Research You Can Use

The Australian methamphetamine problem has reached levels that no national monitoring system has recorded before. The National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre (NDARC) at UNSW Sydney released its September 2026 bulletin (Chrzanowska et al., 2026). Nearly every headline indicator points upward. Wastewater consumption, hospitalisations and overdose deaths sit at record highs. Crystal methamphetamine, meanwhile, sells

The Australian methamphetamine problem has reached levels that no national monitoring system has recorded before. The National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre (NDARC) at UNSW Sydney released its September 2026 bulletin (Chrzanowska et al., 2026). Nearly every headline indicator points upward. Wastewater consumption, hospitalisations and overdose deaths sit at record highs. Crystal methamphetamine, meanwhile, sells

Drug checking services have quietly become one of the most accepted tools in how society now handles illegal drug use. A sample goes in. A result comes out. Somewhere in that exchange, a seller learns whether they cut the batch correctly, and a buyer learns whether tonight’s supply is roughly what it claims to be.

Why School Based Drug Education Belongs in the Science of Resilience New findings from brain science and education research are changing how communities view school based drug education. Researchers no longer treat it as one isolated lesson. Instead, they place it within life course science, alongside growing research on youth resilience. Two recent studies show

There is a version of the psychedelics story that everyone already knows. A veteran who stopped waking up screaming. A cancer patient who made peace with dying. A depressive who, after decades of grey, felt sunlight again. These stories are moving, they are frequently true, and Netflix, bestselling books, presidential press conferences, and a booming

A major new study has raised serious concerns about teen drug use and mental health, finding that young people who use drugs or binge drink are far more likely to suffer psychological distress. They are also more likely to have considered or attempted suicide, according to research from the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research

Addiction has long been treated as a matter of willpower, a personal failing, or a moral weakness. But a growing body of neuroscience tells a very different story. A landmark study published in Translational Psychiatry in 2025 found that people dependent on wildly different substances share a remarkably consistent set of addiction brain patterns. This applies

It looks like a travel shampoo bottle, smells like bubblegum, and fits in a school bag pocket. On top of that, it costs less than a coffee. And according to a growing and convergent body of scientific research, it is very likely giving young people cancer. The vaping carcinogens inhaled with every puff are no

Scientists in Israel have just engineered a tobacco plant to grow five psychedelic drugs at once. They call it pharmaceutical progress. They call it a simpler, more sustainable route to medicine. Yet what they have actually built, beneath the language of research and therapeutic potential, is a more efficient delivery system for psychotropic compounds that

A major scientific review has concluded that e-cigarettes are likely to cause cancer. The finding could reshape how governments, health bodies and the public think about vaping. Published in the journal Carcinogenesis on 31 March 2026, the study offers one of the most comprehensive assessments of the e-cigarette cancer risk to date. It raises serious questions