Right: Music festivals are big business, as well as part of the lives of young people. Drugs have become part of the scene.
 Found a word you're not familiar with? Double-click that word to bring up a dictionary reference to it. The dictionary page includes an audio sound file with which to actually hear the word said. |
Arguments in favour of pill testing at music festivals
1. Pill testing is intended to reduce the risk of an existing practice, not promote illegal drug taking
Supporters of pill testing or drug checking argue that the process is not intended to encourage the use of illegal drugs. The Alcohol and Drug Foundation issued a statement explaining the nature and purpose of drug checking on April 4, 2018. This indicates, 'It is especially important to note that drug checking does not promote illicit drug taking, and people who choose to get their substances tested have already purchased their drug with the intention to use them.'
The purpose of pill testing is to promote the safe use of illicit drugs by users who have already purchased the product. Numerous drug experts have advised that young people, in particular, commonly take illicit drugs recreationally despite their illegality. For the majority of these users, this behaviour is experimental and short-term, associated with heightening the pleasure of a particular social event. Supporters of pill testing argue that what it is intended to do is help ensure that this drug use does not prove fatal.
The Out of Home Care Toolbox site refers to the 2001 research of Steinberg and Morris which concludes, 'Most young people will experiment with alcohol and potentially other drugs at some stage. [It is necessary to] distinguish between occasional experimentation and enduring patterns of dangerous or troublesome behaviour. Many prevalence studies indicate that rates of occasional, usually harmless, experimentation far exceed rates of enduring problems.'
In an opinion piece published in The Conversation on July 3, 2018, outlining the advantages of pill testing, Alison Ritter, Professor and Specialist in Drug Policy at the University of New South Wales, noted that a significant number of young people are already using illicit drugs recreationally and that the community has a responsibility to help to ensure they do so as safely as possible. Professor Ritter states, 'A 2010 survey found more than 11 percent of 20- to 29-year-olds and 7 percent of 18- to 19-year-olds had taken the drug (ecstasy) in the previous 12 months. According to annual research among 1,000 ecstasy users, 70 percent of these pills are taken at clubs, festivals and dance parties.'
More recent Australian data indicates that in 2016 43 per cent of people aged 14 and older reported they had used an illicit drug at some point in their lives and 28 per cent of people in their 20s said they had used illicit drugs in the past year.
As proof that pill testing does not promote illegal drug use, it has been noted by that in countries that have introduced pill testing operations, there has been no increase in drug use.
A report from Switzerland's Research Institute for Public Health and Addiction concluded that a drug checking service combined with a consultation session does not, as some would claim, encourage consumption.
2. Illegal recreational drugs are killing festival goers
Many of those who argue for pill-testing at music festivals and other major sites of recreational illicit drug use argue that this would be an important step in reducing the increasing number of deaths attributable to these drugs.
The Pennington Institute released its annual Australian overdose report on August 30, 2018. The report indicates that deaths by accidental drug overdose have consistently increased across the country over the past 15 years and now significantly outnumber the road toll.
In the last four months of 2018 and the first month of 2019 there was a dramatic spike in the incidence of deaths resulting from illicit drug use at music festivals. Between September 2018 and January 12, 2019, five people aged between 19 and 23 died after taking drugs at festivals in New South Wales.
On January 1, 2019, a 20-year-old Victorian man died after a suspected overdose at the Beyond The Valley festival. Former Australian Federal Police Commissioner Mick Palmer has referred to these fatalities as ' the most lethal summer of festival deaths on record'. The Commissioner has further stated ' Against any criteria we simply lost way too many kids this past summer, and many others went perilously close. Surely you can no longer ignore the experts who tell us that a pill testing trial is simply common sense.'
These deaths have lead to other calls for pill testing at Australian music festivals from those who believe that the measure would serve to save lives. Dr Alex Wodak, president of the Australian Drug Law Reform Foundation, has stated, ' We know in Australia, every summer, there are deaths of young people. These deaths are so preventable, so needless. It is really just ridiculous how stubborn politicians are being.'
