Festival organisers need to face facts over drug deaths

Rather than blaming police for drug deaths festival organisers and decriminalisation advocates need to own up to their own culpability so that we can find a way out of this tragedy once and for all, writes Miranda Devine.

How did an inquest into the deaths of six young people at music festivals turn into a propaganda platform for pill testing?

Laissez faire approaches to illicit drugs are what got us into this tragic mess. They are not the way out.

If the recommendations are to be of any use, they need to crack down on festival organisers, not to repeat the dishonest doctrine of drug liberalisers who prey on grieving parents to push their lines.

The horrible deaths detailed in the NSW Coroner’s Court ought to be a deterrent, exploding the myth that ecstasy is a safe or “happy” drug.

The most egregious testimony came from festival promoter Simon Coffey, who organised Defqon. 1 in Penrith last year, at which two people died.

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He advocates “hugs” for festivalgoers rather than a “wall of police, riot police and drug dogs”.

This problem has emerged precisely because drugs are easy to come by, cheap and socially acceptable.

Defqon festival organiser Simon Coffey spoke at the inquest into the suspected drug-related deaths of six young people after NSW music festivals over two years. Picture: AAP/Peter Rae

Alcohol has been demonised by educators and pubs so bound up with red tape we have effectively steered young people toward illegal drugs.

Now liberalisers are desperate to weaken the remaining prohibitions before the next festival season because a summer with no deaths would expose their cynical sham.

Death is just the tip of the harm iceberg when it comes to illegal drugs, whether it’s the physical toll on first responders or the mental health of users.

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Tony Wood, whose 15-year-old daughter Anna died in 1995 after taking ecstasy, has met more families devastated by drug use than most people, and he warns of the link between widespread drug use and the youth suicide epidemic.

“Most families I have been with who have lost a child to suicide point out that they were fine before they started using drugs.”

When you rely on a pill to make you happy your brain forgets how to make its own happy hormones and you become reliant on drugs to feel normal. That’s a horrible way to live, let alone die.

@mirandadevine