This week’s episode features Professor Aldo Badiani who is Professor of Pharmacology at the Department of Physiology and Pharmacology of Sapienza University of Rome (Italy). Professor Badiani received his doctoral degree in Medicine and Surgery from Sapienza University of Rome and carried out post-doctoral research in Italy (CNR), Canada (CSBN), and USA (University of  …

Authors: Steve Rolles, Anne Katrin Schlag, Fiona Measham, Lawrence Phillips, David Nutt, Daniel Bergsvik, Ole Rogeberg Published: February 25, 2021 This Drug Science research was published in the International Journal of Drug Policy. A further write-up was featured in the Academic Times. Globally, non-medical heroin use is generating significant public health and social harms, and  …

Mobeen Azhar has been a journalist for 17 years investigating the societal harms related to the ‘war on drugs’. Upon returning to his hometown of Huddersfield, Mobeen started to uncover grizzly story behind the roadside execution of Yassar Yaqub. Described in court as a 28-year-old office clerk, Yassar Yaqub was shot dead by police on  …

The US opioid crisis is a result of a fractured and fragmented healthcare service. Federal and state policy created a system whereby doctors were rewarded for prescribing highly addictive substances. This epidemic was compounded when the same federal and state government suddenly restrained these prescriptions, forcing people into the black market. Now underground drug dealers  …

Today’s report of over 60 deaths last year in which fentanyl was implicated raises major alarm bells in the opioid treatment community. It could be the prelude to a wave of deaths from this synthetic opioid (as is now being seen in the USA), where now most street “heroin” is boosted with fentanyl. So what  …

In Austria, judges can offer quasi-compulsory treatment options (in- and outpatient settings) as an alternative to imprisonment for drug-related delinquencies. A standard assessment of medical, psychological and legal data on the implementation of health-related and legal interventions in Austria was applied in 96 opioid-dependent individuals (10.4% female) undergoing quasi-compulsory treatment, receiving health-related measures. Additional data  …

Today the Mail, Telegraph and others have been featuring the vile and dehumanising “More than Meth” campaign, which invites us to gasp and be disgusted by the faces of Americans arrested for drug related offenses. The campaign shows mugshots of individuals chronologically as their appearance changes. Unsurprisingly, the ghoulish coverage of this stigmatising campaign omits  …