Drug deaths at music festivals reignites debate on pill testing
To test or not to test? That is the question state governments around the country are again grappling with following five drug-related deaths at music festivals since September, writes Greg Stolz.
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TO test or not to test?
That is the question state governments around the country are again grappling with following five drug-related deaths at music festivals in NSW and Victoria since September.
The deaths, including that of 22-year-old Brisbane man Joshua Tam after the Lost Paradise festival on the NSW Central Coast last weekend, have reignited debate about the merits of pill testing.
Supporters say the measure, used widely at festivals and rave parties in Europe and trialled in Australia for the first time at the Groovin’ the Moo festival in Canberra last April, has the potential to save lives. Opponents argue that on-site testing is an inexact science, condones illicit drug use and could actually do more harm than good.
Despite the latest spate of deaths, the NSW and Victorian governments this week ruled out introducing pill testing in their states (although NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian appeared to soften her stance when pressed by journalists at a media conference on Wednesday after almost 200 drug arrests at Sydney’s Field Day music festival).
The Palaszczuk Government, however, is keeping an open mind on the issue, with Health Minister Steven Miles refusing to rule out pill testing at Queensland festivals.
Speaking in the wake of the Joshua Tam tragedy, Miles said such deaths were “every parent’s worst nightmare” and Queensland Health was considering the findings of a report into the Canberra pill testing trial.
The trial was hailed a success in a 37-page report by the group that ran it, STA-SAFE — a consortium that included Harm Reduction Australia, the Australian Drug Observatory (based at the Australian National University), Noffs Foundation and Students for Sensible Drug Policy Australia.
The consortium secured the backing of the ACT Government and police, as well as Groovin’ the Moo festival promoters and host venue Canberra University, to conduct the trial.
“Despite repeated drug-related incidents occurring for many years at music festivals across the country, some of them fatal, governments of all persuasions have continued to prioritise a punitive supply reduction strategy for festivals,” STA-SAFE said in explaining the rationale behind the trial.
“More often than not, governments have increased the number of sniffer dogs and police presence, despite the lack of evidence … to support the effectiveness of this approach.”
The voluntary drug testing at Groovin’ the Moo was carried out in a tent using the same type of infra-red spectroscopy machine used at music festivals in the UK since 2016, as well as in legalised drug consumption rooms in British Columbia.
A total of 129 punters at the Canberra festival signed waiver forms agreeing to have their drugs — capsules, pills, powders and crystals — tested.
Two were refused because they were deemed to be intoxicated.
The punters were also issued with hospital wristbands printed with the details of their drug sample.
But none later presented to hospital or paramedics, according to the STA-SAFE report.
As well as MDMA, cocaine, opium and ketamine — and substances including toothpaste and paint — the testing revealed in one sample high traces of the synthetic designer drug N-Ethylpentylone, or “bath salts”, responsible for mass overdoses and deaths at festivals overseas.
After the testing, the drug samples were classified and displayed on a screen as either white (containing the same substances the patron had anticipated), yellow (containing a “significant disparity” between the actual and anticipated substances) and red (containing dangerous and potentially deadly substances).
The results were then explained by a chemist and doctor, and festival-goers could discard their drugs “should they choose to do so”.
Only five of the punters whose drugs were tested threw them in bleach-filled “amnesty bins”, although STA-SAFE claims more than 80 per cent of trial participants did not want to use the “highly visible” bins.
Some drugs were later found discarded near the festival medical centre where the testing was carried out, the consortium says.
According to the STA-SAFE report, 75 per cent of those who took part in the trial received some “brief intervention counselling”, 42 per cent said their drug-taking habits would change as a result of the testing and 18 per cent said they would either discard the drugs or think about it.
STA-SAFE says the trial proves that “front-of-house” pill testing at music festivals can be successfully carried out.
“We’ve just taken a big step towards taking back control of the dangerous black market in drugs in order to keep our kids safe,” Noffs Foundation chief executive Matt Noffs told media in the wake of the trial.
ACT Health Minister Meegan Fitzharris hailed the trial as a success, saying it shows there is a demand for pill testing at festivals.
“As the first trial to be conducted in Australia, I know that other jurisdictions will be looking on with interest to see the results of the evaluation,” she says.
ACT chief health officer Dr Paul Kelly says: “If we continue to do what we have been doing for the past 20 or 30 years in relation to drug policy, we will continue to get the issues that we face at festivals and other places every weekend and day in and day out in Australia of kids putting themselves in harm.”
