The NSW Labor government has been under long term pressure from health and advocacy groups promoting a health based approach to drugs to introduce pill testing in NSW. Today NSW Labor announced that they ‘will commence a music festival-based pill testing trial in early 2025, to reduce risks and harms associated with illicit drug use’.
‘The trial, which is free and anonymous, will allow festival goers to bring a small sample of substances they intend to consume to qualified health staff to test for purity, potency and adulterants,’ they said in a press release.
‘The amnesty provided as part of this trial, is strictly limited to people seeking to check drugs for their own personal use and it will remain an offence to possess illicit drugs at any event where pill testing is provided.’
Historic day
Former magistrate and drug reform activist Professor David Heilpern told The Echo that, ‘This is an historic day for the drug law reform movement with pill checking now right down the east coast. This will save lives. Credit must go to the tireless efforts of those families who lost children to overdose at festivals and kept pushing this even in the face of such hurtful responses. Amazing that it has taken this long.’
Should start Boxing Day
The Greens have congratulated the NSW Labor government on their decision but say that ‘trials must be in place for the festival blitz that commences on Boxing Day’.
‘Further, continuing to have an over-the-top police presence with sniffer dogs and strip searching tents is an irresponsible use of taxpayers’ money, when music festivals have pill testing facilities.’
Greens MP and drug harm reduction spokesperson Cate Faehrmann said, ‘The Health Minister says that the trial could be up and running by “early February”. This is too late because most of the music festivals taking place this summer will go ahead without pill testing services.
‘With festivals like Lost Paradise, Field Day, and Spaced Out in Byron Bay taking place in late December and early January, along with New Years Eve and the holidays, most of the larger summer festivals will have concluded by early February.’
Not everyone agrees
Drug Free Australia have opposed the trial highlighting Australia’s first 1995 Ecstasy death Anna Wood that involved MDMA and ‘a study that found that 14 per cent of deaths were caused by an allergic-like reaction to MDMA’.
They stated in a press release that NSW pill testing ‘will inevitably lead to increased fatalities amongst vulnerable young people within NSW as festival goers will act on the illusory “safety” they think pill testing provides them.’
Testing saves lives
Countering their argument Professor Heilpern told The Echo that, ‘as usual Drug Free Australia remains a Fact Free Zone. The evidence is that pill checking saves lives. Not every life, not all the time, but it saves lives. This is a great day for those parents who tragically lost children to festival deaths where pill testing was likely to have prevented the death. Their bravery in maintaining a call for change, should not be diluted by the wowsers and naysayers who cling to some 1950’s South Park “don’t do drugs” mentality.
‘Drug Free Australia maintains that this will normalise drug use and convey a false sense of safety because no drug use is safe. There is utterly no evidence that testing for foreign substances will legitimise drug use. On that argument, we never would have introduced safe injecting rooms or needle exchanges for intravenous drug users. Just let them die in the street rather than be seen to treat this as a harm reduction exercise. Just like safe injecting rooms, this gives authorities a golden opportunity to educate users, ensure they are minimising risk, and open communications for where things go wrong,’ he explained.
‘Anna Woods did not die solely because of some allergic reaction to ecstasy. She died because she, and her friends, did not get help early enough. Tragically her death has been used to perpetrate myths that have led to more fatalities.
‘Drug Free Australia have lost this battle convincingly, and thus become increasingly shrill and predict catastrophe. Inherently dangerous.’
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