Festival-goers scared to get help fearing punishment, missing out on jobs
Some teens are smart, but many others would rather die than tell their parents they’re on drugs. Emergency medicine experts say revellers turning up at Sydney dance festivals are undeterred by the recent spate of fatal overdoses and scared to get help if they need it, fearing punishment and job penalties.
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Some teens are smart, but many would rather die than tell their parents they’re on drugs.
It’s a common attitude among revellers turning up to Sydney dance festivals undeterred by the recent spate in fatal overdoses.
And emergency medicine experts say festival-goers are afraid to seek help because they worry about being punished by their parents, kicked out of school or denied jobs.
The Sunday Telegraph spoke to several attendees of the Hidden 2019 festival at Olympic Park last week who claimed the police efforts to kerb drug use were discouraging young people from seeking help and even seeing some pre-load on pills.
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Hardstyle music fan Emma Moran, 20, believed the show of force, including strip searches in purpose-built tents, was intimidating and discouraged drug-takers from seeking medical help for fear of prosecution.
“People would rather die than have their parents find out they were taking drugs,” Ms Moran said.
“A lot of my friends take MDMA, and it would be normal for them to have between four or five at a festival, but if they were overdosing they wouldn’t seek help.”
Teenagers Peri Roberts and Ashley Parker had both been subject to “scary” and “invasive” strip-searches at music festivals — Groove in the Moo and Rolling Loud.
“A dog came up to me and sat down, which was terrifying, then two female police officers strip-searched me,” Ms Roberts said.
“The strip-searches don’t stop anyone bringing in MDMA to the festivals, they just think of more creative ways to smuggle it.” Neither woman uses drugs.
Young people are often reluctant to seek help, said former St Vincent’s Emergency head Dr Gordian Fulde.
“It’s an enormous issue,” Dr Fulde said. “Teenagers are scared to seek help because they think that’s the end of the world. A lot of these kids aren’t just worried about what their parents will think, but whether they’re going to be expelled from school or university, or even if it will affect their future careers.”
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Dr Fulde said hospital staff weren’t the police.
“I don’t care if you give me an assumed name,” he said.
“If someone comes to us after taking drugs but they’re more or less in reasonable shape, we can save them from intensive care or death. Once they get to the stage they’re burning up and overheating, they’re in very big trouble.”
Two months after her friend, Alex Ross-King, died from an MDMA overdose at FOMO festival, Bonnie Crawford, 23, said she would never try the drug again.
“I’ve done caps at festivals, but losing a friend was really heavy, and I won’t do it again,” said Ms Crawford, who attended Hidden. “Alex didn’t need to die.”
As an alternative to strip searches, she supported Alex Ross-King’s parents in calling for pill testing at festivals.
“If police keep strip searching people, then they’ll have more drugs than normal before they arrive at the festival so it lasts longer,” she said.
Tony Wood, whose 15-year-old daughter, Anna, died after taking ecstasy at a dance party in 1995, rejected the suggestion police should change tack.
“There’s no difference between cracking down on drink driving and pills — it keeps people safe and stops them killing themselves,” Mr Wood said.
“I can’t see why there’d be a problem with cracking down on drugs when they pose a risk to kids’ safety.”
“The only way we’ll stop these deaths is to take a zero tolerance stance on drugs, which may never stop it completely but will slow the deaths down.”
In his two decades spent talking to children and young adults about drug safety, Mr Wood said the only message that struck a chord with young people was the fear their families would be shattered by their deaths.
Privately senior police concede there is little more that can be done to make the events entirely drug free.
“Unless it's a drug free society it’s not going to be a drug free festival,” said one officer who oversaw police operations at festivals. No amount of drug dogs will stop it because there is only so many police you can have before the dogs get too exhausted to work.”
For every sniffer dog at a festival, there needed to be at least seven officers, he said.
“If you have a look at the results from every festival, its always 100 or 120 people charged because that is the tipping point of how long it takes to search people, weigh the drugs, charge them.
That’s as much as you can do with the resources in the space of three or four hours.”
While more security cameras and surveillance — at the cost of festival organisers — might serve as a deterrent, it would probably make the cost of putting on the event unviable, another police source said.
This month the NSW Government used a licensing shake up to crack own on high risk events and vowed never to allow pill testing.
Originally published as Festival-goers scared to get help fearing punishment, missing out on jobs
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