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Music festivals and drugs:
How would pill testing work?
Josh Butler,
Huffington Post
(30/12/15)
he calls for pill testing at
Australian music festivals are
growing louder, with drug
advocates, medical experts and former
drug squad police saying there is little
but political will standing in the way of
introducing such a system.
Pill testing, in place in various forms in
certain parts of Europe, can be as
simple as a litmus test indicating the
presence of certain substances – for
instance, ecstasy, MDMA,
methamphetamine, heroin or poisonous
cutting agents – up to sophisticated,
laboratory-grade equipment that gives
precise rundowns of the chemical
ingredients in a certain substance. Pill
testing regimes put forward by
Australian advocates would not tell a
potential drug user that a substance is
‘safe’ or ‘unsafe’ – they would give the
user more information on that
substance, for the user to then make an
informed decision.
Emergency physician and drug expert
Dr David Caldicott is leading the
charge. He wants permission to
conduct a pill testing trial at an
Australian music festival this season,
telling The Huffington Post Australia
of his frustrations such a program is not
already in place.
‘This is not novel or scary or
dangerous. The only people portraying
it as such are fringe members of the
prohibition movement and politicians
terrified of engaging with anything on
illicit drugs,’ he said.
‘This is so mainstream in Europe now,
the European Union has had their peak
drug body produce best practice
guidelines to do pill testing. Dozens of
countries in Europe do this already. As
with marriage equality or climate
change, we are leading the way in
being backwards on this. I’m
flabbergasted and my overseas
colleagues are scratching their heads.’
How it works
aldicott, who has been pushing for
such a scheme for over a decade
including running a trial at a South
Australian festival in 2005, wants to
bring in laboratory-grade equipment,
with ‘ the latest equipment, forensic
analysts, supervised by doctors.’ He
says he would set up shop in a visible
part of the venue, asking potential drug
users to bring their substance – pill,
powder or otherwise – in for a test. The
test takes between 20 and 40 minutes,
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