Articles with category: Article
Our ‘psycho’ psychoactive substances legislation
New Zealand’s Psychoactive Substances Act has been described as world leading. But in 2014, public moral apoplexy and political disquiet resulted in a reversal of what the legislation was designed to achieve.
A court that heals
Offenders opting to come under New Zealand’s first Alcohol and Other Drug Treatment Court choose a stretch of healing, rather than jail time. It’s hard work for everyone, but it’s paying off. Keri Welham visits the Alcohol and Other Drug Tr
About a drug: Methamphetamine
Amphetamine, meth’s parent drug, was first synthesised in Berlin in 1887 by Romanian chemist Lazâr Edeleanu, but its potency as a central nervous system stimulant wasn’t really discovered until 1927.
Q&A: I’m Lotta. I’m an alcoholic.
Lotta Dann, the journalist wife of TVNZ political editor Corin Dann and a mother of three, has outed herself as a recovering alcoholic and released a book, Mrs D is Going Without, which has quickly become a bestseller.
Mythbusters: Substance and substantiation
Tobacco plain packaging laws are an experiment that hasn’t worked. Tobacco companies claim the new law has led to a booming black market for cheap cigarettes instead of stamping out smoking.
Viewpoints: So should naloxone become more accessible in New Zealand?
In the US, opiates cause thousands of overdose deaths each year. Making naloxone more readily available here would widen the safety net for overdose victims.
Decriminalise cannabis, decriminalise Māori?
That Māori are more often criminalised for cannabis use is often used as another good argument for decriminalisation. Hirini Kaa argues things are more complex than that.
Guest editorial: Towards global drug policy pathways that work
The Global Commission on Drugs proposes a new drug control regime for the 21st century. The experience of what regulation means in practice is informing policy, as Steve Rolles explains
Face Trashed
Alcohol marketing on social media is cheap, successful and legal. But researchers say New Zealand should be attempting to control marketers’ sophisticated digital strategies.
Doing LAPs
With few Local Alcohol Plans (LAPs) in place, communities are forced into being reactive when faced with new applications for liquor licences.
Shulgin was known to many as the “Godfather of ecstasy”
Alexander “Sasha” Shulgin was born on 17 June 1925 and died, aged 88, at home in California on 2 June 2014.
About a drug: NBOMe
While LSD is often painted as the psychedelic equivalent of a tie-die t-shirt, the new, nefarious n-bomb is portrayed as a potent potion of peril.