Keyword: drug policy

The Illegal Drug that Could Help Ease Anxiety About Death

Picture: Animal New York April M. Short - Phil Wolfson is a psychotherapist who lost his 16-year-old son to leukemia more than three decades ago. He wrote the book Noe: A Father-Son Song of Life, Love, Illness and Death about the experience of watching his son navigate adolescence while succombing to the terminal disease. His personal experiences, he says, place him in a strange position of “too much knowledge” when he works with patients who are dealing with devastating loss, as well as anxiety and PTSD symptoms that...

Decriminalising Dagga: Let a Real Debate Begin

Picture: Brian Robert Marshall Dale T. McKinley - It was 2am on a cold August night last year when six screaming and heavily armed members of the SA Police Services forcibly removed their driveway gate and tried to bash down their kitchen door. But, this wasn’t a stealthily planned arrest of much-sought after murderers, some court-ordered operation on a heavily fortified residence belonging to a member of organised crime or a raid on the house of a government official suspected of serious corruption. No, it was members of a police...

The War on Drugs: Is It Time to Change?

Picture: Splifr Glenn Ashton - South Africa has one of the highest rates of drug abuse in the world. The most commonly abused drugs are alcohol and dagga (cannabis). The abuse of chemical stimulants such as tik (methamphetamine) has recently soared. Other synthesised drugs like cocaine, heroin and mandrax remain deeply problematic, both to users and society. The drug scourge is an historical international problem linked to globally connected and well resourced criminal enterprises. Russian, Italian, Columbian, Chinese,...

Time to End the War on Drugs

Produced by an Oscar-winning studio for the Global Drug Policy Program of the Open Society Institute, the International Drug Policy: Animated Report 2009 highlights some of the disastrous effects of drug policy in recent years. This short film seeks to show that pursuing a "drug-free world" can lead to more harm than good. Ten years ago the United Nations (UN), thought they could free the world from drugs. By 2008, they aimed to wipe out the use of drugs.  However, given...