We owe our kids a fair hearing on pill testing

There is a contradiction in giving laboratory approval to illegal drugs but the alternative is more tragic deaths. Government is right to be watching pill testing trials with an open mind, writes Terry Sweetman.

Dr Alex Wodak believes that drug taking is often part of a phase for young people.

Alcohol is a thriller and killer but generally you know what you’re getting.

Beer, wine and spirits have the alcohol levels marked on the labels and there is strict regulation of the contents, how they are made and what they contain.

For example, under Australian and New Zealand food standards, beer is ponderously “characterised by the presence of hops or preparations of hops, prepared by the yeast fermentation of an aqueous extract of malted or unmalted cereals, or both; or with any of the following added during production: cereal products or other sources of carbohydrate; sugar, salt, herbs and spices”.

More succinctly: “a food that is sold as beer must be beer”.

Alcohol can kill slowly and inexorably or instantly and dramatically but unless you’re swilling bootleg in some benighted dry Indian state or necking the neighbour’s toxic home brew there are guarantees of purity and strength.

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Alcohol can pose a danger to health if abused, but its purity and strength is regulated by Australian and New Zealand food standards. Picture: iStock

Party drugs, too, are thrillers and killers but those who take them have absolutely no way of knowing what they’re getting. There are no guarantees that drugs sold as party drugs are just that.

They take a steady toll of youngsters who, for reasons we older people will never understand (or have long forgotten), swallow what are called recreational drugs to add to the pleasures of the moment.

It may sound judgmental — even elitist — but these youngsters generally do not fit the community template of heavy drug users or addicts. They’re not desperates shooting up heroin, smoking crack or any other back alley concoction in a market place where death is their constant companion.

They’re casual users who, in most cases, pass through a phrase and get on with their lives and, quite possibly, grow up to share the hypocritical sanctimony of their elders.

I’m not happy with kids taking drugs but I’m even less happy with the fact that they die unnecessarily because they have to take the word of some low-life pusher that the pills they buy are pure and untainted.

In recent months at least five people have died after taking recreational drugs at music festivals.

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Brisbane man Josh Tam died after taking “unknown substances” at a music festival in NSW last month. Picture: supplied

Even allowing for the starry-eyed remembrances of grieving family members, they seem to have been otherwise good kids.

I used the word “kids” advisedly because, despite the fact most were in their late teens or 20s, they were still at that stage of life where folly was their prerogative. People of this age are not receptive to the “just say no” message, any more than they can resist the temptations of fast cars and unwise sex. And a sizeable minority of them take illicit drugs, especially ecstasy and its pharmaceutical neighbours.

University of New South Wales professor Alison Ritter recently cited a 2010 survey that found more than 11 per cent of 20 to 29-year-olds and 7 per cent of 18 to 19-year-olds had taken ecstasy in the previous 12 months. Yet our institutional response is to fall back on the tired and demonstrably unsuccessful war on drugs that seems to do little more than drive up the price of illicit drugs and demean police who try to enforce the unenforceable. (Would you like to be cavity searching barbecued chickens for drugs?)

The one tactic we have not tried is testing pills.

There is a contradiction in giving laboratory approval to drugs that rightly or wrongly remain illegal but the alternative is an ongoing roll call of death. Despite similar legal confusion, drug testing is available in the Netherlands, Switzerland, Austria, Belgium, Germany, Spain and France.

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Dr Alex Wodak believes many take drugs for a short period of their lives and then stop. Picture: David Geraghty

The evidence is that as a harm reduction intervention it works well enough to earn the endorsement of the Australian National Council on Drugs.

Opposition to pill testing is brutally summed up by former Labor leader Mark Latham who tweeted: “The solution to drug-related deaths at music festivals is to make these events drugs free: more sniffer dogs, more policing, more searching, tougher penalties — not a surrender to the druggies by testing their pathetic pills.’’

And that’s worked so well so far.

To those hardheads who say taking drugs is a conscious decision with known consequences, expert and reformer Dr Alex Wodak replied: “Remember they’re all someone’s brother/sister; daughter/son; mum/dad. Some take drugs for a while then stop, get a job, partner, pay taxes, look after ageing parents.”

Thankfully, and surprisingly, Queensland is taking a sensible and temperate approach with the government watching a trial of drug testing in Canberra before deciding whether to introduce it here.

I say “surprisingly” because Queensland has a long and sorry history of burying health initiatives under avalanches of politically-inspired, exploitative and morally-driven hysteria.

So far the responses have been muted and considered. Let it remain that way.

Drug testing is challenging and can be no panacea, but we owe to our kids to give it a fair hearing and maybe a fair trial.

Terry Sweetman is a columnist for The Courier-Mail.

@Terrytoo69