Matt Johnston: Pills to set a test for Daniel Andrews
The Greens joining forces with the Reason Party on pill testing could spell trouble for the Andrews Government in the Upper House and Daniel Andrews will soon show how his government will respond, writes Matt Johnston.
Opinion
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Australia’s first “pill testing” trial took place last year in our nation’s capital. It was at the Groovin’ the Moo festival, which I once attended when living in Canberra.
While it wasn’t the most memorable music event I’ve attended, nor the most “druggy”, I do recall being searched for illicit substances.
In fact, security was so tight (and stupidly rigid) that they forced our group to chuck out expensive makeup because the containers may have been hiding drugs — despite us clearly showing them they weren’t.
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No doubt people still smuggled drugs into that festival. Where there’s a pill, there’s a way.
Things have moved on since then with pill testing promoted as a “harm minimisation” measure.
In other words, authorities said that if you are going to take drugs, at least let us check what’s in them first, warn you of the dangers and try to stop you inadvertently killing yourself. More than 80 revellers at last year’s festival submitted to tests of their drugs. Products included what users thought was MDMA (ecstasy), speed, ketamine (an anaesthetic) and cocaine. They varied in purity and authenticity, with one festival-goer told his “ketamine” was actually a substance that had been linked to several deaths in Melbourne.
After all that, 58 per cent of people who got their drugs tested said they would still take them, 12 per cent said they would take less, 5 per cent said they might switch drugs and 18 per cent said they would not use the drugs at all.
A handful of participants said — whether they actually did this is unclear — they would throw theirs in the bin.
Potential drug users were made to sign a liability waiver and were given an information pack including a simple message: “All drug use carries with it an inherent risk. The only way to guarantee, 100 per cent, that you are not harmed by consuming drugs is not to consume drugs.”
As you can imagine, people’s reaction to this trial has been largely driven by their attitude to drug taking rather than results. Some people lauded it as a potential lifesaver, others said it gave people a false sense of security about dangerous drugs.
Perhaps the biggest win nominated by supporters of the trial was that participants didn’t have to be helped by paramedics. They knew that because participants got wristbands identifying which drug they had tested and in the event of an incident, paramedics would be able to treat them based on that drug’s effects. Plenty of people without wristbands were helped by emergency services. Both the benefits and drawbacks of pill testing are evident in this finding. Tracking people using drugs to assist paramedics has some merit but it only works for those festival-goers prepared to submit to it.
This isn’t like Melbourne or Sydney’s injecting centres where all users are literally monitored in case they overdose and need to be resuscitated. True, heroin addicts don’t have to go to an injecting centre either and once they are there they aren’t left to go free range, potentially ingesting more drugs than they let on they had — with the hope a friend might grab emergency services if they get into trouble.
Most music festivals are predominantly for younger partygoers happy to ignore the risks they face. Some advocates are using the age of festival-goers as a reason to act. The idea that pill testing will prevent all deaths of young people at festivals is false and deceiving. People can die from adverse reactions to substances that test as pure as Snow White. Or from gobbling too many pure pills.
What it will potentially limit is participants taking dodgy drugs that have been cut down and mixed with other substances.
This is another argument used to support pill testing, being that bad dealers would get a bad reputation and lift their game if dodgy batches were identified.
Who know if that is true?
It’s hard to know how suppliers of illegal products market their wares or change behaviour based on consumer feedback.
What many people calling for pill testing at festival really want is a regulated drug market or a decriminalisation of drugs — such as in Portugal. If they want to have that argument, then let’s have it. There may be a time cannabis is regulated and taxed, which California did last year, but if it happens it will be some way off.
The Andrews Government has legalised medicinal marijuana, something California did about two decades ago.
This government won’t be the one to deal with that issue, but it will have to deal with this ongoing campaign for pill testing, including by a group of crossbench MPs whose vote Labor may need this term.
The Greens and Fiona Patten’s Reason Party recently held hands — no doubt extremely awkwardly — at Chapel St nightclub Revolver to push the case.
Premier Dan Andrews will soon show how his government will respond.
He eventually backed an injecting centre, which is aimed at saving the lives of addicts and shifting junkies off streets and into a contained space monitored by doctors.
But allowing kids to voluntarily check the purity of potentially deadly drugs and wander open fields drinking alcohol and whatever else they get their hands on is a more dangerous political proposition.
Matthew Johnston is the state politics editor
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