INTRODUCTION:For many women in Western countries, alcohol is associated with pleasure, sociability and coping, but also health risks. Drawing on postfeminist healthism concepts, this research explored how women at midlife perform health and well-being around drinking alcohol. METHODS:Eight friendship groups and 17 individual interviews were conducted with 50 women (35-59 years) in Aotearoa New Zealand about alcohol and drinking. Transcripts were analysed using discourse analysis. RESULTS:The women drew on discourses underpinned by healthism and postfeminist imperatives, including taking individual responsibility for health and viewing themselves as a 'psychologised self', to make sense of-and justify-drinking. These discourses enabled three 'drinker' subject positions for the women: (1) self-monitoring, controlled drinker; (2) self-investing, heavier drinker; and (3) self-aware drinker. The women were impelled to be continually reflexive and self-surveillant, to enact wellness practices, and to constantly monitor their alcohol consumption in performing postfeminist ideals. CONCLUSION:Industry and policy notions of 'responsible drinking' portray drinking as a potentially healthy activity. Action is needed to change women's environments to support reduced alcohol consumption, including reducing alcohol's social embeddedness and addressing activities that promote women's drinking and normalise alcohol consumption. A multi-faceted gendered lens on policy development and implementation is essential.

Across their lifetimes, women at midlife have experienced shifts in idealised femininities and permissive alcohol environments. Rising drinking rates in midlife women have gained media attention and are often framed as a societal and public health issue. This research explored how women construct and position drinking and alcohol within their lives. Eight friendship groups and 17 individual interviews were conducted with 50 women (35–59 years) in Aotearoa New Zealand about alcohol and drinking. Transcripts were analysed using feminist Foucauldian-informed discourse analysis. The women constructed drinking alcohol as enhancing pleasure and happiness (within reason), facilitating care and fun in relationships, and enabling the performance of midlife roles and responsibilities. Simultaneously, the women positioned their drinking in line with gendered expectations of being controlled, mindful, and in accordance with social, parental, and economic success. These findings demonstrate an underlying postfeminist sensibility that shapes notions of living a good feminine life and creates imperatives for women at midlife. The neoliberal logics of seeking—and taking individual responsibility to achieve—pleasure, happiness, health, and self-care through consumption (including drinking) are salient. However, this reinforces women's work and care responsibilities and deflects attention from the structures that maintain unequal gendered roles.

"Review of intoxication: an ethnography of effervescent revelry,." Drugs: Education, Prevention and Policy, ahead-of-print(ahead-of-print), pp. 1–2

Research on women's drinking occurs in largely disparate disciplines-including public health, health promotion, psychology, sociology, and cultural studies-and draws on differing philosophical understandings and theoretical frameworks. Tensions between the aims and paradigmatic underpinnings of this research (across and within disciplines) have meant that knowledge and insight can be frequently disciplinary-specific and somewhat siloed. However, in line with the social and economic determinants of the health model, alcohol research needs approaches that can explore how multiple gender-related factors-biological, psycho-social, material, and socio-cultural-combine to produce certain drinking behaviours, pleasures and potential harms. We argue that critical realism as a philosophical underpinning to research can accommodate this broader conceptualization, enabling researchers to draw on multiple perspectives to better understand women's drinking. We illustrate the benefit of this approach by presenting a critical realist theoretical framework for understanding women's drinking that outlines interrelationships between the psychoactive properties of alcohol, the role of embodied individual characteristics and the material, institutional and socio-cultural contexts in which women live. This approach can underpin and foster inter-disciplinary research collaboration to inform more nuanced health promotion practices and policies to reduce alcohol-related harm in a wide range of women across societies.

Purpose This study aims to explore people’s experiences of taking cannabis therapeutically and to gather some real-world evidence (RWE) about the products they were using, their efficacy and what kinds of positive or negative effect/s patients experienced. The focus of this discussion is the efficacy of cannabis for the participants in this study. Design/methodology/approach This was an exploratory study that used a mixed methods approach: a survey and semi-structured interviews. The data presented here focus on thematic analysis of five of the open-ended survey questions. Results from a purposive survey sample are also briefly reported. Interview data are not reported on here. Findings Across the sample (n = 213), 95.6% of participants reported that taking cannabis helped them with a number of conditions. The most common three themes across the thematic analysis were that cannabis helped with pain relief, sleep and anxiety. Negative effects, some of which related to having to source cannabis from the illicit market, were relatively minor and experienced by 28% (n = 58) of participants. An important finding was that 49% (n = 76) of those who said their use of prescribed medicines had decreased (n = 155), significantly decreased and in some cases stopped their use of prescribed medications. Originality/value This study reports on a sample of participants with clinically diagnosed conditions and adds to the RWE base about the efficacy of using cannabis for therapeutic purposes in the New Zealand context.

