DruGS Program Lead Dr Adrian Farrugia has recently completed ARC DECRA-funded research examining the ways gender and sexuality are addressed in drug education, articulated by drug education professionals and understood by young people. The research findings have been published in a new report entitled Addressing gender and sexuality in drug education. The report is available…
In November 2025, DruGS Program affiliate Professor Kate Seear (Deakin University) presented a TEDx Talk as part of The Science of Us event hosted by Deakin University in Melbourne. Entitled The War on Drugs: A Global Failure, Professor Seear explored not only the inordinate human harms caused by efforts to enforce drug prohibition globally, but…
This year, DruGS Program Lead Dr Adrian Farrugia has been pleased to take up invitations to present keynote addresses at two conferences. The first, the Association of Alcohol and Other Drug Agencies Northern Territory annual conference was held in Darwin, Australia and the second, the Contemporary Drug Problems biennial conference was held in Manchester, UK.…
A new article led by DruGS team member Emily Lenton addresses the constitutive role of medical records in the production of stigma. Stemming from a research partnership developing novel strategies to address stigma related to blood-borne viruses and sexually transmissible infections in healthcare services, this new article analyses how the very process of producing medical…
A new article by DruGS Program Lead Dr Adrian Farrugia examines how drug education professionals understand and respond to the relationship between alcohol and other drug consumption, sex and harm. This new article builds on previous research that demonstrated how drug education curriculum resources constitute sex in the context of alcohol and other drug consumption as…
A new article by DruGS Program Lead Adrian Farrugia in collaboration with Kiran Pienaar (Deakin University) and Fay Dennis (University of London) explores the relationship between gender, harm and fun in young women and gender diverse people’s experiences of alcohol and other drug consumption. Building on recent DruGS team scholarship such as David Moore’s research…
The DruGS team recently completed a professional consultation conducted on efforts to address young people’s use of e-cigarettes or vaping. Debate continues on how to balance the harm reduction potential of e-cigarettes against concerns about their potential risks. Key concerns include the acute harms of vaping and its potential to ‘normalise’ nicotine consumption, including smoking.…
A new article by DruGS team members Gemma Nourse, David Moore and Suzanne Fraser examines health professional understandings of performance and image-enhancing drugs (PIEDs) in Australia. The article has been developed from Gemma’s PhD thesis, supervised by Suzanne and David, which examined what it means to be a man who consumes PIEDs, a practice commonly pathologised…
The DruGS team has recently published an implementation guide to support healthcare workers to use the blood-borne viruses (BBV) and sexually transmissible infections (STI) stigma reduction toolkit. In 2022 the team published the practice-ready stigma reduction toolkit designed to be used by individual healthcare professionals and services to tackle stigma and discrimination related to BBVs…
The DruGS team has just completed an innovative project exploring women’s perspectives on take-home naloxone, a drug that can temporarily reverse opioid overdose. While research suggests that gender can shape engagement with harm reduction initiatives such as take-home naloxone programs, these issues have only been fleetingly been acknowledged in available research. Responding to this, the…
A new article by DruGS team members Gemma Nourse, David Moore and Suzanne Fraser examines discourses on performance and image-enhancing drugs (PIEDs) in Australia. The article has been developed from Gemma’s PhD thesis, supervised by Suzanne and David, which examined what it means to be a man who consumes PIEDs, a practice commonly pathologised in…
In September, DruGS team members travelled to Paris, France, to take part in the Contemporary Drug Problems conference. Co-convened by the journal’s co-editors Associate Professor Kate Seear and Professor kylie valentine along with the conference organising committee, this year’s conference theme was ‘Embracing trouble: New ways of doing, being and knowing’. The theme aimed to…
The DruGS team’s newly published report finds that more direct engagement with gender, and particularly masculinities, should be central to future efforts to address alcohol and violence. Importantly, the report offers several recommendations for how research and policy on alcohol and violence can more effectively attend to gender. You can find a copy of the…
Following the recent retirements of Professor Suzanne Fraser (former DruGS Program Lead) and Professor David Moore (former DruGS Professorial Fellow), longtime DruGS team member Dr Adrian Farrugia has been announced as the new Program Lead. Aiming to continue their highly influential careers conducting theoretically innovative and empirically robust research on alcohol and other drugs and…
The DruGS team is currently working on an innovative new project funded by the Commonwealth Department of Health that explores understandings of stigma and stigma reduction in blood-borne virus (BBV) and sexually transmissible infection (STI) related healthcare. Reducing stigma is vitally important to improve lives and deliver equitable access for all, yet despite many years…
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