Referring to the reduced fatalities achieved through the use of pill testing in Europe, Dr Wodak has queried, 'Why can't we learn from that experience, why are we so rigidly sticking with an approach?'
The mother of one of one of the young festival goers to die at the end of 2018 as a result of drug use at a music festival has called for pill testing as a way of reducing this loss of life. Mrs Julie Tam has stated, 'The government must get behind a system that will increase awareness and education to minimise harm.'
Supporters of pill-testing claim its capacity to reduce the harm done to illegal drug users has been clearly demonstrated. Fiona Measham, Professor of criminology at Durham University, has noted that following the United Kingdom's first pill testing trial in 2016, 'There was a 95 per cent reduction in hospital admissions that year when we were testing on site.'
3. There is no regulation of the content of illegal recreational drugs
Those who support pill testing or drug checking stress the uncertainty of the illegal drug market. The drugs offered for sale are completely unregulated with no guarantee of either purity, quality or indication of the nature of contaminants. This lack of regulation and resultant uncertainty regarding the product results in greatly elevated risks for users.
The Australian government Health Direct sites advises, 'Unlike prescription medical drugs, there is no quality control process for making many party drugs, because most of them are illegal. This means you don't really know how strong the drug is and what other substances have been added to each batch. For example, ecstasy can be made using drain cleaner or battery acid.'
Both the purity of the drug being taken and the nature of the contaminants or cutting agents with which it is mixed can dramatically influence the effect the drug has upon the user. Catherine Quinn, who heads the Victoria Police's forensic lab, has indicated that the purity of individual ecstasy pills can vary widely from as little as five percent of the active ingredient (MDMA) in each pill or capsule to as much as 60 percent. Quinn warns, 'The higher the purity of drug within a tablet the greater the risk or the more potent it could be for an adverse effect.'
On March 13, 2019, the Ted Noffs Foundation drug and alcohol rehabilitation program declared its support for pill testing, detailing the inevitable unreliability of illegal drugs. The Foundation stated, 'There is no way of knowing the contents of a pill or capsule simply by looking at it. While various online drug forums such as Pill Report have compiled a database of pills and their contents based on anecdotal evidence, this is far from a foolproof strategy. A pill testing program can benefit recreational drug users by scientifically testing and revealing the contents of the substance they are intending to consume. An individual can then make an informed decision as to whether or not they will use the drug.'
Geoff Munro, the policy manager at the Alcohol and Drug Foundation, similarly commented favourably on the first drug pill test trial held at Canberra's Groovin the Moo music festival in April, 2018. Mr Munro stated, 'When people are buying pills and powders on the street they can never be sure what is in them. Very often people are playing Russian roulette. It may be a highly dangerous chemical, or it may be a much stronger drug than they believe it is.'
Some commentators have noted that the variability of illegal drugs offered for sale in Australia is particularly high relative to many other countries. Political analyst, Carl Schelling, in an opinion piece published by Liberty Works on February 8, 2019, stated, 'The purity of MDMA tablets in Australia routinely ranks at the bottom of developed nations. A study conducted by American Addiction Centers found that MDMA pill purity was 16.1 percent, the lowest of all developed nations surveyed...Netherlands, a country which pursues a far more liberal approach to drug use, came in at 68.8 percent while also having a lower rate of ecstasy related hospitalisations and deaths.
The same study also found that Australian pills tested highest in the developed world for substitute substances like MDA and other amphetamines, substances that are far more chemically dangerous and easier to produce than MDMA.'
4. Pill testing has improved the quality of the illegal drugs offered for sale
Supporters of pill testing claim that having testing facilities at festivals affects the quality of drugs being offered for sale. It is argued that when drug traffickers know that their product can be tested and rejected if found to be contaminated or otherwise inferior, they are more careful about what they attempt to sell.
In 2014 Professor Alison Ritter, Director of the Drug Policy Modelling Program at the National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre (NDARC) outlined a number of reasons why pill testing should be piloted. First among these were ' pill testing has been shown to change the black market, with products publicly identified as dangerous being found to leave the market' and '[the] ingredients of tested pills started to correspond to the expected components over time, suggesting that pill testing can place pressure on manufacturers to refrain from using adulterants in drugs.'
