In January 2025, the then Minister for Policing, Fire and Crime Prevention commissioned the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD) to provide an updated assessment of ketamine-related harms, consider its appropriate legal classification, and advise on how best to reduce harms associated with ketamine use.

For the first time since cannabis-based products for medicinal use were legalised in 2018, police officers across England and Wales now have a shared set of principles to guide interactions with patients who are lawfully prescribed these treatments.

A new study by O’Leary et al (2026) published in Research Integrity and Peer Review introduces a striking, unexplored phenomenon in academic research: “reverse spin bias.” Unlike conventional spin bias, where authors frame nonsignificant results as significant or meaningful, reverse spin bias occurs when evidence of benefit is ultimately discounted or discredited by the very authors who produced it.