‘Inherent contradiction’: Inside the tent where drugs are legal

As the mercury hits 28 degrees, Jimmy Brown is starting to regret the wizard costume.

Another festival goer, Phoebe Knight, uses a pink fan to cool down. There is a hint of a sea breeze, but inside the mosh pit at Wollongong’s Yours and Owls festival on Saturday, there is no relief.

Inside the NSW government’s pill testing trial site at the Yours & Owls Festival in Wollongong.Credit: Rhett Wyman

Heat, drugs and alcohol have proven a deadly mix at NSW music festivals. It was 28 degrees when 19-year-old Callum Brosnan died at the Knockout Games of Destiny festival at Sydney Showgrounds in 2018; 35 degrees when 22-year-old Joshua Tam died of an MDMA overdose at Lost Paradise weeks later; and 30 degrees when 19-year-old Alex Ross-King died at FOMO Festival in 2019.

After six music festival deaths sparked a coronial inquiry, deputy state coroner Harriet Grahame urged then-premier Gladys Berejiklian to introduce pill testing and end the use of sniffer dogs at music festivals.

It took six years and a change of government, but the first of those recommendations finally went ahead at Yours and Owls Festival in Wollongong on Saturday. A discrete tent, tucked away near the festival’s entrance, let revellers test whether drugs they planned to take were actually what they thought they were. The process is anonymous.

Among festival-goers, there was strong support for the trial. Sydney resident Simon Ellis said drug-checking was commonplace in Europe, where he is originally from, and that it was long overdue here.

Jimmy Brown was regretting the wizard costume as the temperature hit 28 degrees on Saturday.Credit: Rhett Wyman

Health Minister Ryan Park, touring the pill-testing site on Saturday morning, said the service could be the first opportunity for a young person to speak with someone who was able to give them accurate information about the substance they were about to take.

“I know very well that for parents of teenagers, this is a real challenge,” he said. “I know for others, they would have liked to see this in place a long time ago.”

But those same people say the trial is doomed to fail if policing is not adjusted.

“Having police in front of a festival where there is pill-testing is like having a teacher in front of toilets where students are vaping,” said Redfern Legal Centre supervising solicitor Samantha Lee.

“It will stop people from getting their pills tested, and that is the whole purpose of the scheme.”

Park has met with the parents of Ross-King, who died after taking all her MDMA to avoid getting caught by police, and so he should be acutely aware of the deputy coroner’s recommendation that sniffer dogs be removed from festival policing “given the evidence of a link between the use of drug dogs and more harmful means of consumption”.

Fanning herself as the temperature rose, Wollongong local Phoebe Knight said access to information would empower young people to make better choices.

“If you test your pills, and it comes back with something bad in it, but you take it anyway, that’s your own fault,” she said.

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