How Weak Medicinal Cannabis Regulation Created a Public Health Problem Australia’s medicinal cannabis regulation has failed to keep pace with a market few predicted would grow this fast. What started in 2016 as a tightly controlled pathway for seriously ill patients has become a mainstream prescribing industry worth hundreds of millions of dollars a year....
A Dalgarno Institute Position on Early Intervention, Diversion, and the Culture We Want to Build Queensland is in the middle of a significant drug policy decision, and the public deserves a serious conversation rather than a partisan one. The state government has proposed winding back its three-strike drug diversion program, the arrangement that gave people...
Most people associate substance-related harm with illegal drugs. But some of the most widely consumed substances in the world are entirely legal, and that legal status can quietly obscure the very real dangers they carry. Understanding legal substance risks is not about scaremongering. It is about giving people accurate, honest information they deserve. Why Legality...
Alcohol and Biological Ageing: What the Research Now Confirms Most people know heavy drinking harms the body. But new research on alcohol and biological ageing reveals something far more precise and, frankly, more alarming. Alcohol does not just damage your health in vague terms. It actively speeds up how fast your body ages at the...
For Sandi Hersh, lighting up a cigarette was as routine as making her morning cup of tea. She had smoked for four decades, having picked up the habit at 19 because, as she puts it, she simply thought it looked cool. By the time she reached her early sixties, she had resigned herself to the...
For decades, a glass of red wine at dinner felt less like an indulgence and more like a prescription. Doctors smiled, nutritionists nodded, and dinner party guests poured freely, all in the name of heart health. But a growing body of scientific evidence now forces a long overdue reckoning with what we thought we knew...
Every smoker knows the warnings about the lungs and the heart. What gets far less attention is what cigarettes do to the body’s largest organ. The smoking effects on skin go well beyond looking tired or washed out. Over time, they include accelerated ageing, impaired healing, and a noticeably higher risk of several skin conditions...
Sleep is one of the body’s most essential functions. For the millions of people living with sleep apnea, getting a full night of restorative rest is already a challenge. What many people do not realise is that drinking alcohol can make that challenge significantly harder. Understanding the connection between alcohol and sleep apnea is an...
A broad coalition of health organisations has written to Congress calling for $310 million in tobacco prevention funding at the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), warning that without a meaningful increase, decades of hard-won public health progress could stall. The letters were sent on 18 March to senior members of both the Senate...
England’s most deprived communities drink less than wealthier people, yet they suffer far greater alcohol-related health inequalities. That is the alcohol harm paradox, and a new study in BMC Public Health has produced some of the most detailed national evidence yet of how it plays out across different social groups. Researchers analysed data from more...