Thursday July 21s saw the grand opening of CanTest, Australia’s first fixed-site drug checking service, often dubbed ‘pill testing’. The service is delivered by Directions Health Services in partnership with AIVL member organisation CAHMA and Pill Testing Australia.

AIVL and the important network of community-led organisations working in response to Blood Borne Viruses and sexually transmissible infections have, for decades utilised their limited resources to work in close partnership with each other. Not only have they been the voice of the community at a national level but have also been drivers for getting the community to both engage in healthcare and promote the uptake of harm reduction practices. We remain closely knit in our joint commitment to eliminate Hepatitis C by 2030.

Whenever there are highly desirable restricted products within society, there will be people willing to produce, and sell “knock-offs” of the products. It doesn’t matter if it is a Gucci handbag, concert tickets, or a pill. Within the drug using community, it is becoming more common for the “People’s Choice” of benzos (Xanax) to be mimicked and sold by “bootleggers.”

21 July marks the date of International Drug Users Remembrance Day, a day observed by the International Network of People who use Drugs (INPUD) in conjunction with UNAIDS, to reflect upon the countless lives lost to drug related harm.

Whenever there are highly desirable restricted products within society, there will be people willing to produce, and sell “knock-offs” of the products. It doesn’t matter if it is a Gucci handbag, concert tickets, or a pill. Within the drug using community, it is becoming more common for the “People’s Choice” of benzos (Xanax) to be mimicked and sold by “bootleggers.”

Last month AIVL Staff attended ‘Is it time to legalise drugs?’ a discussion by Drug Policy Australia on Friday June 24. Presentations by Dr Alex Wodak, Dr Annie Madden AO, The Honourable Michael Kirby, The Honourable Bob Carr, Greg Chipp and Emma Maiden covered topics of the harms of illicit drug criminalisation, drug law reform, and the need for drug policies to be viewed within a public health lens, stating that our current drug policies are not assessed on merit but rather cultural and societal ‘norms’, characterised by moralistic righteousness against the backdrop of maintaining diplomatic ties through the established rhetoric of prohibition politics.

AIVL praises Freestone et al. for the ingenuity of their research that has shed light upon some of the lesser understood scenes associated with recreational drug use, and the role of harm reduction, peer networks and ever apparent need for education around overdose and BBV/STI risks surrounding chemsex.

Almost 1700 Australians die of illicit drug overdoses each year. These are peoples’ sons, daughters, brothers, sisters, neighbours, and friends.

The elimination of hepatitis C in a priority group, people who inject drugs, is the goal of a new campaign to be rolled out across Australia over the coming months.