Drug testing is not a remedy
THE debate, such as it is, over drug testing at music festivals features an extraordinary amount of misinformation and misconceptions.
Primary among those misconceptions is that drug testing would improve the safety of young people taking drugs at these events.
Even if testing was able to provide quick and reliable results amid the decidedly non-sterile atmosphere of a music festival, all that such testing could do is at most determine what chemical components are within a submitted tablet.
Supporters of drug testing seem to believe that deaths could be reduced if impurities are found.
What they clearly miss in this argument is that the drugs themselves are the impurities.
A test that shows an MDMA tablet to be a 100 per cent pure MDMA tablet does not mean that the tablet is safe.
It means it is an MDMA tablet and that consuming it may be fatal.
NSW Poisons Information Centre toxicologist Professor Andrew Dawson explains that MDMA causes a potentially deadly body temperature spike.
“Normally, what will happen to people is that they will often get inflexively-- creasingly agitated, they can then become confused and that’s often a sign they already have a temperature,” he told News Corp Australia. No impurities required. Proponents of drug testing also re- assume that testing should be a government responsibility.
That is, they believe that the government should fund and carry out testing on substances that the government has determined are dangerous to the point of illegality.
Putting aside the absurdity of that situation, why are the cashed-up organisers of music festivals not arranging their own drug testing?
Ignore, for a moment, the obvious legal complications and consider instead who is actually directly responsible for the wellbeing of music festival attendees.
If the organisers of events that are more like drug festivals with a small musical aspect wish to continue profiting from these events, let them invest in the safety of their clients.
After all, supporters of drug testing assume that testing is such a simple matter that all it requires is government approval.
If this is the case, then it ought to be just as straightforward for organisers to arrange their own on-site testing facilities
Beyond a certain point the whole debate becomes uselessly complex. But there is one easy way to deal with the entire issue.
Don’t take drugs.