Long-overdue pill testing trial a welcome start

More than five years after the drug deaths of six young revellers led the state’s coroner to call for drug-checking services at music festivals, NSW’s long-awaited pill-testing trial opened on Saturday.

The tent at Wollongong’s Yours and Owls festival is the first fruit of Labor’s 2024 drug summit, after which the state government promised a year-long pill testing trial to start in time for the summer music festival season.

Drug-checking services have existed in the ACT and Queensland for years, and Victoria’s summer pill-testing trial, announced by its government months before NSW’s, began at the Hardmission festival in Melbourne’s west last month.

But despite the growing use of pill-testing , NSW’s trial has not been without controversy.

Premier Chris Minns is a long-time sceptic of pill-testing, and his government’s decision to maintain regular drug policing at Yours and Owls this weekend has prompted warranted criticism about the service’s ability to operate.

Indeed, while it is a welcome start, testing pills at a music festival is behind the times somewhat.

Other Australian jurisdictions are looking beyond festivals as the best place to provide drug-checking services.

After becoming the first jurisdiction to run a pill-testing trial, the ACT now instead has a well-established fixed-site drug-checking service, testing pills, capsules, powders and liquids. A 2022 evaluation of the territory’s CanTEST service found the fixed site model was preferable because it allowed more comprehensive health services to be provided.

CanTEST was busiest during the weeks ahead of local music festivals, suggesting attendees intending to use drugs at these festivals were not deterred by needing to travel to a fixed site.

Victoria’s first pill-testing trial, held over the summer of 2024-25, comes with a fixed site in inner Melbourne, opening in the middle of this year.

In Queensland, the pill-testing program that debuted at Schoolies Week in November may be scrapped after the state’s new health minister claimed under-use of the service, provided through a private contract, meant the small uptake left the program costing $8000 a test.

In contrast, Queensland’s permanent drug-checking sites have proven to be more useful for health officials, identifying dangerous substances, such as highly potent synthetic opioids (nitazenes), in pills, including counterfeit painkillers purchased online.

Pill-testing is not just about keeping festivalgoers safe. The oversight of what is in pills being consumed by the public is incredibly useful for health authorities trying to keep up with the new and dangerous substances being added to consumables.

Last year, NSW Chief Health Officer Kerry Chant asked Minns to consider drug-checking as in the “public interest” after NSW’s first cases of accidental nitazene dependence.

The state government should be applauded for finally implementing a drug-checking trial. But it is in the public interest that lessons learnt elsewhere in Australia are used to its benefit.

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