Hot Press is once again delighted to be part of the latest Global Drug Survey, which has gone live today at https://www.globaldrugsurvey.com with #KnowYourDrugs the accompanying social media hashtag.
Key questions this time round include “How much do you trust the police?”; “How much do you trust your dealer?”; “Would you pay more for fair trade cocaine?”; “What’s the deal with microdosing?”; “Would you take a trip to heal your mind?”; “Have you tried any edibles lately?”; and “Have you tested your pills?”
In association with the unit it funds at Imperial College London, the independent Beckley Foundation is carrying out a placebo-controlled trial to discover whether taking regular small doses of LSD is, as many in Silicon Valley are claiming, good for the brain.
The answer to the pill-testing question in an Irish context is almost certainly “no” but might change if Sinn Féin Senator Fintan Warfield, the Ana Liffey Drug Project, Hot Press and other supporters of it get their/our way.
Conducted in sixteen different languages, the GDS is the biggest survey of its kind in the world with over 130,000 people confidentially submitting data last year about their recreational - and occasionally problematic - drug use.
Over 50 academic papers have been generated using the GDS data, with drug agencies, the wider medical community, politicians, the legal profession and law enforcement benefitting from its insights.
We’ve set ourselves a record-breaking target of 10,000 Irish respondents this year, so take the 15-20 minutes needed to complete the survey and help us separate pharmaceutical fact from fiction.