Researching drug diversion schemes. Harm reduction activism in fields. Consultancy bits & bobs. Views are mine.
Joined February 2017
- Tweets 1,501
- Following 868
- Followers 1,055
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50 Photos and videos
23 Jan 2025
A reminder that if you search joshtorrance on the other one you can find the account where I now post text-based drug policy stuff...
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17 Nov 2024
Quite a mad case of stigmatisation of people who use heroin here... vigilantes using violence to police their local community. So much ropey logic and drug exceptionalism I don't know where to start!
youtu.be/t4UowXTw7Lg
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8 Nov 2024
The largest single seizure of cocaine ever by Spanish authorities - 13 tons found in Spain in one shipping container, sent from Ecuador. That's a lot of eggs in one basket. Insight Crime with good coverage as per usual.
bit.ly/4e7V3y7
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Josh Torrance retweeted
6 Nov 2024
UN: Rise in Afghan opium cultivation reflects economic hardship, despite Taliban ban news.un.org/en/story/2024/11…
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Josh Torrance retweeted
Germany's first legal non-medical cannabis is dispensed from one of the newly licensed non-profit membership-based associations.
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HT @tblickman
weser-kurier.de/landkreis-ol…
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1 Oct 2024
Kamala Harris seems to back federal cannabis regulation...
thehill.com/policy/healthcar…
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19 Sep 2024
Europol and others dismantle another encrypted phone network called Ghost. 51 suspects arrested: 38 in Australia, 11 in Ireland, one in Canada and one in Italy. Over €1m in cash seized plus lots of drugs and a drug lab.
Weird how anyone still trusts encrypted phone networks!
🚨Europol has teamed up with law enforcement from 9 countries to take down a criminal encrypted communication platform.
👮♀️Law enforcement is committed to ensuring that crime cannot operate in the shadows.
More details in our press release ⤵️
europol.europa.eu/media-pres…
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16 Sep 2024
Big collectives of vendors will likely end up splintered.
No real reason to think that vendors will start getting their doors kicked in (yet), as long as they have decent opsec.
Veteran vendors will have lived through many iterations of online markets, so may well just....
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16 Sep 2024
...be glad they had such a long run with access to so many customers (because of low tech barriers to entry).
Dialadealers will have a good October.
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13 Sep 2024
Goodbye to stupid names for medical cannabis...
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13 Sep 2024
A thread:
Some ketamine-related bits from the UN World Drug Report published in July...
Global Ketamine seizures more than doubled in 2022 compared to previous years. Seizures were up in a lot of countries but it seems large scale production has shifted from China to Cambodia.
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13 Sep 2024
According to surveys, British schoolkids are 3 or 4 times more likely to have used ketamine in the last year than schoolkids in China, Spain, Italy or the US:
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13 Sep 2024
Incredibly cheap bulk pricing incentivises social supply and increased consumption.
It's time for treatment agencies, local authorities and drug educators to get serious about young people using ketamine.
unodc.org/unodc/en/data-and-…
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31 Aug 2024
So it turns out that:
1) EUDA can guess the country of origin of cocaine through chemical analysis
2) There is a strong hypothesis that cocaine in Europe of Peruvian or Bolivian origin is being processed from paste within Europe...
28 Aug 2024
Meanwhile, record quantities of S American cocaine have been flooding into Europe (c €10bn/yr retail), with Colombia the main source euda.europa.eu/publications/… - causing considerable harm euda.europa.eu/publications/….
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