DRUGS: CLUBLAND AND FESTIVALS

The Loop, a Manchester-based drugs welfare charity, has been working to help drug users - without judging them - and test recreational drugs.

At the Parklife festival earlier this year, its experts tested a variety of drugs which had been seized by the police or dumped in amnesty bins.

Among the bags of pills and powder were blue triangular ‘Punisher’ ecstasy tablets with a skull motif which they found contained 300mg of MDMA more than three times the usual amount.

There was, and remains, a real concern about super-strong ecstasy.

Just a few days before Parklife, Georgia Jones, 18, and Tommy Cowan, 20, collapsed and died at the Mutiny Festival in Portsmouth after falling ill just 20 minutes apart.

For the moment, The Loop has a fairly low-key presence at Parklife and other Manchester party nights held at the Victoria Warehouse and Albert Hall.

In Manchester at least, it is behind the scenes and provides welfare support for people who are feeling unwell.

You’ll get some water and a bit of free, friendly and honest advice.

Testing is only done on drugs seized by the police or placed in amnesty bins.

At the Love Saves The Day festival in Bristol, it wasn’t behind the scenes.

The Loop had a stall and a team of post-doctoral chemists and medics - all volunteers - checking the drugs they had brought before they consumed them.

The local council and police supported the project. It was the first time any city had allowed pre-use drugs testing.

Analysis showed that around four in five people whose drugs were tested had the substance they thought they had purchased.

The rest had bought something that wasn’t as billed.

Some of these people had simply been ripped off and would not have come to any serious harm as the ketamine they believed they had bought was actually simply salt - and what they thought was MDMA crystal was actually brown sugar.