www.bbc.com/news/article... An estimated 13,000 opioid-related deaths have been left out of official drug deaths from 2013-2022 - 50% higher than previously known. This means what was already dire numbers were actually worse than expected. But would things have been different with this info?

Call from Palestinian Scholars to boycott the European Society of Criminology #EuroCrim2025 Link below

Abolish the Home Office.

Exactly this. Let’s not give the drug war yet another tool to mask the real problem.

More information on the L&SERWFL Trophy final between Clapton CFC Women's First Team and Dulwich Hamlet Reserves at Maidstone United today 🇵🇸✊ www.claptoncfc.co.uk/2025/05/25/c...

I'm not an expert in this by any stretch, but I am uncomfortable with 'do this or stay in prison' being presented as "voluntary". www.theguardian.com/society/2025...

🔎 Special Issue Alert 🔍 This Special Issue seeks to provide ways in which we can understand drug-related violence. Submission Deadline is September, 15th, 2025. Link: www.sciencedirect.com/special-issu... #InternationalDrugPolicy #DrugRelatedViolence

As I argue in the article linked below, "concerns about immigration" are created in a top down manner and focusing on this only serves to legitimise and normalise the far right Starmer is not trying to counter Reform, he's normalising far right politics journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

Very excited to share our new paper in @ijdrugpolicy.bsky.social 🎉 In this paper we look at experiences of people who use drugs in public and semi public drug consumption environments and the need for OPCs in England.

People often claim psychedelics have been used globally, for millennia, & in rituals of psychological healing. In today's Guardian Long Read, I show what these stories get wrong & why the reality is far more interesting: www.theguardian.com/science/2025... From "Shamanism: The Timeless Religion"

Is the UK shifting its approach to drug policy? Why is drug policy more important than ever in today's geopolitics? What does global evidence say about OPCs? It was great to join Sam Lewis from the Human Condition Podcast to discuss these questions...check out our full discussion below 👇

good for booker, good for crawford, but really, this should be the top news story and nothing else is close www.theguardian.com/world/2025/a...

Trump is cutting billions from treatment and health interventions that keep people safe from fentanyl to justify increasing border control funding. Shifting funds to enforcement jeopardizes the solutions that we know work. We need to protect programs that keep people safe.

Read our full statement on the UK in the World. Labour must be a beacon not a weathervane – neither national nor human security is advanced by jeopardising the world’s poorest, nor making things harder for its most fragile states.

“The entire staff of the federal government's Office of Infectious Disease and HIV/AIDS Policy is expected to be laid off.”

We are seeking two new trustees with strong commitment to HRI’s vision and mission to join our board of trustees. hri.global/vacancies/trustee-vacancy-2/

We know immigration as a concern is a top-down construction that allows the mainstream elite to avoid tackling real crises We know it only serves to mainstream the far right further Labour (and the Conservatives) are complicit rather than an alternative to the far right which is running the show

Just out in #HarmReductionJournal: another article from our realist review of international evidence on overdose prevention centres (AKA drug consumption rooms, supervised injecting facilities), showing how and for whom they work #harmreduction #OPCPrep 1/7 links.springernature.com/f/a/hWOfNJIE...

Meet Evan Anzoo, a five-year-old boy in South Sudan who died when Elon Musk shut down USAID and the boy lost access to his HIV meds. Musk says no one has died because of the aid shutdown, but that's because he didn't look. RIP, Evan, you deserved better. www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

Which countries carried out the most executions for drug offences? 🔴Iran: 485 (79% of known cases globally). 🔴Saudi Arabia: 122 —a 6000% surge from 2023. 🔴China: unknown, like hundreds. 🔴Singapore: 8. Learn more: https://shorturl.at/bf6Td #StopExecutions #EndTheDeathPenalty

There's a lot to unpack in this very affecting story, and better people than me to do it. One thing that stands out, though: 'zero tolerance' on drugs means nothing more than washing your hands of responsibility. www.theguardian.com/society/2025...

Trump is shifting into Duterte mode — an autocrat he has admired for years. He killed up to 30,000 Filipinos during his term and they’re still flush with drugs.

Just a reminder that if you're working at a UK university and want to talk about cuts at your institution, my DMs are open. For a piece for Prospect.

PITCH: An updated version of the curse of Cassandra where she's describing things that are happening now, in front of everyone, but still isn't believed.

One of these things is not like the others

Stop blaming trump/musk/whoever’s actions on medications. Trump is not a monster because of adderall. Musk is not a Nazi because of ketamine. They are - simply and horribly - bad people. Normal, decent, non-fascist people use both of those medications to live happy, productive lives.

This feels only half right from stephenkb.bluesky.social. Highlighting the harms of *drug laws* (not just drugs) is good, but shaming people who use drugs is not www.ft.com/content/8ab2...

Great to see Timpson aiming to close one women’s jail in E&W and citing plans to move away from custodial sentences for low-level crimes. Huge news! This focus will shift to community-based alternatives to better address issues like addiction and trauma.

Does the billionaire guy who grew up in a white supremacist segregationist autocracy, and spends much of his time retweeting racists and fascists, know what the gesture means and is associated with? Who can say.

Journalists: Let’s call time on news reports that refer to drug users as ‘zombies’ (and no, using quote marks does not make it ok) It’s embarrassing and it leads the public into thinking drug users are subhuman

At last, Britain has a legal drug consumption room – thanks to one man's civil disobedience | Kojo Koram

A big day for UK harm reduction and drug policy today. I hope everyone involved is allowing themselves a huge pat on the back today. The work is never done, but anyone who has contributed to opening this has helped to save lives. news.sky.com/story/uks-fi...

Next week, the first officially sanctioned overdose prevention centre in the UK will open in Glasgow. Here's our realist review of how they work as spaces of safety, trust, and social inclusion. doi.org/10.1111/dar....

so, how's that drug war going? www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/1...

Bethlehem 🎄

So, Gerald Darmanin is now the minister responsible for drug policy in France. A man who, as interior minister, blamed people who use drugs for basically all crime in France. e.g. www.senat.fr/compte-rendu....

Drug consumption rooms are so much more than health services

If you read one thing today…please read this testimony from the first day of Ireland’s first Injecting facility.

Only took us 35 years to catch on. Better late than never, I suppose. This is a big step, and hopefully the first of many.

BBC 5Live’s only news from the Middle East just now was 12 people with ‘minor injuries’ in Tel Aviv. Meanwhile, 12 members of the same family were killed in Gaza. 7 children.

The Subcommittee against Torture has just released its recommendations on its visit to #Bolivia raising concerns over the situation in private drug rehab centres #SupportDontPunish #HumanRights

I have a lot of sympathy with this view on prohibition…only I’d add that people who use legal drugs are also othered. Especially when homeless or otherwise marginalised. Demonisation of drug use is as much about class as about the substance.

Glasgow drug consumption room to open within weeks www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

I know there’s other politics going on here, but I’m not wild about the precedent that a criminal conviction *before you were an MP* is enough to bar you from being a minister www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

Just your annual reminder that ‘needle spiking’ is an urban myth. There’s been no proven cases (outside of the spy world) I can find anywhere in the world. Public and authorities need to focus on the real spiking threats eg drink spiking.

Precisely this dynamic went on in Dublin for years. Pub owners opposing the ‘wrong’ sort of consumption site.

Very cool opportunity here 👇

Fantastic to see such a positive intro to South America’s first official safe injection site in the “extreme centrist” El Espectador this week #harmreduction www.elespectador.com/investigacio...