Right: Is pill testing at music festivals a "caving-in" of governments to drug dealers, or is testing just sensible and - according to some - inevitable.
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Arguments against pill testing at music festivals
1. On-site pill testing is limited and not sufficiently accurate
Opponents of pill testing argued that the on-site pill testing some advocates have proposed for Australia has limited capabilities and is not accurate.
In an article published in The Sydney Morning Herald on January 20, 2017, Andrew Leibie, a scientist with Safework Laboratories, and a member of the International Association of Forensic Toxicologists, stated, 'On-site pill testing sounds great. People take the pills they purchased at a music festival to a booth where test kits analyse whether the drugs are safe to consume. This will prevent deaths from bad batches, the reasoning goes.
It sounds fine in theory, but there is one major flaw - pill testing kits currently relied upon to deliver the results are limited by scientific realities. In fact, the proposed colourimetric on-site pill test kits provide results that are little more accurate than "best guesses".'
Leibie further explained, ' From a purely practical point of view, on-site drug testing is fast and easy, but not particularly accurate. Proper analysis of pills requires highly sophisticated laboratory equipment and can take days of work by trained scientists.
SafeWork Laboratories has some of the most advanced analytical equipment in Australia. Even then, it takes us more than 24 hours to obtain detailed results. When you add the time to get the pills to the laboratory, accurate results take days, if not weeks to turn around, a timeframe that seems entirely impractical in any real-world situation.'
Leibie issued an additional warning that on-site testing is not effective in detecting newly-developed drugs. He stated, ' The greatest concern however, is that on-site tests cannot detect new designer drugs on the market, such as flakka, liquid acid or NBOMe compounds. NBOMe, or N-Bomb, is a relatively new psychoactive substance (NPS) being detected in Australia. As little as a few thousandths of a gram are enough to cause violent or frightening hallucinations, major cardiac symptoms, nausea, vomiting and potentially death.
Unfortunately, these dangerous compounds frequently are mixed with more familiar drugs, such as ecstasy, speed or ice, requiring highly advanced scientific analysis to be detected.'
Leibie concluded, 'European data shows more than 100 new illicit drugs and compounds are entering the market each year. Detection of these compounds is challenging, even in advanced forensic facilities, so the reality is that pill testing kits will never be able to detect all the illicit drugs entering the community.'
The same point has been made by Dr John Lewis, a forensic scientist from the University of Technology Sydney. Dr Lewis has warned that a festival would need a commercial quality mass-spectrometer, costing approximately $500,000 to test products with a high degree of accuracy.
Dr Lewis has further warned that even such sophisticated tests would not provide three-dimensional modelling of an ecstasy pill, so only the surface level of the pill or any scrapings could be tested. Dr Lewis has stated, 'Because chemical substances are not evenly distributed through the pill, it creates a situation where a pill could be cleared for consumption without actually being tested.'
Dr Lewis has further noted that MDMA is often laced with synthetic compounds which cannot be detected. He has stated, 'It might not be able to detect synthetics such as Carfentanil, which is 10,000 times more potent than morphine.' He concludes, 'We need to get away from the spin around pill-testing and look at what can and will happen if it takes place.'
2. Abstinence is the only certain way to end drug-related deaths at music festivals
Opponents of pill-testing generally reject the harm minimisation approach of which drug checking is a part. They argue that pill testing offers a false solution to a problem that can only be fully addressed by having festival goers refrain from taking illegal drugs. Their argument is there is no safe manner in which these drugs can be ingested and no government-endorsed measure should suggest that there is.
Opponents of pill testing argue that potential drug users need to realise that contaminants are not primarily the issue. These illegal substances are inherently unsafe and any ingestion, even of pure MDMA, is a threat to life. New South Wales chief toxicologist, Professor Andrew Dawson, has warned that even a pill of 100 percent purity can result in death. The professor has described what occurs as part of a potentially fatal reaction to MDMA. 'Normally, what will happen to people is that they will...get increasingly agitated, they can then become confused and that's often a sign they already have a temperature... They may not always be aware that they're actually hot. Once your temperature starts going above about 41 degrees, you're at a temperature where...the proteins in the body start poaching and you get multiple organs shut down. And that's actually what causes the death.'
