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campusreview.com.au
Image: FOMO Festival, via Facebook
Testing times
Experts plead for pill testing following
increase in festival deaths.
By Loren Smith
A
s summer peaks, so does the
incidence of music festivals – a rite of
passage for many young Australians.
Yet, increasingly, these events are tinged with
tragedy. Recently, 19-year-old Alex Ross-
King died at the FOMO Festival – the fifth
drug-related festival death in the country in
six months.
Just showing my age on this debate
but genuine question: Why do so many
people die now? When I was that age,
people died from heroin but rarely
ecstasy. Is it just more people taking
it? People taking greater amounts?
Shittier drugs?
https://t.co/3fTQd3vYTt
—@samanthamaiden 13 Jan 2019
Samantha Maiden’s hunch via Twitter
is correct – although usage is down,
there are more young people dying from
methamphetamines than in 1999. In the UK,
drug-related festival deaths, usually involving
‘uppers’, are at a record high. As for why, one
reason, as Maiden suggested, is that there
are more users of a particular drug – MDMA
– the active ingredient in ecstasy.
Maiden’s other suppositions, like the drugs
being of poorer quality, are yet to be proven,
due to a lack of data. That’s why Ross-
King’s family, together with many experts
and expert bodies, are calling for research,
including by way of piloting pill testing at
music festivals.
Despite this and the burgeoning death toll,
bureaucrats remain intransigent on the issue.
When asked about it following Ross-King’s
death, Prime Minister Scott Morrison deferred
his answer to NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian.
She doubled down on her opposition to it.
“The NSW government has the same
position as the Victorian government, and
that is we’re concerned by the unintended
consequences of pill testing,” she told the
Today show.
“Pill testing could unfortunately give people
a false sense of security. What is most lethal
is the ecstasy [and] people believing these
drugs are okay when in fact they’re not.”
According to Professor Alison Ritter,
director of the Drug Policy Modelling
Program at UNSW, there is no evidence to
support Berejiklian’s first assertion. However,
there is proof to the contrary: pill testing
positively impacts consumption choices.
Ritter draws this conclusion from various
pill testing pilot studies from here and
abroad. At a 2016 trial in the UK, for instance,
researchers found that a fifth of participants
ditched their drugs after they discovered
they weren’t as labelled. A majority of this
group also chucked other, untested drugs
after receiving this result. Further, at a pilot
conducted in April last year at Canberra’s
‘Groovin the Moo’ festival, post-pill test, 35
per cent of participants said they intended
to change their intended drug use by either
using less of it, using a different drug, or not
consuming any drugs at all.
Paul Komesaroff, professor of medicine
and director of the Centre for the Study
of Ethics in Medicine & Society at Monash
University, pointed to the other aspect of pill
testing: counselling.
“Pill testing doesn’t happen in isolation,”
he told Campus Review. “It occurs along
with another risk-minimisation tool,
face-to-face counselling, where there’s
an opportunity for people to be given
information about variables and the
particular risks they may face.”
Deeming policymakers’ views on pill
testing “rigid”, he compared them to
the negative views directed at seatbelts,
vaccines, random breath testing and bicycle
helmets prior to their introduction.
“I don’t think it’s unreasonable for the
government to be very cautious [about
pill testing]. We [the Royal Australasian
College of Physicians, of which he is a board
member] waited for evidence in the form
of data and reliable pill testing technologies
before weighing in,” Komesaroff said.
Having said that, he thinks the political
inaction must now cease. “I think that now’s
the time for them to start moving.”
Ritter also used the analogy of seat belts,
albeit differently: “The availability of pill
testing cannot guarantee that no more
deaths will occur, just like the introduction
of seatbelts and reduced speed limits has
not guaranteed a zero road toll,” she said.
“But not introducing measures that in 2019
have a solid evidence base is to treat young
people’s lives as somehow less important, or
less worthy of care and support.”
In 2016, nearly a third of people aged
20–29 reported that they had used drugs
illicitly in the past year, with 2.8 per cent
noting ‘recent’ use of an amphetamine. ■
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