Twenty-two-year-old Australian woman Cassandra Sainsbury was arrested on April 11 at El Dorado airport in Bogota, Colombia. Sainsbury was due to return to Australia via London. Her suitcase contained 5.8kg…
A file photo from 2013 shows a woman smoking a cigarette.
Dave Martin/AP Photo
Cigarette smoking kills about 480,000 Americans annually and costs nearly US$170 billion in health care each year. Is it time we considered financial incentives to help people quit?
There’s a reason he grows this crop.
Jaime Saldarriaga/Reuters
Our study found that 8% of the 1,684 elite Australian athletes we surveyed said they had used at least one of six illicit drugs – including ecstasy, cocaine and cocaine – over the previous year.
Safe injection facilities (SIFs) offer clean syringes, bandages and antiseptics to drug users. SIFs reduce overdose deaths and limit the spread of disease.
Andy Clark/Reuters
Cocaine is a popular recreational drug that makes users energetic, confident and talkative. It’s also highly addictive and dependence-producing. Australians rank fourth in the world in cocaine abuse rates…
In 2013, Mexico signed into law an important and controversial set of structural reforms, one of which opens the way for foreign companies to profit from Mexico’s oil holdings. An article in The Economist…
Young adults are six to seven times more likely to suffer from an ischemic stroke (caused by blood clots) within 24 hours…
Drug lord Pablo Escobar was regarded as one of the most powerful entities within Latin America, but his legacy remains the subject of debate.
Thierry Ehrmann
Even today, some 20 years after his death, there is still debate in Colombia on how to interpret the mythology surrounding feared drug lord Pablo Escobar and his Medellín Cartel. Escobar was regarded as…
Peru is now the world’s leading producer of coca leaves, used in cocaine. Should this mark a new shift in the War on Drugs?
Julyinireland
The United Nations has recently announced that Peru has taken over Colombia as the largest producer of illegal coca leaves, the base for the drug cocaine. This comes as Brazil becomes the second biggest…
We might pay more for cocaine in Australia but the social and economic costs of its use reach beyond our shores.
Corbis
According to the United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime, Australians are now the world’s eighth highest per capita users of cocaine. Cocaine use within the wealthier echelons of society is so unremarkable…
El Bronx, Columbia. Where addicts disappear and dealers hustle.
Steven Bunce
Recent findings by the Australian Crime Commission suggest Australians are consuming more cocaine than ever. Far from the buzzing beach-side nightclubs of Sydney, where I grew up, I recently had a chance…
Regular cocaine users have stiffer arteries and other heart problems, the study found.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/ljcesca
Regular cocaine use significantly raises the risk of heart attack and stroke for otherwise healthy young people, a new study has found. The study, presented at the American Heart Association’s Scientific…