AMA NT President Robert Parker calls for pill testing before BASSINTHEGRASS 2025

The president of the Australian Medical Association’s Northern Territory branch has labelled pill testing as a ‘very sensible’ idea.

NT AMA President Dr Robert Parker

Australian Medical Association Northern Territory (AMA NT) President Dr Robert Parker has labelled pill testing as a “very sensible” idea, as he calls on the NT Government to implement the service ahead of Darwin’s biggest music festival.

It comes after this masthead reported the finding of a deadly synthetic opioid known as nitazene, considered to be up to 10 times stronger than fentanyl, in the NT.

Some nitazenes – which have been detected in illicit drugs such as MDMA and cocaine, as well as counterfeit pharmaceuticals – are so strong that there is no safe dosage, with as little as two milligrams enough to cause death.

Minister Marie-Clare Boothby at the preview event to BASSINTHEGRASS 2025 at Raintree Park 13/02/2025. Picture: Pema Tamang Pakhrin

Major Events Minister Marie-Clare Boothby told this masthead the government had no plans to introduce pill testing ahead of BASSINTHEGRASS, but suggested “nothing is off the table”.

Dr Parker said there was no fair reason to rule it out and indicated pill testing was a “sensible” idea.

“It is very sensible to know what you’re putting in your mouth given the consequences … [and] given the very nasty toxic substances that are going around at the moment,” Dr Parker said.

Pill testing facilities at Beyond The Valley. Picture: Alison Wynd

Pill testing is a process that tests the contents of most drugs to inform the owner of what is in a substance before they use it.

A number of jurisdictions on the east coast of Australia – Victoria, New South Wales and the ACT – have begun trialling the service to “great success”; while on the other side, Queensland has sought to discontinue two existing sites.

Notably, many jurisdictions – Tasmania, South Australia, Western Australia and the NT, for example – have not even made attempts to trial the service, with most a citing a lack of research.

However, Dr Parker suggested he would not buy into that reasoning.

Robert Parker, President of AMA NT. Picture: Julianne Osborne

He said he believed one of the main reasons state and territory governments were avoiding pill testing was actually because they did not want to appear to be “encouraging drug use”.

“It’s usually ‘Drugs are bad and we are encouraging drug use, therefore we don’t approve it’,” he said.

“But the issue is that young people will probably use drugs anyway; and you’d like them to be informed about what they are popping in their mouth and whether it’s dangerous.

“It’s just in the nature of young people to experiment; we don’t want them dying just because the government is opposed to pill testing.”