Aims: The harms arising from psychoactive drug use are complex, and harm reduction strategies should be informed by a detailed understanding of the extent and nature of that harm. Drug harm is also context specific, and so any comprehensive assessment of drug harm should be relevant to the characteristics of the population in question. This study aimed to evaluate and rank drug harms within Aotearoa New Zealand using a multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) framework, and to separately consider harm within the total population, and among youth. Methods: Two facilitated workshops involved the separate ranking of harm for the total population, and then for youth aged 12–17, by two expert panels. In the total population workshop, 23 drugs were scored against 17 harm criteria, and those criteria were then evaluated using a swing weighting process. Scoring and weighting were subsequently updated during the youth-specific workshop. All results were recorded and analysed using specialised MCDA software. Results: When considering overall harm, the MCDA modelling results indicated that alcohol, methamphetamine and synthetic cannabinoids were the most harmful to both the overall population and the youth, followed by tobacco in the total population. Alcohol remained the most harmful drug for the total population when separately considering harm to those who use it, and harm to others. Conclusions: The results provide detailed and context-specific insight into the harm associated with psychoactive drugs use within Aotearoa New Zealand. The findings also demonstrate the value of separately considering harm for different countries, and for different population subgroups.

BACKGROUND:A range of societal changes have created positive and encouraging environments for women's alcohol use. Within this context, in Western countries there is evidence of rising rates of alcohol consumption and related harms among midlife and older women. It is timely and important to explore the role of alcohol in the lives of midlife women to better understand observed data trends and to develop cohort specific policy responses. Focussing on Western countries and those with similar mixed market systems for alcohol regulation, this review aimed to identify 1) how women at midlife make sense of and account for their consumption of alcohol; 2) factors that play a role; and 3) the trends in theoretical underpinnings of qualitative research that explores women's drinking at midlife. METHODS:A meta-study approach was undertaken. The review process involved extracting and analysing the data findings of eligible research, as well as reviewing the contextual factors and theoretical framing that actively shape research and findings. RESULTS:Social meanings of alcohol were interwoven with alcohol's psycho-active qualities to create strong localised embodied experiences of pleasure, sociability, and respite from complicated lives and stressful circumstances in midlife women. Drinking was shaped by multiple and diverse aspects of social identity, such as sexuality, family status, membership of social and cultural groups, and associated responsibilities, underpinned by the social and material realities of their lives, societal and policy discourses around drinking, and how they physically experienced alcohol in the short and longer term. CONCLUSION:For harm reduction strategies to be successful, further research effort should be undertaken to understand alcohol's diverse meanings and functions in women's lives and the individual, material, and socio-cultural factors that feed into these understandings. As well as broad policies that reduce overall consumption and "de-normalise" drinking in society, policy-makers could usefully work with cohorts of women to develop interventions that address the functional role of alcohol in their lives, as well as policies that address permissive regulatory environments and the overall social and economic position of women.

Synthetic cannabinoids (also referred to as ‘Spice’ and synthetic cannabinoid receptor agonists (SCRAs)) have become part of the global drug landscape. The rise of new psychoactive substances (NPS) presents unique challenges for policy makers and those who seek to reduce drug-related harms. Synthetic cannabinoids are often noted as having intense effects due to their interactions with receptors in the brain. In recent years, they have become popular amongst disadvantaged groups who suffer from multiple health and other social harms. The association of synthetic cannabinoids with groups such as those who are homeless, has led to the intensification of stigma around this particular drug. This conceptual paper seeks to explore shifting intoxications in relation to synthetic cannabinoids, including a discussion of debates about stigma and the co-production of knowledge about drugs and their users. The legislative responses to NPS and synthetic cannabinoids will also be examined focusing on the notion of ‘success’ and global legislation. Recent NPS legislation is positioned as part of the co-production of synthetic cannabinoid users and their construction as abject and disorderly. As such, it becomes part of the assemblage of synthetic cannabinoids and creates an environment that produces risks and harms for specific marginalised groups.

