‘Enough is enough’: Mum of teenager who died at festival says we need pill testing to save lives
The mother of teen Alex Ross-King, who died from a drug overdose, has attended Splendour in the Grass with a NSW deputy coroner, to push for legal pill testing at festivals.
THE mother of a teenager who died at a music festival from a drug overdose says ‘enough is enough’ and pill testing needs to be introduced now.
Jennie Ross-King, whose 19-year-old daughter Alex died at Sydney’s Fomo festival in January, fought back tears as she attended a pill testing demonstration alongside the NSW deputy state coroner Harriet Grahame at the Splendour in the Grass festival outside Byron Bay on Saturday.
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Ms Grahame is heading an inquest into the deaths of Alex Ross-King and five other young people, including Queenslander Joshua Tam, at NSW festivals between 2017 and this year.
“I guess the disappointing part is that this (pill testing) has been 20 years in the making,” Ms Ross-King told journalists after the demonstration by Pill Testing Australia head Dr David Caldicott.
“Alex was 19 … had this (pill testing) been implemented five years, 15 years ago, 20 years ago (Alex might still be alive).
“This is why I’m feeling like I need to help promote that change, because someone else is going into labour and I don’t want their kid
to be 20 years from now, in the same position as what Alex and our
family are.
“Enough is enough. You know, like … enough. It’s getting beyond a joke now.”
The pill testing demonstration did not involve real pills, and the machine was not even plugged in, because Dr Caldicott said NSW police would ‘freak out’.
Festival punters who packed the Science Tent for the demonstration and talk cheered and clapped the pill testing advocate.
Dr Caldicott, whose organisation has run pill testing trials at the Groovin’ The Moo festival in Canberra, said pill testing saved lives and called on politicians to listen to the science.
He said Pill Testing Australia was “ready and willing” to introduce pill testing at festivals around Australia, including in Queensland which unlike some states has not ruled out the initiative.
Dr Caldicott said politicians were afraid of appearing soft on drugs but their policies were killing kids.
“The way to look tough on drugs is to endure the people who are dealing and supplying them are nicked, and the people who are consuming them don’t get killed,” he said.
Originally published as ‘Enough is enough’: Mum of teenager who died at festival says we need pill testing to save lives
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