On January 5, 2017, in an opinion piece published in The Daily Telegraph, Louise Roberts argued to parents that they should aim to have their children not take drugs. Roberts wrote, 'Do you want your kids to take šillegal drugs? No.
Is there a safe way to swallow, smoke and inject these substances? Hello, that's also a no.
Maintaining that message is a Parenting 101, you would think. One of those obvious things such as don't give your kids matches, knives or loaded guns to play with.'
Roberts points to 'harm minimisation' as a misnomer and argues that only drug education and penalties are likely to end the loss of lives. She warns, '[The] inconvenient truth is trampled in our stampede to reach the apparent nirvana of inclusion and harm minimisation.
As sure as night follows day, news of a drug-related death at a weekend music festival has reignited calls for pill testing because pill testing "saves lives"...But] who believes that an individual intent on getting high at a festival would have taken the time to test his drug before he indulged?... It's a fairy floss safety net.'
A similar point has been made by Tim Mander, deputy leader of Queensland's Liberal National Party. Mr Mander stated, 'We have to remember that these substances are illegal and they're illegal for a reason. One pill can kill and we need to educate our young people that you don't need to be on drugs to have a good time at a concert.'
3. Pill testing could encourage drug taking by giving potential users a false sense of security
It has been claimed that allowing pill testing to occur at festivals or elsewhere will send the message that taking drugs is safe. It is feared that this misleading message will encourage drug use among young people who otherwise might not experiment.
The Victorian health minister, Martin Foley, has noted that the state's police advised the government that pill testing would 'give people a false, and potentially fatal, sense of security about illicit drugs'.
Similarly, Andrew Leibie, a scientist with Safework Laboratories and a member of the International Association of Forensic Toxicologists, has stated pill testing services could leave consumers with a false sense of security that the party drugs they buy may be safe, when this is not the case. Victorian Deputy Police Commissioner, Rick Nugent, has stressed that the reassurance that potential drug users may take from pill testing is false. He has stated, 'Victoria Police is not supportive of pill testing. There is no such thing as a safe illicit drug. An identical drug can affect different people in different ways. Illicit drugs affect people different depending on the purity of the drug, tolerance level, or medical conditions that people may or may not know they have. The majority of overdoses at music festivals are caused by poly drug use - that is multiple drugs consumed by the person. Pill testing does not prevent this.'
The same concern over giving potential drug users an unfounded sense of safety has been made by the New South Wales Health Minister, Brad Hazzard. Mr Hazzard has stated, 'Pill testing or 'drug checking' may test for the presence of particular compounds in a pill or capsule - it does not indicate that a pill or capsule is safe to consume. It gives people a false sense of security that may leave them brain damaged or physically disabled.
Focusing on pill testing and identifying the contaminants distracts from the fact that early toxicology tests indicate MDMA was present in the tablets consumed by all five people who died since September last year after attending music festivals.'
The Tasmanian Health Minister, Michael Ferguson, has argued similarly, 'There is no safe use of any illicit drug and it's reckless to suggest otherwise. The idea that a testing service can indicate that an illegal drug is free of certain contaminants sends a very mixed and risky message.
There are serious concerns over how many lives could be lost by people taking an illegal and dangerous drug under a belief that it is safe, and some families who have lost loved ones are calling on Governments to reject testing for this reason.'
4. Pill testing could encourage drug taking by creating the impression that drug use is officially condoned
Opponents of pill-testing argue that it could promote drug taking by creating the impression that governments and medical authorities endorse the practice. According to this line of argument, official prohibitions act as a warning against the banned behaviour. Critics fear that pill testing will remove that warning.
Australian Medical Association WA president, Omar Khorshid, has warned that no matter how much pill testing is marketed as not condoning drug use, the message could be that drug taking is acceptable.