Purpose - This paper aims to explore the context and implications of the New Zealand Drug and Substance Drug Checking Acts 2020 and 2021. Design/methodology/approach - This discussion provides a description of legislative changes about drug checking in the New Zealand context, alongside a critical analysis of the interlinked factors surrounding these important pieces of legislation. Findings - The legalisation of drug checking is an important harm reduction development in the New Zealand context, although overregulation of licensing requirements should be avoided, as well as overly punitive responses to peer service providers who may have criminal convictions. The new regulations should also ensure that innovation around new technology or products tested is not stifled. Originality/value - New Zealand is the only country to introduce permanent national legislation to legalise drug checking, and as such analysis of the legislation is of interest to the international community.

Abstract Background: The issue of drug checking at events such as music festivals has come to the fore in recent years both in New Zealand and other countries such as Australia and the UK. Drug checking, also referred to as pill testing, involves testing a small sample of a particular substance to determine what it contains. Alongside the actual testing drug checking services usually offer advice around how to take the substance more safely e.g. to keep hydrated, not to mix the substances together, and to avoid mixing alcohol and illegal substances. KnowYourStuff (KYSNZ) are a voluntary organisation that have been providing drug checking services at New Zealand festivals for approximately five years. KYSNZ operate in a grey legal area, making it difficult to provide a harm reduction focused service. For example, festival organisers could be prosecuted under s12 of the Misuse of Drugs Act (MODA) for openly having drug checking at their events. Globally drug checking is not a new phenomenon and has been in existence in some countries such as the Netherlands since the 1990s. The international evidence so far about drug checking demonstrates that: it does not increase the use of illegal drugs; it does not encourage those who don’t use illegal drugs to start using them; behaviour change is evident when substances are not as sold; harm reduction advice is valued and acted upon by young people. Drug checking services often positively affect people’s behaviour and as such are an important harm reduction service, although drug checking is not just about the test itself - the information offered and advice given are important elements of drug checking services. Further, behaviour change should not be measured solely in terms of drug disposals as other behavioural changes are also important e.g. taking less, not mixing substances tested with other drugs or alcohol, as well as improvements in knowledge about harm reduction for service users. This research was undertaken to provide information and understanding about drug checking as a harm reduction intervention. Further, it aimed to explore both behavioural changes related to drug checking and attitudes towards drug checking services in New Zealand. Methods: This mixed methods study gathered data via an online and in-situ survey as well as through structured and semi structured interviews. Four groups of people were interviewed: festival/event organisers; medical personnel who worked at festivals and events; volunteers working for KYSNZ; festival attendees/wider New Zealand public (recruited via the survey). Overall 66 people were interviewed, and 911 surveys were completed, with the final survey sample after cleaning totalling 861. The sample was a purposeful, focused, non-random sample. Results - Survey: 68% of those who had used the services of KnowYourStuffNZ (KYSNZ) stated that they had changed their behaviour either through disposing of their substances after checking or through adhering to harm reduction advice. 87% of those who had used KYSNZ drug checking services stated that their knowledge of harm reduction had improved a great deal or a little. The survey results also found that the majority of participants (95%-97%) supported drug checking, thought that it reduced drug related harm, and supported the proposed change to s12 of the 1975 Misuse of Drugs Act (MODA) to give drug checking legal status legal. Results – interviews: All of the groups that were interviewed thought that drug checking was an important harm reduction service and that it reduced drug-related harms. The interviewees noted that young people will take drugs regardless of their illegal status and that drug checking services were therefore a crucial harm reduction intervention. Festival organisers wanted to provide as safe an environment as possible for those attending their events and noted illegality as a barrier to providing drug checking services. Festival organisers who invited KYSNZ to their events noted fewer serious incidents related to illicit drug use and emphasised the importance of having drug checking at their events. Medical personnel who were interviewed noted the treatment problems that came with festival attendees ingesting unknown substances, and supported drug checking as it enabled clear information about drugs that were circulating at particular events that might be dangerous. All 66 interviewees viewed drug checking as an important harm reduction initiative and believed that it reduced drug related harms. Conclusions: The majority of people who had used the services of KnowYourStuffNZ changed their behaviour. This is in line with international evidence. Drug checking was recognised by research participants as an important harm reduction intervention that saved lives and kept young people as safe as possible when using illicit drugs. Drug use was also viewed by the majority of participants as a health issue and that it should be treated as such by supporting harm reduction initiatives such as drug checking. There is a high level of support to amend s.12 of the 1975 MODA to allow drug checking and make services like KYSNZ legal.

