The Daily Telegraph Editorial: Four drug deaths in five years tells us we need better drug detection
SATURDAY night in Sydney was absolutely beautiful. It was one of those perfect Sydney spring evenings, rich with summer promise. Tragically, for two young adults at Penrith’s Defqon. 1 music festival, Saturday night was the last night of their lives.
Opinion
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SATURDAY night in Sydney was absolutely beautiful. It was one of those perfect Sydney spring evenings, rich with summer promise. Across the city, people enjoyed long, slow walks just to experience the night’s wonder.
Tragically, for two young adults at Penrith’s Defqon. 1 music festival, Saturday night was the last night of their lives.
Aged just 23 and 21, the festival attendees suffered fatal heart attacks following suspected drug overdoses. A third heart attack victim clings for life in hospital.
“It was a very traumatic scene,” NSW Ambulance liaison officer Katherine Rallings said as an evening at the Sydney International Regatta Centre went from celebratory to terrifying.
“We had three patients in cardiac arrest simultaneously. It is so hard when you lose anybody, particularly young people. This is a senseless waste of life. No party is worth risking your life for.”
The raw statistics read like a casualty count after a terrorist attack: two dead, multiple others in critical condition and some 700 requiring medical intervention at the festival site.
Shockingly, the final Facebook message shared by apparent drug victim Joseph Pham described what he said were “ridiculous” levels of “anxiety” caused by the use of police dogs at the festival.
Yet other attendees said there were fewer police at the event than in previous years. “In the past you would have to walk past at least 20 police officers with sniffer dogs on your way in,” she told The Daily Telegraph.
“This year I only saw three dogs. I wasn’t searched on my way in.”
In the wake of this tragedy, police must revise and increase their use of sniffer dogs and other means of drug detection at these and similar events. That is if, of course, if such occasions are permitted to continue.
Premier Gladys Berejiklian is presently of a mind to ban the events outright — and few, at the moment, would sensibly argue otherwise.
“I’m absolutely aghast at what’s occurred. I don’t want any family to go through the tragedy that some families are waking up to this morning,” the Premier said. “This is an unsafe event and I’ll do everything I can to make sure it never happens again.”
The Premier should also push for tougher anti-drug legal penalties. Young lives are at stake.
ABBOTT’S MESSAGE VALUABLE
IN 2009, Tony Abbott took over the leadership of a Liberal Party seemingly futureless after Malcolm Turnbull’s period as opposition leader.
For years later, Abbott led the Coalition to a stomping victory over Kevin Rudd, having accounted for Julia Gillard along the way.
This was an object lesson in the power of political unity — a lesson learned well by current Labor leader Bill Shorten.
Abbott is now urging his party to unite at federal and state levels behind Premier Gladys Berejiklian.
Liberals would be wise to heed his words.
KIDS GETTING CAUGHT IN NET
IF you are ever stuck for a conversation among fellow parents, try this as an opening line: “Thank God I grew up before the internet was invented.”
The outpouring of shared feelings on this will be something to behold. Australians of a certain vintage now look back on their internet-free youth as a truly golden age. It was a time that, in the digital era, can never be replicated.
For the same reasons those parents feel blessed to have avoided any online pitfalls during their childhoods, they have deep concerns about the effects of online culture on their own children. These concerns were once primarily related to privacy and the danger of online sex predators. But as the online world becomes ever more an embedded component of daily life, other concerns emerge.
Experts now warn that oversharing online images of children may be putting them at risk of long-term mental health or self-esteem issues.
“Images posted now could be very challenging for teenagers and young adults to deal with in the future,” one authority told The Daily Telegraph.
Parents must remain vigilant. Childhood is too precious to risk.