New drug measures cost NSW taxpayers $500,000

Festivals could be forced to foot the bill from March, as 25 people were rushed to hospital with drug overdoses over the weekend.

Emergency services attend to a man before he is loaded into an ambulance at the Rainbow Serpent Festival.

The NSW government spent about $500,000 over 10 days on harm reduction measures for three festivals, as 25 people were rushed to hospital with drug overdoses over the Australia Day weekend.

NSW Health Minister Brad Hazzard plans to introduce legislation to force festivals held from March to foot the bill for extra drug harm reduction measures, which includes the critical care teams, roving drug educators and free electrolyte drinks, as well as a rolling social media campaign aimed at warning festival goers about the health dangers of taking drugs.

But he again ruled out supporting pill testing which is backed by several leading medical associations.

Mr Hazzard called pill testing a “sideshow” while Premier Gladys Berejiklian said she didn’t want the culture of people thinking it was okay to take ecstasy.

He said placing emergency medical teams on “the front line’ of music festivals had been a “national first”, but it was clear it had saved lives.

While keeping young people alive had been “money well spent”, he was alarmed so many had continued to ignore the safety message this weekend.

“This tells us … that we have a very serious problem, young people are continuing to take drugs and at such a level we had to get 14 receiving extremely high-level response,” Mr Hazzard said.

NSW Minister for Health Brad Hazzard, Dr Jo Mitchell, right and Dr Sarah Coombes, left, NSW Ambulance. Picture: AAP

“Six were intubated — they had tubes put down their throat to assist their breathing. A number of other measures were taken to make sure they stayed alive.”

According to the NSW Ambulance Service, many of the 25 Sydney festival goers who were rushed to hospital over the weekend would have died or been permanently brain damaged by illegal drugs if medical teams had not been at the venues.

Twenty five people aged 16 to 25 had to be hospitalised after collapsing at the three music festivals, most of them casualties of illegal drugs.

Fourteen of the revellers had required “extremely high-level” care, including six instances where patients had to be intubated.

NSW Ambulance retrieval specialist, Dr Sarah Coombes said the highly specialised medical teams deployed at festival venues as part of the NSW government’s new mandatory safety procedures had been forced to perform ‘early aggressive medical critical care procedures” to prevent “death and disability”.

“There were a number of patients that were treated that likely would not have survived this event had the increased medical support not been onsite or if they did survive would not have survived neurologically intact or normally functioning people,” Dr Coombes said.

She said patients who had overdosed on drugs had presented in an “agitated delirious state with high temperatures” and had to be rapidly sedated and cooled down.

“As the temperature gets above a certain level you start to effectively cook the organs in your body and your organs and your muscles will start to break down,” she said.

NSW Health has confirmed a 21-year-old man who was rushed to Westmead Hospital in Sydney’s west from the Hardcore Till I Die festival on Saturday remains in the intensive care unit in a “serious but stable” condition.

All but two of the 25 festival goers who were hospitalised have since been discharged.

Teams of critical care doctors, paramedics and nurses were deployed at this weekend’s three music festivals in Sydney — part of a suite of new mandatory safety measures introduced by the NSW government following the deaths of five young people at Sydney music festivals since September.

Mr Hazzard said much of the recent debate about safety measures had been derailed by the pill-testing debate was a “sideshow, a distraction”.

With AAP