There is a particular kind of document produced by modern bureaucracies which manages, with great skill, to describe catastrophe while avoiding any responsibility for it. The latest quarterly bulletin from Public Health Scotland, comfortably situated within the expanding landscape of state-funded bodies often grouped under the ‘quango’ label, is a near perfect example. It tells...
Supervised consumption sites were sold as a disciplined, tightly monitored answer to the overdose crisis. In Alberta, the evidence suggests something far messier: weak oversight, fuzzy statistics, rising disorder, and a public policy that keeps asking citizens to trust what it does not fully measure. The claim that these facilities are “safe” has become a rhetorical...
Scientists in Israel have just engineered a tobacco plant to grow five psychedelic drugs at once. They call it pharmaceutical progress. They call it a simpler, more sustainable route to medicine. Yet what they have actually built, beneath the language of research and therapeutic potential, is a more efficient delivery system for psychotropic compounds that...
On the morning of 8 May 1976, something quietly extraordinary took place inside a Washington, D.C. hotel ballroom. Fifty-two well-known Americans stepped forward and told the truth about their lives. Among them were astronaut Buzz Aldrin, actor Dick Van Dyke, and Senator Harold Hughes. They were in recovery from alcoholism. Many had never said so...
Is Indiana Drug Policy at a Turning Point? Indiana has long held its ground on drug policy, but that resolve is now wavering. Cannabis regulation in Indiana faces its biggest test yet. In a March 2026 fireside chat, Governor Mike Braun described himself as “kind of agnostic” on medical marijuana, noting that four neighbouring states...
Walk into any well-stocked bookstore today and you will almost certainly find a dedicated corner for what has become known as “Quit Lit”, a growing shelf of memoirs shaped around humour in recovery literature, or the noticeable absence of it. The category has exploded over the past decade. It has also, largely, stayed serious. Very...
Child Drug Safety: A National Reckoning Begins Across the United States, a quiet reckoning is under way. State governments once embraced a hands-off approach to child drug safety. Now they are confronting an uncomfortable truth: voluntary support without accountability has cost young children their lives. The evidence is impossible to ignore. New Mexico Governor Michelle...
By Geraldine Casey From the ‘Broken Communities’ Special Series The Australian Government Department of Health and Ageing has, under both Labor and Liberal administrations, deliberately suppressed every fact about cannabis since 1993. As Brisbane Cannabis Expert Doctor Stuart Reece can attest. I am constantly aware of the hundreds of Australian mothers whose hearts are broken...
A growing backlash against recreational cannabis is gaining momentum across America, with Massachusetts poised to become the first state to attempt marijuana legalisation reversal, a move that could reshape drug policy nationwide and signal a historic shift in attitudes towards cannabis legalisation repeal. Anti-cannabis campaigners in Massachusetts have achieved a significant milestone in their effort...
Recent alcohol consumption research claiming English adults increased their drinking by over a third during the pandemic has raised serious questions about methodology and what happens when ideology trumps evidence. This drinking habits study, published in the journal Addiction, contradicts virtually every piece of hard data available. The research suggested alcohol consumption in England jumped...