Global evidence suggests that experiences of access to Needle Exchange services are gendered and that women who inject drugs (WWID) access needle exchange services differently to men. Despite being a significant proportion of injecting drug users, women’s voices and experiences have often been silenced in studies around harm reduction service provision, hampering the development of harm reduction services for WWID. This article highlights the experiences of four women and one trans man who have previously injected drugs, in accessing needle exchange programmes (NEPs) in a New Zealand context. Semi-structured qualitative interviews were carried out with five participants and thematic analysis of the interviews produced three core themes: how stigma permeates WWIDs’ lives; barriers in accessing needle exchange services; and how experiences within a drugs context are gendered. Stigma was an overwhelming issue affecting WWID which also acted as a barrier to their access of NEPs. The WWID in our study in terms of Goffman’s original theorizing were “doubly discredited” as well as “precariously discreditable” due to their gender and injection drug using status. The participants keenly felt their stigmatized status through interactions with pharmacy-based needle exchange staff, perceiving that pharmacy staff viewed them as more contaminated than their male counterparts. Gendered relationships were also noted in injection practices, although initiation for this group of WWID was done by intimate partners as well as friends, dispelling the stereotype of WWID as passive victims. Some participants also learnt to self-inject which gave them a sense of empowerment and freedom as they did not have to rely on others to help them. The social structures that support stigmatizing tropes about WWID need to be addressed as well as more local interventions to prevent stigma in NEPs, alongside women focused services.

1. Introduction, Fiona Hutton -- 2. Alcohol And Intoxication, Antonia Lyons And Kate Kersey -- 3. Smoking And Intoxication: From Control To The Buzz, Helen Keane -- 4.Illicit Drugs And Intoxication, Angus Bancroft -- 5. New Psychoactive Substances (NPS) And Intoxication, Fiona Hutton -- 6. Alcohol Mixed With Energy Drinks (Amed) And Intoxication, Nic Droste, Amy Peacock, Amy Pennay And Peter Miller -- 7. Sexualities And Intoxication: “To Be Intoxicated Is To Still Be Me, Just A Little Blurry”: Drugs, Enhancement And Transformation In LGBTQ Cultures, Kira Pienaar, Dan Murphy, Kane Race, Toby Lea -- 8. Ethnicities And Intoxication, Sarah Herbert And Tim Mccreanor -- 9. Femininities And Intoxication, Fiona Hutton -- 10. Masculinities And Intoxication: Notes Towards A Co-Constitutive Approach, David Moore -- 11.Media And Intoxication: Media Representations Of The Intoxicated, Tammy Ayres And Stuart Taylor -- 12. Social Media And Intoxication: “Tweaker Nation”: Intoxication And Social Media, Andy Rudock -- 13. Societal Responses To Intoxication, Robin Room -- 14. Intoxication And Harm Reduction, Adrian Barton.

AddictionVolume 115, Issue 6 p. 1192-1193 Book Review Negotiating Femininities in the Neoliberal Night-Time Economy: Too Much of a Girl?, Emily Nicholls Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan; 2019 ISBN: 978–3030066376. Fiona Hutton, Corresponding Author Fiona Hutton fiona.hutton@vuw.ac.nz Institute of Criminology, Victoria University, Wellington, New ZealandSearch for more papers by this author Fiona Hutton, Corresponding Author Fiona Hutton fiona.hutton@vuw.ac.nz Institute of Criminology, Victoria University, Wellington, New ZealandSearch for more papers by this author First published: 05 December 2019 https://doi.org/10.1111/add.14924Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat No abstract is available for this article. Volume115, Issue6June 2020Pages 1192-1193 RelatedInformation

In New Zealand, the debates surrounding legal highs have been developing for approximately a decade. New Zealand’s historical grappling with the problem of legal highs reflects a global problem in addressing the issues related to new psychoactive substances. The focus of this article is the prohibition of BZP-based party pills under the Misuse of Drugs (Classification of BZP) Amendment Act, 2008 (hereafter the 2008 Act). This article reports on a qualitative study of the banning of BZP-based party pills in New Zealand, using thematic analysis of the discourses contained in the 2007 Parliamentary Bill readings of the 2008 Act. Six key themes were identified from the bill readings: prohibition is not an effective way to deal with drug use; BZP has a ‘gateway effect’; availability and accessibility means young people can access BZP-PPs too readily; young people are at risk; BZP has contributed to establishing a pill popping culture in New Zealand; and BZP has the potential for harm/has a moderate risk of harm. The thematic analysis revealed that evidence was often not fully represented in parliamentary debates, and that many of the concerns raised about BZPPs could have been dealt with through regulation rather than prohibition. A punitive moral populism aimed at drug use and drug users was also identified, driven by fears of drug using groups, and the symbolism associated with drug use.