Helping festivalgoers party smart and safe this summer
With the summer festival season in full blast, there’s a dark side to the fun in the sun.
One local service agency is helping festivalgoers who use drugs avoid the deadly mistakes that have killed people in Ottawa and across Canada by offering low-tech checking kits.
Another is training Ottawa festival volunteers — more than 4,500 of them last year alone at events like Escapade, RBC Bluesfest and CityFolk — to intervene when they see sexual violence, which spikes at mass gatherings.
“One of our big messages is how can we make fun safe?” said Stefanie Lomatski of the Sexual Assault Network, which helped launch Project SoundCheck, an initiative that helps teach volunteers to recognize and stop sexual violence at festivals.
“To have an enjoyable time, we want to build people’s safety and awareness and a community where people are willing to step in.”
The Ottawa Hospital treated eight women for sexual assault and Ottawa police were investigating as many as 10 sexual assaults on a single weekend last month.
The hospital reported six of those women were under 20, with assaults reported to have happened at festival sites (both an electronic dance festival and rock music event were underway that weekend) and parties.
It’s the same “devastating ” trend explored in The Ottawa Hospital research in 2014, which found sexual assaults peak during celebrations such as New Year’s Eve and Canada Day, with statistical links to youth, drugs and alcohol and assailants who were strangers.
“It’s a community responsibility to address sexual violence,” Lomatski said. “We can change what that looks like.”
Project Sound Check trains volunteers to look for signs of trouble while they ’re taking tickets or selling merchandise, then step in and get help.
Volunteers might spot someone who appears very drunk, high or confused and vulnerable to what the project calls drug- and alcohol - facilitated sexual assault — like if they see someone slip a pill into a drink or overhear a troubling conversation.
They learn skills like how to “check in” — which could be as simple as striking up a conversation about the band to gauge the situation — or the “distraction technique” when they are concerned about how two people are interacting.
It doesn’t end at the festival gate. Nine in 10 volunteers said they’d spread the word.
“We’re reaching people as part of the festivals, but they’re sharing this message,” Lomatski said.
When it comes to drug use, the problem is information about widely used, but potentially dangerous substances is not being shared at all.
“When warnings get out there, it’s long after someone has had an adverse reaction,” said Caleb Chepesiuk, harm reduction co-ordinator at AIDS Committee of Ottawa.
“In Ottawa, we have no idea whether the MDMA is stronger than it used to be or adulterated — we don’t have the ability to monitor. What we get is rumours and gossip in place of health information. This is the gap in harm reduction we’re trying to address.”
Chepesiuk demonstrated how to use the test kits, which users can buy for $15 or pay-what-you-can, by putting drops of a reagent on a fragment of a white pill. “I’ll ruin the suspense — this is just aspirin,” he said as it turned brown.
It wasn’t aspirin when a 19-yearold woman died and a 20-year-old woman ended up in a coma after “severe reactions” to unidentified pills at large events over the Canada Day long weekend in 2014.
The Canadian Centre on Substance Abuse reports five young people died that summer at music festivals with alcohol, drugs or both contributing factors.
Among its recommendations were making sure there’s enough water to avoid dehydration at events like dance parties, finding ways to quickly share word of bad drugs and considering checking services.
While the test kits are cheap and simple, they don’t indicate strength and only pick up one substance at a time, such as ketamine, which turns bright red, and MDMA, near black.
It takes sophisticated equipment to pick up fentanyl — a major concern right now — and identify multiple substances through a checking service, which is the ultimate goal, Chepesiuk said.
“It’s peak party time,” he said. “A lot of drug use is situational, not habitual. That doesn’t mean people are not facing the same risks.
“They may be less educated on the ways of making sure the drug is what it says it is.”
Too often, the message to young people is “just don’t do it,” said Derek Cassidy of Queering613, who teamed up with Chepesiuk to offer a “safer partying” workshop last month.
Instead, Cassidy shared tips ranging from testing any drugs and telling a friend what you’re taking, to making sure to eat and drink water, carry cash for a cab and to pack condoms and ear plugs.
He also stressed the need for “enthusiastic and ongoing” consent when mixing drugs and booze with sexual activity, something that doesn’t come up in traditional sex ed.
To have an enjoyable time, we want to build people’s safety ... and a community where people are willing to step in.