Drug-testing at festivals saves lives. Why does the Home Office want to end it?
In August 2019, at 3.42am on a Saturday morning at Leeds festival, 17-year-old Anya Buckley, from Oldham, collapsed and died from heart failure after taking MDMA, ketamine and cocaine. Later a pathologist concluded that Anya’s death was caused by mixed drug toxicity, with the court hearing that the ecstasy was particularly strong. “We are tormented by the fact that Anya’s death was avoidable,” her aunt, Anna Short, told the Guardian at the time. “If people are made clearly aware that drugs which are toxic are in circulation, then it can help them make more informed choices.”
Anya could have been many of us – it’s pretty normal for people to take party drugs with their mates at music festivals. Her death certainly doesn’t exist in a bubble. Between 2017 and 2021, there were at least 14 reported deaths among young people from drug use at festivals in England. In 2018, one such person was Georgia Jones, who died aged 18 at Mutiny festival in Hampshire after taking dangerously high-strength MDMA. “I honestly believe that if Georgia had been able to test her substance and given some advice on how to remain safe, she might have come home alive that day,” her mother said after her death.
It’s very clear that onsite drug testing can keep people safe: evidence suggests that festivals see a 10% to 25% reduction in drug-related harm when the volunteer-run drug testing facility The Loop operates onsite. Incredibly, however, use of such facilities appears to be in jeopardy. The Home Office told organisers of Parklife festival in Manchester that, for the first time since 2014, they would not be able to check for dangerous drugs onsite without a special licence.
This can take more than three months to arrange, at a significant cost, making onsite drug testing practically impossible this summer. The move has since been condemned in an open letter by a group of artists and MPs – including Fatboy Slim and Billy Bragg – who have dubbed the decision “shortsighted and dangerous”. “We urge you to reconsider this decision, and allow this vital testing to continue,” read the letter.
Anyone even halfway familiar with the stats on testing drugs at festivals – and actually, testing drugs in general – will know that it can, and does, reduce harm and prevent deaths: the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport committee noted that since 2016 “there have been no drug-related deaths at any festival [with drug checking]”. This is common knowledge, and has already been much discussed and researched at length. The more pressing question is: why does the UK government continue to uphold a long, grim history of ignoring expert advice with regards to drug legislation? And why did this move come unannounced, just as festival season kicks into gear?
For decades, politicians have given vague, ideological reasons for preventing drug safety, with little evidence that a hardline approach to drugs actually works. Since the Misuse of Drugs Act (MDA) was passed by parliament in
1971, drug use and drug-related deaths in the UK have actually soared. And yet, the MDA largely remains in place, with out-of-touch higher-ups reluctant to seem as though they are encouraging drug use in any capacity.
It’s a puritanical attitude that extends far beyond drug safety. Lean in a little closer, and you can see it everywhere. It’s in the idea that young people shouldn’t learn about different types of sex, just in case, God forbid, they start having it. It’s in the idea that the best way to prevent illegal activity is to punish and frighten people into submission, as opposed to taking a levelheaded and evidence-based approach as to what can actually keep them safe in their daily lives – which is what plenty of other countries are moving towards with regards to drugs. It’s these kinds of kneejerk, hand-wringing reactions – at which the UK is especially good – that tend to lead to effective bans such as this one, whereby feelings are prioritised over facts.
This summer, hundreds of thousands of young people will continue descending upon music festivals across the country. Many of them will – shock, horror! – be taking drugs. Some of those drugs will be bought at the festival site, or passed between hands behind portable toilets and muddy dancefloors. Some of those drugs will be cut with things that those people didn’t expect, or be much stronger than they’d been told. In some rare cases, contaminated drug batches might prove to be lethal.
Volunteer-run, on-site drug testing facilities such as The Loop don’t encourage people to take drugs; people have been getting high since time immemorial. Rather, they encourage people to not play Russian roulette with their lives, and to be given easy access to information that can help them to make safe, informed choices. The UK government should want this for them, too.
Daisy Jones is a writer and the author of All the Things She Said