Dr Khorshid has argued, 'Pill testing is not the magic bullet to prevent deaths of young people from drug overdoses at festivals, and there is a significant concern about sending a couple of wrong messages, including that taking these drugs is OK and we're not taking as hard a line on it.'
In 2016, rejecting pleas that his government allow pill testing, former New South Wales premier, Mike Baird, argued that pill testing was effectively endorsing the illegal drug trade. Mr Baird stated, 'We are not going to be condoning in any way what illegal drug dealers are doing.'
Sydney Liberal councillor, Julie Passas, has argued that pill testing would only serve to encourage drug use and help dealers peddle their dangerous products. The councillor stated, ' What message are you sending out? We would be condoning drug taking to children and young people, and we would be aiding and abetting the manufacturers of illegal drugs and helping the drug dealers.'
Drug Free Australia also argues that pill testing can present as official sanctioning of illegal drug taking. The organisation states, ' Pill Testing actually utterly undermines and is contrary to demand reduction. Pill testing... validates the pursuit... of illicit psychotropic toxins...[It declares] bring your illegally obtained and very harmful substances to a public event. We, approved by government, will test your poison to see if it is the poison you ordered, and if the contents of the drug complies with your agreed illegal purchase, then permit you to use this drug!'
Drug Free Australia summed up their position as absolute opposition to governments adopting any policy which could be interpreted as condoning drug use. They stated, 'The gate-keepers of health and well-being in our communities at a governance level are supposed to be politicians and policy makers, using the evidence-base and agreed upon strategies (i.e. National Drug Strategy) and interpreting it for reduction of, not permission for, drug use... Prevent don't promote!'
5. Illegal drug-taking is better treated as a law enforcement issue
Most Australian law enforcement agencies are not in favour of pill testing. Victoria Police, for example, is not supportive of the measure. Their view is that police strive to prevent people from distributing, accessing and taking drugs and that pill testing potentially undermines these efforts.
Victoria Police Deputy Commissioner, Rick Nugent, has stated, 'Police work hard to prevent people from accessing and taking drugs to prevent harm and prevent addiction. Pill testing occurs at the point when a person has already obtained illicit drugs and intends to consume them. More can be done to educate and prevent people from taking illicit drugs before we utilise pill testing. It requires responses from the health and education sectors as well as from Police.'
Police Association Victoria secretary, Wayne Gatt, has similarly stated, 'There is much more to be done in enforcement, prevention and an increased focus on accountability of venue and festival operators.'
A program of this type, with increased emphasis on holding festival operators responsible and punishing drug dealers, is being adopted in New South Wales. Changes are being made to the law to increase the regulatory obligations of festival organisers and the penalties that can be imposed upon drug dealers. From March 2019, festivals in New South Wales will be made to apply for a special liquor license requiring they be approved by the government, police, health officials and paramedics. Once approved, there will be scrutiny over the number of chill out zones and water stations at the festivals. Festival operators who skimp on medical staff, chill-out-zones and water stations will be fined up to $44,000 for individuals and $110,000 for corporations with potential jail time for organisers in the event of drug overdoses.
Police now have the powers to criminally charge owners if they break these conditions. A spokesperson for Racing Minister Paul Toole, has stated, 'As the new licence will fall under the NSW Liquor Act, festival organisers who fail to meet the new requirements will face the same tough penalties that currently apply for breaches of liquor licences. Festival organisers who do the wrong thing and breach conditions will also face being banned from running future events.'
An expert panel has recommended that a new offence be introduced for drug dealers who sell deadly pills, as well as trialling on-the-spot fines instead of court attendance notices. The premier, Gladys Berejiklian, has stated, 'The Attorney-General and the police force will be working together ... we envisage it [the penalty] will be anywhere between grievous bodily harm, which is 10 years [maximum in prison], and manslaughter, which is 25 years [maximum in prison], so somewhere in that range.'
The panel that recommended these changes to the law (comprising NSW Police Commissioner Mick Fuller, NSW Chief Health Officer Dr Kerry Chant and Chair of the Independent Liquor & Gaming Authority Philip Crawford) did not consider pill testing.