Dr Rose Crossin Department of Population Health – University of Otago, Christchurch Drug harm is a significant public health burden in Aotearoa New Zealand (1,2,3); though harms are not evenly distributed across the population. Māori are the indigenous population of Aotearoa New Zealand, making up approximately 17% of the total population, and have a notably  …

Authors David J. Nutt, Lawrence D. Phillips, Michael P. Barnes, Brigitta Brander, Helen Valerie Curran, Alan Fayaz, David P. Finn, Tina Horsted, Julie Moltke, Chloe Sakal, Haggai Sharon, Saoirse E. O’Sullivan, Tim Williams, Gregor Zorn, and Anne K. Schlag Published March 17, 2021 Medical cannabis has been legal in the UK since 2018, but it  …

Authors: Steve Rolles, David Nutt & Anne Schlag Published: April 7, 2021 How do we end the war on drugs? With mounting evidence continuing to expose the failure of the war on drugs, more governments around the world are opening their eyes to consider alternative drug policies. But which drug policy reforms are the best  …

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  …

What do horse riding, motorsports, base jumping, mountain climbing, storm chasing, and drug use have in common? They are of all course all potentially dangerous activities pursued for a thrill, a rush, and often a great deal of enjoyment. But in our modern-day prohibitionist culture, one of those things is not seen as being like  …

Drug Science stands by its e-cigarette analysis from 2014, any way of radically reducing the death toll from tobacco would be a worldwide public health triumph. e-cigarettes are not the solution to end the ever-increasing death toll caused by tobacco. However, they have proven to be an incredibly effective tool for tens of thousands of  …

This blog discusss DrugScience's latest multi-criterion decision analysis of cannabis and alcohol regulation. Read the open access paper here. We’re all used to weighing up the benefits and pitfalls in our decision making. Is it worth the cost? Is it safe? Will I be able to get up in the morning? These are all simple  …

Authors: Ole Rogeberg, Daniel Bergsvik, Lawrence D. Phillips, Jan van Amsterdam, Niamh Eastwood, Graeme Henderson, Micheal Lynskey, Fiona Measham, Rhys Ponton, Steve Rolles, Anne Katrin Schlag, Polly Taylor, and David Nutt Published: February 17, 2018 In collaboration with drug experts in Norway and the UK, multi-criteria decision analysis has been applied to evaluating drug policies  …

As the khat ban approached, DrugScience commissioned a review of khat harms, following the detailed and rigorous report from the UK Government Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs earlier that year. DrugScience's review provided independent corroboration of the ACMD’s findings that the harms of khat cannot justify a ban and that community measures should  …

Around the world, politicians are working to ban e-cigarette marketing, limit their nicotine content, prohibit use in public buildings, and even to ban them entirely. There remains a need for policy makers to become better informed of the relative harms of nicotine delivery systems in order to build a regulatory framework that minimises harm. The  …

Authors: David J Nutt, Leslie A King, and Lawrence D Phillips Published: November 1, 2010 An assessment of the various harms of drugs used recreationally in the UK using multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) – a method that uses relevant experts’ knowledge and experience to assess the actual and relative harms - download the paper here.  …