The world’s largest drug consumption room (DCR) has opened in Copenhagen, offering a safe and supervised environment for people to use illicit drugs.
The 1000 square-metre drug consumption room, named H17, officially opened in the Vesterbro district of the Danish capital on August 15. Staff say that the facility is providing a space for people who use “hard drugs” – most illicit substances apart from cannabis – safely, and without the risk of legal consequences.
The use of dark web drug markets is growing exponentially. While law enforcement has consistently failed to reduce online sales, non-profit initiatives are working to reduce the potential harms of drugs purchased through the dark web.
Recent data indicates that online drug markets are swiftly gaining international popularity. This is particularly evident in the results of the Global Drug Survey 2016 (GDS), which surveyed over 100,000 respondents – primarily those who use illegal drugs – from over 50 countries around the world. Around one in 10 participants reported having purchased drugs through the dark web at least once, while five per cent of respondents claimed they “did not consume drugs prior to accessing them through” the dark web.
Data from the Economist indicates that the turnover of international drug sales through the dark web has increased by over 800 per cent in the past four years; from around $16million in 2012 to between $150m and $180m in 2015.
What happened to New Zealand’s regulation of legal highs?
New Zealand’s much heralded regulation of new psychoactive substances (NPS) appears be at a complete standstill after its introduction three years ago, raising the question: what went wrong?
The 2013 Psychoactive Substances Act (PSA) sought to introduce a full regulatory system for NPS and take control of what was a burgeoning market in these drugs.
China has consistently taken an incredibly hard-line stance against people who use illegal drugs. As the government enforces strict punishments, often in the name of rehabilitation, both human rights abuses and drug addiction rates are worsening.
There are an estimated 12 million regular drug users in China, and illegal production of methamphetamine and ketamine is surging in the country. President Xi Jinping has described illegal drugs as “a menace for society [that] severely harm health, corrupt will, destroy families, consume wealth, poison society, pollute the social environment, and lead to other crimes”. As a response to this perception, authorities are detaining thousands of people in squalid conditions for drug use or possession.
The international community has lambasted Isis for its distinctive form of brutality, yet remained curiously silent on Isis atrocities commited in the name of drug control, perhaps because they mirror so well repressive drug laws elsewhere around the world.
Isis, the militant group which has seized control of swathes of Iraq and Syria since 2013, implements authoritarian rule over all who reside in its claimed territory. In accordance with their strict interpretation of sharia law, Isis leaders consider all intoxicating substances to be haram, meaning they are prohibited by Islam.
For some time I have believed that we, citizens of Western societies, are going through an existential crisis, caused by a growing gap between our material and spiritual existence. Capitalism has primarily fed the former, encouraging competition amongst ourselves for resources and nurturing feelings of inadequacy and insecurity to promote constant consumption and high productivity. Our society has endorsed the pursuit of material happiness and in the process emaciated our spiritual existence, either attempting to drown it in more superficial satisfactions or repressing it through a pharmacologically induced stupor.