Professor Ritter drew on European research in support of her conclusions. Part of this research was ' An inventory of on-site pill-testing interventions in the EU' published in 2001 by the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction, which stated '[I]t may be assumed that in the long run pills that are labelled with "unexpected or especially dangerous content" cannot be sold easily anymore which subsequently has to be seen as a success for public health.'
Dr Alex Wodak, president of the Australian Drug Law Reform Foundation, has similarly claimed pill testing not only influences the behaviour of drug takers but also of those selling the drugs. Dr Wodak has claimed that drug suppliers are less likely to bring 'their most dangerous products' to pill tested events. He has explained, 'When people find out that they're dangerous they try to get their money back. That goes back up the system and suppliers face lots of angry abuse. It changes the whole system.'
Some of those supporting pill testing have argued that if New South Wales does not adopt the measure this will increase the likelihood that the state will have even more contaminated drugs sold at festivals. This is because, while Canberra offers pill testing, drug dealers will sell their safer products there and their more contaminated products in New South Wales.
This point has been made by Shane Rattenbury, the Australian Capital Territory's Minister for Justice. Rattenbury has stated, 'We have been informed by policy experts... that if NSW does not introduce pill testing there is a significant risk that drug suppliers will respond by supplying higher quality, less dangerous, pills to festivals in the ACT while offloading lower quality and more dangerous drugs in NSW.
This is because pill testing in the ACT will increase the risk of exposure for suppliers who sell poor quality and more dangerous products. There will then be a deterrent for the sale of these drugs into the ACT market and the NSW market will be the more attractive and less risky option for poor-quality drugs. '
5. Pill testing involves counselling potential users regarding the dangers of drugs
Defenders of pill-testing argue that the testing process is used as an opportunity to educate potential users on the dangers of the substances they have purchased.
Dr Stephen Bright, an addiction expert at Edith Cowan University has stated, ' One of the biggest misconceptions around pill-testing is that it will portray taking drugs as safe.' Dr Bright further explained, ' Harm reduction workers always say there is no safe level of drug consumption. It's an opportunity to educate people on drugs - people who may not have seen such education in their schools, for example.'
Dr Bright has claimed that the brief intervention component was crucial, and that there were several cases in which people who were thinking about taking ecstasy for the first time - and whose pills yielded a pure result - actually changed their mind after speaking with an on-site expert.
Dr Bright has further stated, ' We know there's concern that pill-testing sites will endorse drug use, but it actually does the absolute opposite. Young people know using drugs is risky. We have research that demonstrates this. We also have research that shows young people are trying to find out what's in their pills.
When you walk into a festival and you see there's a pill-testing service with information about different kinds of drugs on the market, it makes the risk real - it turns the perception of risk into real risk.'
David Caldicott, an emergency doctor who led the Canberra trial, has made the same point. Dr Caldicott has stated, 'When a person first enters the pill testing area, they are met by a "harm reduction worker". This person explains the pill testing process and advises the patron that there is no safe level of drug consumption. You will not be told at any stage that your drug is safe.'
Martyn Lloyd Jones, honorary senior lecturer at the University of Melbourne and Paul Komesaroff, professor of medicine at Monash University have also argued for the benefits to be derived from a pill testing program that includes the opportunity for advice. They have stated, 'Specifically, we support the availability of facilities to allow young people at venues or events where drug-taking is acknowledged to be likely to seek advice about the substances they're considering ingesting.'
A number of studies have indicated that the combined effect of counselling and testing is often that people do not take the drug. A US-Australian study published in the Drug and Alcohol Review journal In December, 2018, found that 54 per cent of ecstasy users would be less likely to use ecstasy again if they learnt it contained bath salts or methamphetamine.
Studies conducted in Hanover, Amsterdam and Vienna similarly observed, 'In the in-formation ecstasy users obtain through pill-testing...the emphasis is always on the risks involved in ecstasy use and potential consequences of taking dangerous pills; pills are never simply given a "stamp of approval". Considering these messages, the assumption that pill-testing leads to increased ecstasy use does not seem all too probable.'