 
5. research and monitoring. 

Each pillar contains a series of key actions and associated enabling actions. The Commission focused on actions the United States could take to stem the illegal flow of synthetic opioids or develop ways to mitigate overdose deaths. 

For complete presentation click here

With a growing voice for greater permission for illicit substance use in some cultures and entrenched addiction for profit industries like Big Alcohol and Big Cannabis, where should the policy priorities lie?

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