Show some courage on pill testing and save young lives

Five deaths at music festivals in less than five months. And, if I listen to some critics, the one thing stopping pill testing is that it is seen as people like me giving the green light to drug use.

I need to get my head around this. Me – a 33-year police practitioner and former federal police commissioner – giving the green light to drug use?

Pill testing could stop deaths at music festivals.Credit: Wolter Peeters

The reality could not be further divorced from this view. When it comes to drugs I’m about the straightest guy in town. I’ve never taken any illicit drugs and would love to live in a drug-free world. Of course that has never been the case and never will be.

I would also love to support a “Just Say No” campaign, if it had any chance of success. The reality is, of course, that it never has and never will.

Perhaps the reason for my support for pill testing and wider illicit drug reform, is that I have seen this failure first hand over 35-40 years – including through John Howard’s well intentioned Tough On Drugs policy stance – in an environment of efficient and well-resourced drugs related policing. I’ve seen too many lives ruined by drug use and abuse; too many families torn apart, and too much heartache caused for too many mums and dads. And it’s no fun delivering a death message.

Former AFP commissioner Mick Palmer.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

So to assume people – many of them doctors and scientists and health workers – like us either want to see a pill testing pilot because we want to give the green light to drugs or we are so stupid that we don’t see that it will open the flood gates is oxymoronic.

I don’t envy the task of our leaders and I’m sure there are many who assume that this is a fringe issue. It’s not – a majority of the country wants this because most of us treasure the lives of young Australians. I strongly suspect that this is an election issue that will define how courageous our leaders are and show us who can put politics aside to save lives.

How a government which presides in a jurisdiction in which a medically supervised injecting centre (MSIC) has operated successfully and with undisputable success in Kings Cross over 18 years, can be so vehemently opposed to trialling – or even discussing or considering – pill testing is difficult, almost impossible, to understand.

On the political front pill testing has been polled to death. A clear majority want to reduce the harm at festivals and get pill testing pilots up all over the country. Wouldn’t everyone want to do this?

If these sorts of programs gave a green light to drug use, why didn’t the injecting room in Kings Cross give rise to increased heroin use over a decade ago?

Self-serving and ill-informed comments from our leaders are just that. They fly in the face of the evidence and in the face of common decency.

Surely there is only one priority here and that is to try any initiative that may serve to reduce the likelihood of harm and save lives. Surely this is more important than winning an election.

Pill testing took place at Groovin the Moo in Canberra last April.Credit: Rohan Thomson

For god’s sake let’s at least have the courage to run a trial and go from there. Former Premier Bob Carr showed courage when supporting the MSIC in Kings Cross at the turn of the century and the benefits are irrefutable.

Instead of Just Say No – how about we say "Just Say No more kids dying on our watch"?

Mick Palmer is former Australian Federal Police commissioner, and policeman and lawyer.