Strict laws on the criminalization of drug use and drug users are fuelling the spread of HIV and other serious harms associated with the criminal market and should be reviewed, say experts. In this video, epidemiologist Elizabeth Pisani and other leading commentators describe which countries are leading the way in tackling HIV infection among injecting drug users.

I'm fascinated by how the mephedrone hysteria is playing out in the UK, not only because I like taking plant food and don't want it to be banned, but also because the UK government's rushed banning of the new drug exposes just how non-evidence-based their drug policies are.

My last post asked the question: If gay guys use condoms more than straight people, why do they get infected with HIV at much higher rates?

I argued that health systems depend too heavily on individual, bio-medical explanations without also accounting for the role of community-level and structural factors in health outcomes. I'm amazed, for example, how rarely the public health system addresses homophobia as a reason why gay guys account for the highest number of new infections in countries like the US, the UK and Canada.

This chart shows absolute numbers of new HIV infections in the United States in 2006, broken down into high risk groups:

Click the picture for a larger view.

Source: CDC Fact Sheet - HIV and AIDS Among Gay and Bisexual Men, Aug 2009

1. Watch this exciting video: DC Cop Waves Gun at Snowball Fight!

2. Read Snowball Fight Takes Dark Turn, a news account of the event by a Washington-based ABC affiliate:

Snowball Fight Takes Dark Turn

WASHINGTON - A lively snowball fight on D.C. streets took a dark turn Saturday when anti-war protesters dressed in anarchist garb showed up, and a D.C. police officer pulled his weapon out of his holster.

Last week, to mark the International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers, I went out Christmas caroling in the streets of London's Soho district with a bunch of hookers and their friends from the International Union of Sex Workers. The weather forecast had been promising "heavy snow" for days (in England that means maybe half an inch, if you're lucky) and, sure enough, as we hit the streets with Silent Night, big fluffy flakes started falling. Magic!

If you've been following the sex work-y blogs, you'll no doubt already be well informed that any rise in global temperatures, sea levels, acid rain or general climate meltdown is wholly due to big bad whores selling sex to UN delegates in Scandanavia. What??

I was walking down the street in London today, all kind of swine fluey and mucousy, when, almost like an apparition from the bottom of my bottle of cough medicine, came marching toward me the only thing that could possibly save a soul as wretched as mine: an earnest, young woman with an Amnesty International flyer.

Salvation!

"Do you think we have a moral obligation to free sex slaves?" she greeted me.

"Uhhh...," my swine flu stammered.

"Look!" she commanded, and she handed me a coaster.

"Ok..."

Having just moved to London, England, I don't always have my wits about me on the street and I've frequently wondered, biking home on my own in the dark, whether or not I'm safe. A straight, female friend of mine rightly wonders if queers sometimes hit the homophobia button out of knee jerk reaction. She's genuinely amazed that in 2009 there are still people who could possibly care who you sleep with in bed -- and so am I. Though when I asked whether she'd advise me to make out with a guy on the street in front of our house after dark, she conceded that it might not be wise.

Mae Callen, author of the consistently thoughtful Ottawa-based blog Driving fast on loose gravel, recently wrote about a particularly good experience she had at the spa:

"...It starts by this big joyful full-figured woman, leading me slowly into this warm candle-lit room. I undress and crawl under the covers of a massage table. After a short pause she comes in and touches my head softly. She invites me to breath in beautiful aromatic smells.