First ever pill-testing trial at Australian music festival
Pill testing will be trialled for the first time at an Australian music festival, in a move that advocates say will reduce drug-related harm.
Revellers at Canberra’s Groovin the Moo festival will be able to have their illegal drugs tested for harmful chemicals by STA-SAFE, an independent consortium of health groups, without the threat of legal prosecution.
The multi-day festival, which began on Friday in Wayville in South Australia, will arrive in Canberra on Sunday, where the pill testing will be made available for one day.
The proposal has been previously been approved by the University of Canberra, on whose grounds the festival will be held, the territory’s health minister and police.
Participants will provide a scraping or small sample of their pill or powder to volunteers, who then analyse it in a mobile laboratory. Staff provide attendees with the results of the test, as well as the risks and side effects of consuming the substance.
Festivalgoers will be able to throw their drugs into an amnesty bin, which uses bleach to “completely destroy any drugs deposited in them to the extent that they could not be recovered or used”, according to ACT Health.
Geoff Munro, the policy manager at the Alcohol and Drug Foundation, said pill testing would reduce the overall rate of drug taking at the festival, and prevent overdoses.
“When people are buying pills and powders on the street they can never be sure what is in them,” he said. “Very often people are playing Russian roulette. It may be a highly dangerous chemical, or it may be a much stronger drug that they believe it is.
“It will reduce overdoses, it will reduce some dangerous drug taking and it will save lives,” he said.
The ACT’s health minister, Meegan Fitzharris, welcomed the move.
“The trial does not condone illicit drug use, however it will provide an opportunity to encourage people who are considering using illicit drugs to modify their behaviour in ways that reduce risks of harm to their health,” she said.
The pill testing facility at Sunday’s festival will be located near first aid services, and users will be provided with medical cubicles to ensure their privacy.
However the ACT opposition’s shadow attorney general, Jeremy Hanson, attacked the move on Friday, saying it would encourage “pill popping”.
“I’m very concerned about the young people who are now going to be taking drugs under the misapprehension that these drugs are safe,” he said. “This is sending a very bad message about drug use in the ACT. It’s essentially saying we’re the pill popping centre of Australia.”
The ACT Health website states that pill testing staff do not tell attendees that drug use is safe.
“Even with laboratory level testing, service staff never advise users that the drug they are taking is ‘safe’. Illicit drugs such as amphetamines and MDMA are inherently unsafe and pill testing cannot certify that a person will not suffer an adverse reaction as a result of taking them.”
Munro said that pill testing was likely to reduce drug taking, rather than increase it.
“There is no evidence that pill testing encourages drug taking and that has been the evidence from Britain and Europe where they have been drug checking for several years now.
“The only real effect that pill testing can have is to reduce drug taking, because some people will discover that their drug isn’t what they think it is.”
He added that pill testing would provide police and ambulance services with a better idea of what kinds of contaminants and chemicals were present in illegal drugs.
“We need to have more than one trial,” he said. “It may take people some time to gain the confidence of the system. I think we have a lot to discover about administering this kind of service.”
The ACT’s chief minister, Andrew Barr, said he “didn’t have a view” about the program.
“It’s not an issue I’m particularly passionate about one way or the other, but I’m happy for this process to proceed,” he said in response to questions from ABC Radio Canberra’s Jamie Travers.
Groovin the Moo takes place over six days in different locations across the country. Only the Canberra date will have pill testing.
On Friday, a 20-year-old woman was taken to hospital after a suspected drug overdose at Groovin the Moo’s Wayville show. She remains in a stable condition.