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Implementing NSW drug summit recommendations should not be delayed

The 2024 NSW drug summit has called for a shake-up of criminal justice and policing, and an end to the use of strip searches and sniffer detection dogs at music festivals.

  • The Herald's View

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Greens MP Cate Faehrmann says the cost of hiring police for NSW festivals is 12 times that of Victoria.

Police should back off drug users, says report

The final report from NSW Labor’s Drug Summit was published on Thursday.

  • Frances Howe
The Queensland government has released a tender calling for a provider to run its pill testing service.

Pill-testing scrapped as deadly opioid emerges

A state government has been slammed for abandoning permanent pill-testing clinics after extremely potent synthetic opioids were found in Australian wastewater for the first time.

  • Savannah Meacham
Wollongong’s Yours and Owls festival.

First NSW music festival to allow pill testing revealed

The announcement marks a major win for drug reform advocates who have long called for pill testing in the state. 

  • Michael McGowan
Kerry Chant has raised concerns about vaping.

State’s top doctor raises alarm as Sydney vapers develop opioid addiction

Dr Kerry Chant pushed the premier to think beyond pill-testing after young Sydneysiders unknowingly inhaled synthetic opioids through vapes.

  • Daniel Lo Surdo
Beyond the Valley music festival.

Festival-goer overdoses on first day of Victorian pill-testing trial

Paramedics were called to the Beyond the Valley festival after a man in his 20s suffered a drug overdose.

  • Rachael Dexter and Marta Pascual Juanola
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Acting Minister for Mental Health Mary-Anne Thomas, seeing sample drug testing with Jacob Fry senior chemist and Sarah Hiley drug checking director at the Beyond the Valley Festival.

What’s in that white powder? Inside Victoria’s first pill testing site

From this weekend, festival-goers will be able to get their drugs tested confidentially to make sure they are taking what they think they are taking.

  • Marta Pascual Juanola
Premier Chris Minns

‘Drugs are illegal’: Pill-testing trial will not stop arrests at festivals

Premier Chris Minns has conceded there is an “essential contradiction” in allowing a 12-month pill-testing trial while still expecting police to enforce the law.

  • Michael McGowan
Pill testing will be allowed at about a dozen NSW music festivals from 2025 in a major trial of the service.

Pill testing to go ahead at NSW summer music festivals

After years of calls for pill-testing services, a 12-month trial in time for the summer music festival season in early 2025 will be unveiled on Thursday.

  • Michael McGowan
The Minns government is facing pressure from within its caucus to introduce pill testing ahead of the summer music festival season.

NSW Labor considering pill testing this summer

MPs including the parliamentary secretary for health have put their names to an open letter calling on their own government to overhaul drug policy in NSW.

  • Michael McGowan

Original URL: https://www.smh.com.au/topic/drug-reform-1lze