The sun was peeking through the clouds as festival-goers arrived at the Rabbits Eat Lettuce festival in Queensland over the Easter weekend. Tents were going up, vans exploding colour, and camp sites were being set up as everyone got themselves ready for a weekend of music, frivolity and drug testing.
When we arrived at our camp we were quickly handed a range of pamphlets that early arrivers had collected from the Hi-Ground tent at the festival site, next to Queensland’s first drug testing service. They detailed a wide range of drugs, their impacts, dangers, times they take to be removed from your system and where to get assistance should things go wrong. Young people were sitting around discussing what were bad combinations, what were risks, who might take something and who wasn’t interested. It was encouraging to see how the information was appreciated, absorbed, discussed and everyone’s varying opinions respected.
The Easter weekend saw Queensland’s first festival drug testing take place over four days with hundreds of samples tested. It was the first time this type of testing had been conducted in Queensland, and a national first for a multi-day music festival. There is nearly $1 million in funding allocated for the delivery and evaluation of drug checking services in Queensland over the next two years.
Pill Testing Australia conduct laboratory-grade drug testing integrated with health professional consultations. Following successful trials of drug testing at Groovin the Moo in 2017 and 2019, where they tested 80 and 174 drug samples respectively, they were able to create a policy document and guidelines for providing a pill testing service.
‘That started Australia’s first ever fixed pill testing service CanTEST in July 2022,’ Professor of Chemistry, Malcolm McLead who was overseeing the drug testing facility told The Echo.
‘The first post-Coivd testing took place at Spilt Milk in November 2023. There is no information available from that due to the operator’s stipulation.’
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Anyone at the festival was able to bring in a sample of the drugs they were considering taking to get them tested. They would do a pre-test survey asking what they expected the drug to be, their intentions, demographics (age, sex, gender) etc. Following the drug test a second consultation would take place to look at the risks of the tested drug and get health advice on the drug and have the option to retain the drug or give it to Pill Testing Australia to dispose of. No identification or names are required so that the drug testing is anonymous. Initial data analysis shows that out of the 210 samples provided for testing at the festival by qualified chemists, approximately 14 samples were discarded at the pill testing service.
One patron told The Echo that they had what they thought was MDMA, that they had bought at the previous Splendour Festival, tested but that the test had been unable to establish what the drug they had been supplied with was. They chose to have the drug disposed of rather than risk taking it.
‘The idea of pill testing started in the early 2000s when I was working in South Australia,’ said Dr David Caldicott who was medical lead and has been pushing for drug testing for 25 years.
‘It was prompted by the death in hospital of a gentleman in his 20s that I was trying to care for when he died. He’d taken paramethoxyamphetamine (PMA) aka Dr Death. It took some time but it dawned on me “don’t eat dangerous drugs”.’
Dr Caldicott had arraived in Australia from Ireland in 1999 and began talking to people in the Netherlands who were already implementing pill testing. The idea of pill testing in Australia got a significant push following the 2015 CLUB health conference in Portugal that had a number of Australian representatives and they came back supporting the idea of pill testing.
Currently 80,000 to 100,000 people are dying a year in the US as a result of drugs.
‘There is a mythology that you can have your cake and eat it with the moral approach of “use less drugs” and the health approach of less people being harmed. But you can’t have both. From a medical and scientific perspective we can prevent harm. This is a conversation that requires people to be alive to have the conversations,’ said Dr Caldicott.
‘For example, in the Netherlands where there is testing, more people use drugs but not many are harmed. In Sweden they have harsher drug laws and there is a low rate of use, but more people are harmed.
‘Opposition to drug testing is not scientific. It is a moral position, they are asking us to take a line that has no supporting evidence. If you took the money that NSW spends on its sniffer dog training alone (75 per cent unsuccessful), if we turned that budget to pill testing it could fund pill testing for Australa for a year. If you took that budget and ran pill testing for a year in Australia you would demonstrably see a reduction in drug harm,’ explained Dr Caldicott.
The most common substances presented for testing were MDMA and ketamine.
Some higher-risk substances were identified including dimethylpentylone (a synthetic cathinone) and 2-fluoro-2-oxo-phenylcyclohexylethylamine, which were both sold as other substances. The latter was detected for the first time in Australia by the CanTEST drug checking service in Canberra.
A fixed site service is earmarked to commence in mid-April in Brisbane and will be delivered by a partnership of service providers. A second fixed site will be determined through co-design processes with people with lived experience.
‘In 2021, there were over 2,200 drug-related deaths in Australia, which is 2,200 too many. That is why this initiative is important,’ said Queensland Minister for Health, Mental Health and Ambulance Service Shannon Fentiman.
‘The drug checking service provided health advice and harm reduction information to hundreds of festival-goers this weekend, meaning that those who did decide to take drugs did so in a more informed way.
‘Many participants said that they would reconsider or take less of the substances they had in their possession, which is an excellent outcome.’
Call for NSW Drug Summit
The Labor government promised that they would hold a NSW Drug Summit if they were elected which they have yet to commit to since being elected. In March interfaith leaders from across NSW have written directly to the NSW Premier Chris Minns calling on him to urgently announce a date for a five-day Parliamentary Drug Summit.
‘It was an election promise – and with a quarter of this parliamentary term nearly over we are concerned that weeks are turning to months and every day people are suffering from the harms caused by our unfair drug laws in NSW,’ said Moderator of the Uniting Church Synod of NSW and ACT, Rev Faaimata (Mata) Havea Hiliau.
‘Drug reform in NSW is a life-or-death issue for some, literally.’
Professor McLeod said if they are able to check drugs for purity if they have the appropriate facilities. He told The Echo that with similar facilities that they were provided with at the Rabbits Eat Lettuce Festival – a clean, airconditioned donga – they are able to bring equipment that can test purity.
Fr Peter Smith, Promoter of the Peace, Justice and Peace Office, Catholic Archdiocese of Sydney said: ‘the 99 Drug Summit delivered tangible outcomes that saved and changed lives and we urgently need to get on with the 2024 Summit in Parliament.
‘Our failure to act appropriately on drug use and dependency in our community comes with an enormous cost – in both human and financial terms.
‘We must give this the time and attention it rightly deserves. We recognise that there is a need for change and a five-day Parliamentary Drug Summit is a good start.’
Abbas Raza Alvi, President of the Indian Crescent Society of Australia Inc. agreed saying that ‘the impacts of our unfair drug laws cannot be understated – with huge and unnecessary costs to our health, justice, community services and education systems. We know that the impacts of the current approach on drug users and those living with dependency – and their families – are enormously harmful.’
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