- Recreational marijuana use will soon be legal in Canada after the Senate passed a “historic” bill on 19 June with a vote of 52-29. Canada is only the second country in the world — and the first G7 nation — to implement legislation to permit a nationwide marijuana market.
- Fourteen cocaine-soaked shirts styled like the Colombian national soccer team’s uniform were seized by Colombian police at the Bogotá airport on June 22.
- The Spanish National Police, supported by Europol, has dismantled three clandestine laboratories and seized more than 5 million doses in an operation against the production of illicit medicines. 29 people have been arrested and 15 houses searched in Madrid, Valencia and Malaga.
- The Polish Police Central Bureau of Investigation, with the help of the Dutch and German police, has identified and shut down a major supplier of chemicals intended to be made into synthetic drugs in the Netherlands. More than 300 law enforcement officers took part in the joint action, which was planned with the support of Europol.
- According to the study, Medication for Opioid Use Disorder After Nonfatal Opioid Overdose and Association With Mortality: A Cohort Study, published on 18 June in the medical journal Annals of Internal Medicine, even though medication-assisted treatment drugs like methadone and buprenorphine are able to save the lives of people who have overdosed on opioids, they continue to be underutilised.
- More than 50% of respondents to the Royal Pharmaceutical Society survey strongly agreed that cannabis should be legalised for medicinal use, and a further 30% slightly agreed.
