Father and son Telegraph journalists Mark and Mitchell Morri debate pill testing

With music festival season kicking off in Sydney this weekend, the issue of pill testing has come to the fore. Daily Telegraph father and son journalists Mark and Mitchell Morri debate the pros and cons. Watch the VIDEO here.

On Saturday the music festival season begins, with more than 30,000 people flocking to Listen Out at Sydney’s Centennial Park.

It has sparked an increasing call for pill testing sites to be introduced.

Pill testing has been resisted by previous Liberal governments and is still being considered by the new Labour government.

Just days before the festival kicks off, NSW Health issued a public warning about a batch of ecstasy pills stamped “Gucci’’ being distributed around Sydney. These pills contain four times the amount of MDMA in other tablets.

Father and son Telegraph journalists Mark and Mitchell Morri have very different views on the calls for pill testing to be made freely available. They lay out both sides of the debate here.

MARK MORRI, DAD

Why can’t young people go to music festivals and just dance without having to take a pill that can kill them in order to have a good time.

I know since time immemorial youth have rebelled against the old guard, and teenagers especially want to test the boundaries

Any parent in today’s world who has a kid over 14 and believes they have not tried drugs or been exposed to them are naive at best and totally ignorant of the modern world.

It is common knowledge that music festivals and drugs go hand in hand, and a large percentage of the party-goers are on “pingers” or MDMA.

Daily Telegraph crime editor Mark Morri. Picture: Jonathan Ng

Mitchell Morri bartending during Covid. Picture: Richard Dobson

In hindsight I now know that my son and most of his generation were experimenting with the odd pill — it terrified me back then, especially when one of them nearly died in a park at 16.

I’m glad he grew out of that phase, as us oldies say.

All the arguments my son and his mates throw at me still can’t convince me that pill testing is a safe option.

Green-lighting drug use, and falsely giving users the impression that pills are safe is not the answer. It encourages risky lethal behaviour.

In most of the music festival deaths, those who died had taken multiple pills or mixed them with other drugs or too much alcohol.

When someone says that a batch is OK, some people will take that as a sign that they can take even more pills … and that can be fatal.

Morri teaching son Mitchell how to swim, 20 years ago. Picture: Bob Barker

MITCHELL MORRI, SON

Like all good 16-year-olds, I had A “stick it‘’ to the (old) man rebellious phase, and liked to push the limits on how much I could get away with.

This meant taking anything under the sun at your go-to local park — or what the young people call ‘gatho’ — or at any underage music festival I went to as a teenager.

This phase didn’t just go away for me, or for many other people who I have the pleasure of calling my friends, it only increased.

Rather than the local park, we would go to a three-day festival in some far off location, buy some MDMA, or a pill, and have the time of our life for a much cheaper price than getting drunk.

The damage definitely hasn’t gone unnoticed to a few of my friends and myself, and my old-man will argue that its not the drugs, it’s the bloke that takes six.

He’s not wrong, but to that I say, how many alcohol related deaths happen every year?

Stupid people will always be stupid people, and there will always be the guy that wants to take six. Lets just make it easier for him not to die by letting him test what he‘s taking, and make sure it’s not spiked with something he can overdose on more easily than on clean drugs.

People won’t ever stop taking pills and drugs — and with small doses and smart usage, it can be fun and, if controlled, not dangerous.

I won‘t make the argument for drug use but I will say we need to decrease the risk of harmful substances being taken, the mixture inside some pills can be really dangerous, and this is why we need pill testing.

So Old Man, without sounding rude, you are out of touch.

Let‘s move forward and realise that people will take drugs, and let’s make it safer for them. Festivals are a good place to start.