He adds: “At least with pill testing, they have some information to guide their behaviour …”
Even ACT police chief Justine Saunders endorsed the trial, describing the initiative as “a great success”.
“Our intention was to focus our efforts on those who were trafficking and selling drugs, focusing on the criminality of drugs but allowing the pill testing to occur in a safe way,” she says.
“We are not in the business of targeting people who abuse drugs. We’re very focused on criminality, focused on the selling and trafficking of drugs at these events.”
Police and their sniffer dogs were out in force at this week’s Falls Festival at Byron Bay, stopping revellers en masse at the gate. Inside the festival, punters spoken to by Insight overwhelmingly supported pill testing.
“It’s a good thing, absolutely,” says one young woman. “People will take drugs regardless. You’re never going to be able to wipe out all drugs but at least (with pill testing) people can be safe.”
But Dr Terry Goldsworthy, a former senior Gold Coast police detective turned Bond University criminologist, does not believe in pill testing.
“It’s not always accurate and there is not a great take-up of people getting drugs tested at music festivals,” he says, pointing out that only 83 drug tests were carried out in 10 hours at Groovin’ The Moo.
Pill testing, Goldsworthy says, also “sends the wrong message” and “makes a mockery of law enforcement”.
“Music festival patrons are getting their illegal drugs tested and 100m away, there are police with sniffer dogs who can’t do anything about it,” he says.
“It (pill testing) is the first step towards legalisation.”
Goldsworthy notes a table in the STA-SAFE report showing that the vast majority of pill-testing trial participants said they would not discard their drugs or change their drug-taking habits.
“You are always going to have a certain percentage of people engaged in risk-taking behaviour no matter how much you tell them not to, even when the downside of risk-taking is potentially death,” he says.
In September, after two people died at a Sydney dance party, Brisbane-based Liberal National MP Dr Andrew Laming told Federal Parliament that pill-testing labs should be set up in inner-suburbs so accurate testing could be carried out in the days before festivals when users were not intoxicated and could be given professional advice “well away from the place where they are buying the drugs”.
Laming believes music festival testing is not sufficiently rigorous and creates a dangerous false sense of security.
He says it could even lead to violence if drug users whose pills are found to be “dirty” decide to confront their dealer at festivals.
Forensic toxicologist Andrew Leibie agrees.
“The problem with on-site testing is that it’s not entirely accurate,” says Leibie, who works for Australia’s largest workplace drug and alcohol-testing company, Safework Laboratories.
“It can’t tell you anything about the dosage of the drug. It won’t tell you how much MDMA is present in an ecstasy tablet, for example, and that’s a critical bit of information. Because while a little bit of MDMA might not hurt you, a lot might well kill you.”
Leibie says on-site pill testing involves taking a small scraping of the drug.
“The composition of drug can vary greatly throughout the pill — one half might be relatively benign and the other half exceedingly dangerous — so the results can be very misleading,” he says.
“From a scientific point of view, what the hell do we do about legal liability? If we test your pill at a music festival, tell you if it’s safe or not, give it back and you then die, who’s legally responsible for that?”
Leibie says the Netherlands has an accurate system which can uncover potentially deadly batches.
THE GREAT DEBATE
ARGUMENTS FOR:
■ Pill testing has been shown to change the black market, with products publicly identified as dangerous being found to leave the market.
■ Ingredients of tested pills started to correspond to the expected components over time, suggesting that pill testing can place pressure on manufacturers to refrain from using adulterants in drugs.
■ Pill testing changes behaviour, with research suggesting that negative results would deter a majority of people from consuming drugs and spur them to warn their friends.
■ Pill-testing booths create an opportunity for providing support and information over and above the testing itself.
■ Pill testing enables the capture of long-term data about substances in the drug market and the potential for a warning system against new, unexpected, or very dangerous drugs and consumption trends.
ARGUMENTS AGAINST:
■ On-site drug testing is fast and easy, but not particularly accurate. Proper analysis of pills requires highly sophisticated laboratory equipment and can take days of work by trained scientists.
■ On-site pill testing kits are severely limited in what they detect, with test kits unlikely to detect contaminants or other toxic compounds in pills.
■ On-site tests cannot test for the concentration of a particular drug, and high doses of ecstasy and methamphetamine are often fatal by themselves.
■ On-site tests cannot detect new designer drugs on the market, such as NBOMe – or N-Bomb – which has been linked to three deaths in Melbourne in 2017.
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