Stereosonic death: Drug testing at festivals would be just ‘guesswork’

MUSIC festival pill tests aimed at telling illicit drug users if what they are taking is safe would be almost worthless and only provide “best guess” results, a workplace drug tester says.

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MUSIC festival pill tests aimed at telling illicit drug users if what they are taking is safe would be almost worthless and only provide “best guess” results, a workplace drug tester says.

SafeWork Laboratories forensic toxicologist Andrew Leibie said it was virtually impossible to provide meaningful on-site testing of illicit pills at music festivals because current technology did not provide accurate results.

“From a purely practical point of view, on-site drug testing in this context has so many difficulties that it is almost counter-productive and is unlikely to provide any real safeguard,” he said.

“Proper analysis of pills requires highly sophisticated laboratory equipment and can take many

hours or days of work by trained technicians.

Mr Liebie said accurate testing of each component in a pill takes two-to-three days.

The deaths of Stereosonic attendees Stefan Woodward, 19, on Saturday in Adelaide and Sydney woman Sylvia Choi at the festival’s Sydney leg a week earlier has reignited debate about whether pill testing should be routinely available at music festivals, as is the case in many European countries.

A man, 20, remains in a critical condition and a woman, 21, is in a serious but stable condition at the Royal Adelaide Hospital after consuming illicit drugs at the Adelaide festival. They are among 22 fans who were taken to hospital for drug or alcohol issues.

Mr Leibie said on-site testing was often wrongly portrayed as a magic bullet.

“The on-site tests are so limited that at the very best, they can only provide a best guess as to a pill’s components,” he said.

“For example, they cannot detect contaminants or other toxic compounds.”

He said on-site testing was unable to test for unusual or exotic substances, and could not provide an amount of any component in the drug.

“An on-site test may be able to say that pill contains MDMA, or ecstasy, but will not pick up

other contaminants,” he said.

He said small amounts of other less common drugs such as para-methoxyamphetamine, or PMA which is known as “death”, would not be detected.

“Even a small amount of PMA in a pill — as little as one to five per cent — could easily be enough to kill a person on the spot,” he said.

“The on-site tests also cannot test for concentration. High doses of MDMA and methamphetamine are almost certainly fatal.

“A pill identified as pure MDMA at a reasonable concentration is quite capable of being lethal, especially at an outdoor dance party in high temperatures.

“MDMA interferes with the thirst reflex, so people can become dangerously dehydrated without being aware they could be killing themselves.”

Mr Leibie said the on-site tests were also unable to test for new designer drugs on the market, such as flakka, liquid acid and other substances.