Will not increase drug use, sends wrong message: Cases for and against pill testing

Conservatives and more liberal groups have clashed over the decision to allow pill testing to take place at a Queensland music festival this weekend. Here, our writers put a foot in each camp, making their arguments for and against the operation.

Conservatives and more liberal groups have clashed over the decision to allow pill testing to take place at a Queensland music festival this weekend.

Here, our writers put a foot in each camp, making their arguments for and against the operation.

WHAT DO YOU THINK? VOTE IN OUR POLL BELOW.

THE CASE FOR: THIS JUST REDUCES THE RISK, SO DO IT

Harm minimisation is safe politics. Don’t demonise people, work with them.

It’s underpinned our National Drug Strategy since 1985 when introduced by the Hawke Labor government.

So pill testing was always going to happen in Queensland, it was just a question of when.

In an ideal world, we’d go for zero tolerance.

No one wants to see young people destroying their lives with drugs.

But the reality is pill-popping happens so we should do what we can to reduce risk and increase education.

Epidemiologist Daniel Demant, who lectures in public health at the University of Technology Sydney, says evidence from countries with established pill testing programs, such as the Netherlands, France and Germany, shows they work.

Testing helps ensure pills with dangerous fillers are identified, Dr Demant says, and has “improved the quality” of drugs by putting pressure on the black market.

It’s seedy business which sickens me, particularly as a parent, but there is some comfort in forensic scientists and medicos saying testing will not increase drug use.

Emergency doctor David Caldicott, who led Australia’s first sanctioned trial of pill testing in Canberra in 2018, says once users are told what’s in the pills and why illicit drug use is so dangerous, up to half change their consumption.

Pill testing is not a panacea.

Tony Wood, the father of 15-year-old Anna Wood who died in 1995 after ingesting an ecstasy tablet at a dance party, says testing would not have saved her.

Her friends took the same pure MDMA pills and survived – drugs affect people differently.

This is true, but when zero tolerance isn’t practical, pill testing is a step forward.

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THE CASE AGAINST: MIXED MESSAGE NO GOOD FOR KIDS

There are no safe illicit pills. To suggest one can be “tested” as safe is misleading to vulnerable young people.

If ever a mixed message was sent to the nation’s youth, it’s encapsulated in the legal prohibition of drugs, and the simultaneous availability of pill testing sites.

The organisers of this weekend’s Rabbits Eat Lettuce music festival at Cherrabah Resort are taking the “sensible” path, and allowing pills to be tested to ensure they are safe for consumption.

It’s the sensible path because it’s the legal path, and has been since Queensland became the second jurisdiction in the country to introduce a drug testing initiative in February last year. Yet the possession of the drugs themselves remains a crime.

A young person walking the streets of say, Inala, holding these sorts of pills would, in theory at least, be risking a police warning – and, if they persist in their drug-taking, they would be arrested and have to appear before a Magistrate.

If that sounds absurd, it’s probably because it is.

The Queensland government will invest almost one million taxpayer dollars funding pill testing services in Queensland over two years to ensure the drugs are safe.

Simultaneously, our government will spend billions of taxpayer dollars each year to fund a police service which will raid the homes of those who supply the drugs.

Either these drugs should be made legal and become subject to strict monitoring and control by health authorities. Or they should remain illegal, difficult to obtain, and lead to anyone in possession of them being punished.

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