Menzies School of Health Research study finds NT partygoers support pill testing
Ahead of the 2024 BASSINTHEGRASS event, a new report has found Territorians are in “strong support” of introducing controversial pill testing.
News
Don't miss out on the headlines from News. Followed categories will be added to My News.
The majority of partygoers want pill testing for Territorian music festivals, a study has found.
Ahead of Darwin’s BASSINTHEGRASS festival, the Menzies School of Health Research released a study, conducted in 2022 but released in April this year, in which a survey was taken at a Territory-based event to explore local insight into drug-related behaviours.
The survey placed a particular focus on how much support there was for pill testing.
The findings revealed 73 per cent of the 539 participants supported pill testing.
The study also found 40 per cent of participants reported as having used drugs within the last month.
Senior author of the study Dr Cassandra Wright said pill testing was even more popular among partygoers who used drugs.
“When we isolated our results only to people who had used drugs it was higher again,” she said.
“So 81 per cent of people who had used drugs were in support of (pill testing).”
Dr Wright acknowledged that the survey, in which more than half of the participants lived interstate, was “not generalisable” of the Australian population, but maintained the study provided valuable insight into what partygoers wanted.
“I think it is a decent sized sample for the studied population of interest and I do think it shows strong support from people who are in these spaces and who are most affected by (drug) policy.”
Stephanie Tzanetis, of ACT pill testing service CanTEST, said there had been a rise in support of drug checking across the nation.
“The greatest support across the country is in the ACT where people are now used to the service and they can now see the health benefits,” she told the NT News.
“But across the whole country, there is popular support – I believe any kind of hesitation has more to do with people being unfamiliar with how the services works.”
Ms Tzanetis maintained that pill testing needed to be understood as a health initiate first.
“(The benefits to pill testing) is the immediate health intervention for the client accessing the services, where tailored information and even referrals to other services occur, but also the data from drug checking can feed into early warning systems.”
Woman in critical condition after Top End ‘edged weapon’ attack
A woman has been flown to hospital in a critical condition after allegedly being attacked by a man with an edged weapon in a Top End town.
Traffic backed up almost 2km as rain, crashes cause Darwin road chaos
The return of wet weather to Darwin on Tuesday morning was met with frustration, after a couple of prangs forced commuters to a crawl along a major thoroughfare. WATCH.