31/08/2026
💜 On International Overdose Awareness Day, we are thinking of the many lives cut short by overdose, and of the families, friends and communities shattered by this preventable tragedy.
At the same time, this day prompts us to interrogate the scale of this ongoing emergency, and the reasons why it continues unabated.
Drug markets are increasingly risky and unpredictable. Punitive interventions only worsen this picture, reconfiguring supply chains in ways that breed unsafety: more violence, more potent substances, more premature deaths.
Criminalisation and stigma fuel harm, torpedoing vital community organising and, crucially, keeping people away from care and support.
The interventions that actually work remain woefully neglected. Naloxone, drug checking, safer consumption spaces, safe supply systems, and community-led harm reduction have all shown their worth — yet continue to face chronic gaps in funding, coverage and political support.
On , we must demand that governments do more than respond to the consequences while continuing to reproduce the very conditions that underlie them:
- Scale up harm reduction.
- Decriminalise drug use, possession and ancillary activities.
- Redirect resources from punishment towards health and community care.
- Confront the failure of Prohibition by considering responsible regulation grounded in health, rights and dignity.
We refuse to accept preventable deaths as inevitable.
Time to remember. Time to ACT.
