Drug checking saves lives at music festivals: group

At an electronic music festival held on a mountain ranch in British Columbia, what started as a two-person booth 15 years ago has grown into a nearly 60-person harm-reduction team.

Operating out of a large tent at the Shambhala Music Festival, they now offer extensive information about different drugs and the risk of mixing them, and supply condoms, needle kits and straws for safer snorting.

And among the services offered since the beginning is one that now regularly draws hourlong lineups at the festival: drugchecking services that test for unwanted or dangerous substances, allowing people to choose if they still want to consume them or if they would rather dispose of them.

After local non-profit GRIP Montreal called on major music festivals in the province last week to implement similar services in Quebec, those who offer them on the West Coast say it’s no longer a question of whether or not the approach is effective.

The real issue, they say, is having the services in place before the opioid crisis that has devastated British Columbia — resulting in more than 900 overdose deaths in the province last year — makes its way to Quebec.

“I know Quebec hasn’t seen the death rates that we’ve seen in British Columbia, but I feel like we can be your warning,” said Chloe Sage of ANKORS, the non-profit group that runs the drug-checking site at Shambhala.

“We don’t have time to talk about whether or not it encourages drug use. Drug use is happening already. And people are going to start dying in other provinces like they are here pretty soon.”

Though not without its critics, drug checking has long been used at European and Australian music festivals, based on the idea that no level of security will ever stop drug consumption at festivals, so people might as well be as safe as possible about it. In the United States, where harsher regulations apply, groups have been known to smuggle drug-checking kits into festivals where they’re prohibited.

Through most typical drugchecking services at festivals, people can test their drugs for potentially dangerous substances by placing a small sample on a plate and using chemical reagents to identify if it’s what they thought it was based on the reaction. While they wait for their results, advocates say, it gives outreach workers a window to speak with people they usually wouldn’t reach about harm reduction.

It’s with drug checking in mind that Jean-Sébastien Fallu founded GRIP Montreal 20 years ago. He had read about the approach being used at German raves and parties while studying at Université de Montréal, and wanted to implement something similar in Montreal after noticing how the quality of psychoactive drugs — ecstasy in particular at the time — was rapidly declining.

Today, GRIP Montreal has a presence at local music festivals and underground raves, where outreach workers offer tips, psychosocial services, supplies and even a place to rest if people are having a negative reaction.

But drug checking is yet to pierce through in Quebec. And just how long until it does remains to be seen, Fallu said.

“When I see the time it took to get safe-injection sites up and running, particularly in Montreal, I’m still pretty skeptical that it could happen soon,” he said.

The obstacles are numerous and varied, Fallu added, ranging from social acceptability, to financial realities, to permissions from public authorities, to technological challenges and legal concerns.

Two summers ago, when Nova Scotia’s Evolve Festival tried to implement drug checking, it had to cancel the service at the last minute — its insurance underwriter pulled its coverage days before the festival after finding out the service was supposed to be offered.

Though Montreal has other harm-reduction services in place, including the recent safe-injection sites and methadone clinics, Fallu said it’s hard to predict how the public would welcome drugchecking services.

Sage compares it to the early arguments against condoms and needle-exchange programs.

“Any time you implement something new, people will push back because they believe it will enable drug use,” she said. “But people are

using drugs whether or not there are services, support or intervention in place. We know that.”

In what Fallu described as a turning point after five people died at Canadian music festivals in the summer of 2014, the Canadian Centre on Substance Use and Addiction studied the issue across the country.

Two weekends ago, Ottawa’s Escapade Festival partnered with local police to establish an “amnesty drug bin” where people could dispose of their drugs without any questions being asked.

And for the first time this summer, the ANKORS team in British Columbia is adding fentanyl test strips to its tent at the Shambhala festival, a direct response to the public health emergency declared in the province last year after the surge of opioid overdose deaths. Many of those deaths have been linked to fentanyl, a synthetic opioid commonly described as being 50 to 100 times stronger than morphine.

Asked about the possibility of implementing drug checking at its festivals, Evenko spokesperson Philip Vanden Brande said the company — which runs the Osheaga Music and Arts Festival, Heavy Montréal and electronic-music festival îleSoniq, among others — is focused on reducing drug use through its security searches at entrances.