Last weekend saw both the start of the UK summer festival season and the abrupt end to one of its festivals – forced to close early due to two drug-related deaths and over 15 hospital admissions. Sadly another two young adults have been added to the growing list of festival drug casualties. This same weekend, … Continued
The UK’s night time economy is failing to protect its most valuable asset: the people who go out and enjoy it. Night Lives: Reducing Drug-Related Harms in the Night Time Economy, a joint report by The Loop, Volteface, Durham University and The All Party Parliamentary Group for Drug Policy Reform highlights the urgent need for measures … Continued
The Loop has conducted drug safety testing for partner agencies behind the scenes, since 2013, and for the general public, since 2016, through our Multi Agency Safety Testing (MAST) service. The unique value of a drug safety testing service such as MAST is that it is able to compare what drug users think they bought … Continued
Recently there have been comparisons of the relative value of publicly accessible ‘front of house’ drug safety testing with ‘back of house’ lab-based testing only accessible to services working with people who use drugs. We suggest here that rather than competing models, we should aim for a gold standard testing system that includes both, in … Continued
This article was originally published by Transform. Key policy questions around the future of dance drugs in the UK have, this year, crystallised around two profoundly contrasting events: the closure of Fabric for what Islington Council deemed its failure to tackle the nightclub’s ‘culture of drugs’, and the introduction of drug testing for individual users … Continued
This article was originally published on Huffington Post UK. The closure of one of the UK’s most successful and iconic dance clubs, Fabric, in August this year, has raised questions about the roles and responsibilities of nightclubs within the night time economy, as well as broader concerns about the UK’s escalating ecstasy-related mortality rate. While … Continued
Go to a festival this summer, and drugs will never be far away. As the UK festival season gets underway, we asked Professor Fiona Measham to fill us in on this year’s festival drug trends, and what could be done to reduce harms resulting from drug use at festivals. In Part I, Fiona revealed how the Psychoactive Substances … Continued
Go to a festival this summer, and drugs will never be far away. The two are inextricably linked, as people seek to unwind over hedonistic summer weekends. As the UK festival season gets underway, we asked Professor Fiona Measham to fill us in on this year’s festival drug trends, and what advice she would give to festival … Continued