St John Ambulance Victoria outlines four-step plan to make music festivals safer

Police will be “out be out in force” at two Victorian festivals this weekend, amid extreme heat and fears of a repeat of overdoses at events earlier this year.

Bolstering drug and alcohol education for high school students and first aid requirements at events will help reduce “catastrophic outcomes” at music festivals, Victoria’s leading first aid provider says.

On the eve of a scorching hot weekend packed with events, St John Ambulance Victoria chief executive Gordon Botwright urged the development of “a care system for festival goers that prevents and minimises harm” that would also trial pill testing.

His comments follow overdoses at Hardmission Festival and Juicy Fest in Melbourne earlier this year, which led to a spate of hospitalisations.

And they came as Victoria Police warned they would have a “highly visible presence” at this weekend’s Pitch Music and Arts Festival in Moyston.

This would include Passive Alert Detection dogs deployed to detect illicit drugs, local police patrolling the festival grounds, and Highway Patrol and uniform officers “out in force on major arterials and back roads before, during and after the festival”, a police statement said.

“Police have been working closely with event organisers to ensure safety measures are in place,” the statement added.

Police will also be on site at Golden Plains in Meredith this weekend.

The Department of Health released drug alerts ahead of the events, warning users to be “extremely cautious” of any pink and white capsules or white powder sold as ‘3C-P’ or a psychedelic.

“There has been one serious recent hospitalisation in Victoria associated with this pink and white capsule,” the alert said.

“The product appears to produce strong adverse effects such as loss of consciousness, respiratory depression, and life-threatening hypoxia (insufficient oxygen for normal functioning).”

St John Ambulance Victoria community program officer and Party Ready co-orindinator Chantelle Marshall.

The first step in the care system advocated by SJAV should be educating young people, Mr Botwright said – including by expanding the organisation’s Party Ready program, which teaches Year 9 and 10 students about potential dangers at parties, and knowledge and techniques to deal with them.

Funded and run by SJAV in a similar way to its First Aid in Schools program, Party Ready’s lessons include physical and psychological first aid, the effects of drugs and alcohol, how to avoid drink spiking and when to call triple-0 or seek help.

“We need to give kids some responsibility, by giving them some education to make an informed decision,” Mr Botwright said.

“The next thing is there should be an ability for festival operators to be aware of the drug environment that the event is being delivered in.

“The police are very well aware, as is generally the health system, about what drugs are in the circulation (and) that there might be bad batches out there. If that is occurring at the time of a festival … let’s get public announcements happening to warn people.”

The state government should also bolster regulations to place an onus on event operators to prove they have sourced appropriately qualified and resourced first aid providers, Mr Botwright said.

Currently, the responsibility lies with first aid providers to ensure they are licenced.

“There is a requirement that Ambulance Victoria should give a tick of approval for the event, which is always a good thing, and a requirement to get a permit from the local government,” he said. “(But event operators should have to) provide evidence they have ensured their first aid provider is appropriately licenced.”

St John Ambulance Victoria volunteer Michelle Jalocha won a First Aid Champion award in 2022 for helping a patron at a gig who was unwell and disorientated.

Hospitalisations and with them, increased pressure on health services, could be consequences of ineffective first aid care, Mr Botwright said. But the worst-case scenario was more “catastrophic and ends up in death”.

“Fortunately, that doesn’t happen often,” he said.

“It isn’t necessarily always because of bad management, bad planning, bad resourcing. But by and large if you don’t get those things, right, you create more of a risk for a catastrophic outcome.”

He supported pill testing in addition to these measures, while noting, “I don’t think it’s a silver bullet”.

A Victorian government spokesperson said there were “no current plans to trial drug checking”, but “any overdose or adverse health outcome is distressing, and we send our thoughts to anyone who has been affected by the impact of illegal drugs”.

The latest budget allocated more than $372m towards alcohol and drug services. Of this, about $21m per year was put towards harm reduction activities – including DanceWize peer educators who discuss safer drug use, hand out health resources and provide “chill spaces” to music festival and nightclub attendees.

The Victorian curriculum also provides all students with drug education, recommending a harm minimisation approach, and all commercial first aid services in the state require a licence.

DanceWize co-ordinator Nick Wallis said: “In January, we saw multiple overdoses at a music festival in Melbourne. Using large doses of MDMA or other stimulants, or re-dosing alongside the heat and dehydration are a bad combination.

“Drink water regularly, find some shade and have a rest with friends. And if you or your mates show any worrying signs at all – like feeling uncomfortably hot, experiencing nausea and vomiting, being excessively thirsty, feeling confused or being easily agitated, muscle spasms, seizures or loss of consciousness – seek medical advice.”

SJAV volunteers – which include doctors, nurses and paramedics – dedicated 100,000 hours across about 2500 events last year.

stjohnvic.com.au