Pill testing will not save lives, says former Drugs Squad boss
Pill testing at music festivals will not save lives because it’s the ecstasy itself that kills, not potentially harmful additives, says a respected former drug squad boss. LISTEN TO THE POLICE TAPE PODCAST
Police Tape podcast
Don't miss out on the headlines from Police Tape podcast. Followed categories will be added to My News.
Pill testing at music festivals will not save lives, with the initiative doing nothing to expose the purity of the deadly “pretty little pills” nor discourage youth from taking them, the former head of the NSW Police Drug Squad has said.
Former Superintendent Nick Bingham has broken his silence on the issue, angry at the continued waste of life and the misdirected discussion about what to do.
He said the debate should not be about setting up stalls at live music events to test what additives had been mixed with trafficked batches of illegal drugs, but enforcing the message that taking them was “a life and death game of Russian roulette”.
MORE FROM TRUE CRIME AUSTRALIA
Deadly intent: Gang’s crazy price on two cops’ heads
Shootouts: Inside the crime family feud that terrorised a city
Outburst: The one thing that truly shocked Hutchence detective
Five deaths and more than a dozen injured from suspected party drug overdoses at music festivals in NSW in the past five months were too many, he said.
Bingham has previously advocated for the decriminalisation of first-time use and possession of all illicit drugs, saying that charging people with a small amount of drugs was useless, did nothing to address the war on narcotics and merely clogged the court system.
But he told the Police Tape podcast: “I get angry because these people are smart people, but they’re running the risk — it’s like Russian roulette — of death or serious injury.”
He said any argument for having pill testing tents at live music events that can only test for additives not dose levels of MDMA, missed the point.
“People talk a lot about the additives that can compromise your ecstasy and can really have some sort of dangerous impact, but it’s not that, it’s the ecstasy itself that does it to you … it’s actually the ecstasy not the additives, it’s MDMA that kills you or harms you, it’s not really the additives that the people are so big on.
“So when they talk about pill testing at festivals and they’re going to identify other additives within the drug, it doesn’t matter what they identify within that ecstasy pill or ecstasy capsule, it’s the ecstasy that’s going to hurt you, more so than whatever else they put in it.”
At least four of the five young deaths were linked directly to the purity of MDMA in the pills they took.
LISTEN NOW: Hear Nick Bingham on everything from criminals’ threats to pill testing and the moment a police listening device was mistaken for a bomb. WARNING: STRONG LANGUAGE
The former superintendent said young people always thought it couldn’t happen to them, and their families were always surprised when an incident occurred because they were ordinary young people, not stereotypical cocaine or ice users, but the dangers were very real.
“Not only do we have deaths because of ecstasy exposure at these festivals, but there’s also serious, repercussions to the immediate and ongoing health (of people). It can shut down their organs, cause psychoses eventually and, so, the message I try and get out is that there is no safe drug and, if we saw the environment in which these drugs are manufactured, the people would probably think twice about putting it into their mouths because it is not a pretty little pill.”
He said the conditions in the backyard “labs” pills were made in were shocking, let alone what’s mixed into the batches, including acetone and solvents.
And he warned a pill may not be ecstasy at all, with PMA, also known as Dr Death because of its unpredictable effects, being passed off as the party drug when it was more like an antidepressant hallucinogenic.
NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian has ruled out pill testing, saying it effectively gives drug users a “green light to take these drugs”. Over one weekend in January, at music events at the Sydney Showground, Centennial Park and Olympic Park, 25 people aged between 16 and 25 years were hospitalised for overdoses.