Pill testing calls follow multiple overdoses at Melbourne festival

Calls are growing for the Victorian Government to adopt a similar approach to the ACT and introduce festival pill testing following multiple overdoses at a Melbourne event last weekend.
 
Eight people who attended Hardmission, an electronic dance festival held at the city’s Flemington Racecourse, were hospitalised and placed in an induced coma with suspected MDMA overdoses.
 
In response the Victorian Greens, the Animal Justice Party, and Legalise Cannabis Victoria issued a joint call for support of legislation that would allow pill testing at major music festivals, as well as  year-round fixed site services.
 
Chair of RACGP Specific Interests Addiction Medicine Dr Hester Wilson described the introduction of festival pill testing as ‘a no-brainer’.
 
‘[Pill testing] actually does change people’s behaviour, and therefore it makes it safer,’ she told newsGP.
 
Dr Wilson said that pill testing is ‘not a silver bullet’ but should be used as part of a range of measures to address drug use.
 
‘People don’t use to come to harm and the reality is that substance-safety checking helps people make informed decisions,’ she said.
 
‘If they’ve been mis-sold something or it’s more potent or it’s got something dangerous in it, people will change their behaviour.’
 
While the Victorian Police this week signalled there would be a heightened presence at other festivals taking place this month, Dr Wilson does not believe beefing up the criminal justice approach is likely to have the right impact.
 
‘We know people do it. Saying “no, don’t do it” doesn’t work,’ she said.
 
The earliest government-approved pill testing trial in Australia took place in April 2018 at the Groovin the Moo festival in Canberra.
 
An independent evaluation of pill testing at the following year’s festival found the scheme worked well. 
 
‘The combination of the perceived dangers of drug use, expectations of benefits from the pill testing service, and receiving information that they see as credible [since it comes from expert chemical analysts, physicians and peer educators] enhances people’s ability to take effective action to protect their health and wellbeing – their self-efficacy – related to drug use,’ the report found.
 
Last February, the RACGP came out in support of the Queensland Government’s decision to introduce a pill testing trial after the ACT’s encouraging results.
 
When the move was announced, the state’s then Minister for Health and Ambulance Services Yvette D’Ath said protocols would be based on the trials conducted at festivals in Canberra.
 
The RACGP was also among 77 signatories to an open letter published in October last year, urging the Victorian Government to put in place its own drug-checking and public early warning system.
 
The letter’s supporters included the Victorian Alcohol and Drug Association, Victorian Council of Social Service, Youth Affairs Council and Victorian Ambulance Union, according to AAP.
 
It cited several coroners’ reports in Victoria which have advocated for the introduction of pill testing.
 
‘We are particularly concerned about the need to build these systems to anticipate and enable swift responses to the arrival of novel fentanyl-type substances and similar high-risk substances that do not yet have a significant presence in Australia,’ the letter stated.
 
‘Having identified these emerging harms, the Victorian Government should urgently implement the recommendations of Coroners Spanos, Gebert and Cain before more lives are taken.’
 
The ACT was also the first jurisdiction in Australia to introduce fixed site drug testing services, initially in a six-month trial conducted in 2022, a move which was has now been extended until at least December 2024.
 
Dr Wilson believes it is time to make pill testing a permanent presence, both at music festivals and at fixed sites.
 
‘Even when things are longstanding, you continue to follow up into research to make sure that they’re meeting their aims,’ she said.
 
‘But if you’ve got evidence that it’s working, then mainstream it – make it part of the suite of options that you offer people as a part of harm minimisation.
 
‘[If] you mainstream it, then you make it part of the whole health system.
 
‘People can take on permanent jobs, build their skills, and build a service that has capacity, and has capacity to keep on going.’
 
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addiction medicine harm minimisation illicit drugs pill testing