In Bogotá yesterday I presented to members of ‘Dirección General de la Policía Nacional’ on Ireland’s Law Engagement & Assisted Recovery Programme.
The meeting was organised by the Social Development Group.
With translation/support from the Global Initiative against Transnational Organized Crime.

Right Now, most of the American can relate to this message from the 90's.

Frontline worker working in temporary accommodation services in the Northwest? We would love to see you at our next staff meetup taking place on Wednesday 14 May.

Full info here 👉 homelessconnect.org/event/northw...

Have been off X for a while and forgot I’d joined Bluesky until I was watching Jon Stewart, my go to guy for the running commentary of Americas decent into madness. Just thought I’d say Hi

We need a new approach to drug and alcohol misuse in Belfast. We can't ignore rising drug deaths & the impact of zero tolerance policies.

Let's make Belfast the first harm reduction city in Ireland, support our night time economy & make this city a model of progressive change.

Four decades of overdose prevention centres: lessons for the future from a realist review | Harm Reduction Journal Overdose prevention centres (OPCs) are spaces where people can consume previously obtained illicit drugs under the supervision of staff who can intervene to prevent and manage overdose. They have been provided in Europe and elsewhere for nearly 40 years, initially in response to the epidemic of HIV/AIDS. We can learn from their operation history to inform future developments in harm reduction services. We carried out a realist review of 391 documents, reported according to the RAMESES I guidelines, and carried out realist synthesis of these documents. We present a full realist programme theory of OPCs, with a diagrammatic logic model, of how the contexts and mechanisms of OPCs combine to produce various outcomes for service users and their communities in different settings. Three specific causal pathways were evidenced through which OPCs produce their outcomes for particular groups in specific contexts of housing status, gender identity and ethnicity, and local drug markets, with frequency of use, legal and political contexts, and stigma as overlapping contextual factors. Key OPC interventions include the provision of a safe and hygienic consumption space, safe consumption education, timely overdose response, and protection from drug scene and gender-based violence. These can trigger the underlying mechanisms of safety, trust, social inclusion, engagement, autonomy, and empowerment when supported with health care and other services, including detoxification and opioid agonist treatment. The combinations of these contexts and mechanisms create important outcomes for individual service users, for the communities they live in, and for wider society. We also describe causal pathways that can lead to unintended, adverse outcomes. This review provides useful information for policy makers, practitioners, and researchers on how to implement and evaluate OPCs in future to maximise their benefits; an important task in the context of the ongoing public health crises of drug poisoning deaths in North America and the UK, and the possibility of increasing deaths from synthetic opioids in Europe and elsewhere.

Despite strong evidence for the effectiveness of Overdose Prevention Centres, the specific mechanisms behind their impact remain unclear. A new realist analysis uncovers what works, for whom, and in what context—offering a blueprint for future harm reduction efforts.
link.springer.com/ar...

If you are in the Oxford area and interested in drug policy, come catch @gwshorter.bsky.social who will be giving a guest lecture on the evidence-base surrounding overdose prevention centres 🎉

🗓️ Thursday 1st of May
⏰ 6pm-7pm
📍Wolfson College

www.wolfson.ox.ac.uk/event/from-s...

Council to look at Bristol 'Harm Reduction' campaign over drug and alcohol misuse in Belfast - VIEWdigital By Michael Kenwood, Local Democracy Reporting Service A campaign which aims to reduce drug and alcohol abuse in streets and venues at night is to be studied by officials at City Hall with a view to it...

Council to look at Bristol ‘Harm Reduction’ campaign over drug and alcohol misuse in Belfast - viewdigital.org/council-to-l... - @gwshorter.bsky.social

Imagine if the UK government told the Trump administration that they must change their anti-DEI policy if they want a trade deal with the UK.

Or their policy of deporting people without legal due process.

How would Trump or JD Vance respond to that?

🔥Powerful event → EuroNPUD hosts a session on the power of peer work, drug user organising, and community-based harm reduction, highlighting best practices from the #EU4Health #BOOST Project.

📅 Thurs. 13 Feb
⏰ 10:00 GMT / 11:00 CET
🔗 Registration: https://buff.ly/3ExwZsB

The social organization of structural vulnerability among people who are homeless and use drugs: an institutional ethnography In this article, we describe an institutional ethnographic investigation of the housing and homelessness response in one municipality in Ontario, Canada.Drawing on 42 interviews with social service...

Online now: The social organization of structural vulnerability among people who are homeless and use drugs: an institutional ethnography doi.org/10.1080/0968...

Bags coming this week! Keep your eyes peeled 😍

How to tell pro-lifers don't actually care about life..they throw Nazi salutes and find it funny.

So we put a missile defence system in space. Enemy state sees it as a legitimate target and blows it up. Debris from explosion wipes out satellites and we go back to communicating via smoke signals and pigeons

A decade ago, families devastated by failed drug policies came together to form Anyone’s Child. In 2015, we delivered a letter to 10 Downing Street, calling for legal regulation of the market to stop others from suffering as we have.

Sadly, our numbers have only grown. It’s time for change.

Just done the same. Thinking of doing the same for Facebook. Will see how Zuck behaves over the coming weeks. Although I will miss my substance fuelled rants 🤣🤣🤣