Many rural communities have experienced economic decline in recent years and have poorer access to drug treatment services. This increases the risk of drug use and overdoses.
Safe injection facilities offer clean syringes, bandages and antiseptics to people who use drugs.
Andy Clark/Reuters
How much more suffering and death will people who use drugs have to endure?
A student cramming for exams. Some college students take stimulants to cram for exams, but studies suggest that has little positive effect.
Geo Martinez/Shutterstock.com
Students looking to gain an academic edge by taking stimulants such as Adderall fail to do better on tests and also mess up their sleep. A neuroscientist explains why.
Purdue faces about 2,000 lawsuits related to the opioid crisis.
AP Photo/Toby Talbot
OxyContin maker Purdue has reportedly been mulling a bankruptcy filling, just as the first of around 2,000 lawsuits against it prepares to go to trial.
Pill testing is a rare opportunity to speak to drug users about their drug use.
from www.shutterstock.com
Media-driven panic about drugs can create a perception more people are using the drug than they actually are, and when teens think ‘everyone’ is doing it, they are more likely to want to do it too.
Quetiapine is increasingly prescribed a sleeping drug.
Mink Mingle
Quetiapine is an antipsychotic drug to treat severe mental illness, but it makes people feel sleepy, so has also been used as a sleeping pill – by prescription and illicitly.
The drug GHB gained notoriety during raves decades ago, but it is resurfacing again.
Anthony Mooney/Shutterstock.com
The recent death of ‘Storm Chaser’ star Joel Taylor, reportedly because of his use of the GHB, is a tragic reminder of the drug’s dangerous impact.
People without ID, like Steven Kemp, are sometimes turned away from the country’s already threadbare system of drug treatment centers.
Matt Rourke/AP Photo
Jessie Schanzle, The Conversation and Aviva Rutkin, The Conversation
Drug deaths are rising faster than ever. How did we get here and what to do about it?
People who take GHB at dance parties say it makes them feel euphoric and less inhibited. But the drug is easy to overdose on.
from www.shutterstock.com
It’s easy to overdose on the recreational drug GHB, as recent cases in Melbourne show.
Police seized 200kg of methamphetamine during a drug bust in Perth, Western Australia, in May 2016.
AAP Image/Department of Immigration and Border Protection
West Australian Labor leader Mark McGowan said his state has the “worst rate of methamphetamine usage in the country”. We asked the experts to check the evidence.
A spontaneous memorial shrine to an overdose victim in Celestial Lane, Melbourne.
Peta Malins
Public memorials to overdose victims might not only shift who we consider worth grieving, but also encourage us to reflect on the nature of memory and mourning, inclusion and exclusion.
Americans consume a staggering amount of the opioid painkiller hydrocodone - about 99% of the world’s supply. In October, after 10 years of debate the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) reclassified medications…
People overdose from illicit substances, such as heroin, or prescription medications, such as valium or opioid painkillers.
Thomas Marthinsen/Flickr
In 2012, 103,000 people around the world lost their lives to drug poisoning or overdose. As terrible as this waste of life seems, it’s important to remember that drug overdoses are not inevitably fatal…
Underestimating paracetamol in remedies.
Pills by Shutterstock
Strict guidelines that were introduced 18 months ago following the death of a young woman have transformed the way paracetamol overdoses are managed, including the introduction of the lowest threshold…
Most overdose deaths are due to heroin but an increasing number are due to pain relieving prescription opioid drugs.
Thomas Marthinsen
Once again, overdose deaths from opioids are increasing in Australia. And once again, we are in danger of ignoring effective, evidence-based interventions. According to the National Drug and Alcohol Research…