‘Join the movement’: Minister calls for pill testing trial in NSW

A NSW minister has broken ranks to urge her Labor government colleagues to “join the nationwide movement” toward pill testing at music festivals, while also suggesting controversial policing tactics such as strip searches and drug-detection dogs should be part of the promised drug summit.

Youth and Homelessness Minister Rose Jackson told an international conference in Melbourne on Sunday that NSW was lagging other states on the issue of drug reform, and called on her colleagues on both sides of parliament to support a trial of the policy.

Senior Labor cabinet ministers Jo Haylen (left) and Rose Jackson are both long-time advocates for drug reform. Credit: James Brickwood

“This reform is supported by medical experts, the industry and perhaps most importantly, the families of the young people who have tragically died because our current drug laws are not working,” she said.

Jackson’s intervention comes despite Premier Chris Minns’ outward caution on drug law reform, and represents the potential for an early schism inside the new government.

Despite calling in 2019 for Labor to “have a big debate that includes a commitment to legalising” cannabis, Minns has poured cold water on the reform push inside his own government.

He says he has since changed his views on legalising cannabis, and on Thursday said Labor does not “have a mandate” to change the laws around cannabis.

He dismissed the suggestion that voters who supported Labor at the election because of Jackson’s advocacy on drug reform would feel betrayed if the government did not pursue changes to the law and pointedly referred to the cabinet’s role in formulating policy.

“I think people understand that government policy decision is made by the cabinet and the leadership of the NSW Labor Party,” he said.

“We’ll make the decision about drug law reform and any other policy changes in NSW. MPs are entitled to their view but it’s collective decision-making.”

But Jackson’s comments reflect the significant support for drug law reform that exists within the new cabinet. Along with transport minister Jo Haylen, she was one of two cabinet ministers who were part of the parliamentary patrons of the NSW Labor for Drug Law Reform during the last term of parliament.

A lab technician conducts a demonstration at the CAHMA pill testing site, which opened in Canberra last year.Credit: Martin Ollman

As recently as last November, Haylen told parliament: “When we sort through the evidence that has been laid out for us by experts, all signs point to decriminalisation. We cannot arrest our way out of the problem.”

Labor has promised to hold a drug summit in its first term modelled on the success of Bob Carr’s in 1999. That summit led to a series of ambitious reforms, including the medically supervised injecting room in Kings Cross.

The summit has been the subject of some criticism because, experts say, it is unnecessary following the former Coalition government’s $11 million ice inquiry, as well as a string of recommendations by state coroners to implement pill testing and decriminalise drug use.

“We shouldn’t have to wait for a drug summit to get what we already know works,” Harm Reduction Australia President Gino Vumbaca said.

But in the speech Jackson said the summit would “get our state back on track in exploring evidence-based policies that recognise problematic drug use is best managed as a health issue, not a criminal justice one”.

She also indicated controversial policing tactics such as strip searches at music festivals should be part of the reform “conversation” and said the state’s current laws were “ruining families”.

“I know we have to have a conversation about how policing works, about how strip searching works, and how sniffer dogs are used,” she said.

But “an important first step” was to “establish the idea that people who go to music festivals in NSW are able to access the same drug checking that they can in the ACT and soon in other jurisdictions like Queensland”.

‘This reform is supported by medical experts, the industry and perhaps most importantly, the families of the young people who have tragically died.’

Youth and Homelessness Minister Rose Jackson

Pill testing was a key issue during the last term of parliament, and former premier Gladys Berejiklian was fiercely criticised when her government immediately ruled out a trial despite it being one of the key recommendations of the ice inquiry.

The former Coalition government introduced a discretionary infringement notice for low-level drug offenders off the back of the ice inquiry, but stopped short of the recommendation from commissioner Dan Howard, SC, to decriminalise drugs in NSW.

In 2019, then-Labor leader Jodi McKay backed pill testing at music festivals after the coronial report into music festival deaths also recommended its introduction.

A government spokesperson did not specify what issues would be on the agenda at the summit, but said it would bring together health and medical experts, police, advocates and families “to build consensus on the way NSW deals with drug use and misuse”.

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