Street Drugs Discussions

Street Drugs Discussions evolved from a series of pre-pandemic live events held across the UK. The initial event was in March 2018 “Street Drugs in the Northern Powerhouse” held at Manchester University, hosted by Jo. We had a number of expert speakers including Prof Fiona Measham (the Loop), Neil Woods (LEAP UK), Prof David Nutt (Imperial) and Andy Costello (GMP). After this event, Jo contacted James, who had attended, for his feedback, and “suggested” that he host the next event in the Street Drugs series, which he did!  This event was “Street Drugs in the Big Smoke” (held at London Metropolitan University in November 2018). Speakers included Nuno Capaz (Health commission, Govt of Portugal) and Marcos Baudean (Drug Board of Uruguay), and was followed by a meeting with MPs in the House of Commons at an APPG meeting on Drug Law Reform.  The street drugs team was formed at the London event and the rest is history! 

Another live Street Drugs event took place in June 2019 “Street Drugs Wales: Is the Dragon Still Smoking?” This was hosted by Barod and the University of South Wales in Cardiff. More live events were planned across the UK but the pandemic hit and we reverted to online webinars. We have now been running these for 4 years. More recently we have entered into a collaboration with Drug Science who are hosting these events on their website and handle the bookings and technology. 

In those 4 years, we have hosted 26 webinars with topics ranging from policy: overdose prevention centres (drug consumption rooms); trafficking and policing; environment, Covid19 and, gender; to Drugs: cannabis, alcohol, psychedelics, benzodiazepines, ketamine, nitrous oxide; to harm reduction: drug checking at festivals, e-cigarettes and vaping, naloxone.