Last week, following the drug-related death of 24-year-old man Glenn McRae at a New South Wales music festival, state premier Gladys Berejiklian reaffirmed her long-standing position on pill testing: that it’s a bad idea, essentially, and her government vehemently opposes it. Despite calls from the likes of former federal police commissioner Mick Palmer and NSW Deputy Coroner Harriet Grahame to implement the practice, Berejiklian quadrupled down on her stance by claiming that it would “unintentionally [give] young people the green light that it’s okay to take the drug so long as you test them”.
Berejiklian, of course, wants to reduce drug-related harm. But she’s wrong to suggest that pill testing doesn’t work, according to an independent review of a trial which took place at Canberra’s Groovin the Moo festival earlier this year.
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The evaluation—believed to be the first of its kind in the world—was commissioned by the ACT Government and undertaken by researchers from the Australian National University, who spoke to people post-festival about what they ended up doing with their drugs after testing them, the ABC reported.
“What they largely told me was that most of them used the drug that they had tested and employed harm reduction behaviours [while doing so],” said one of those researchers, Dr Anna Olsen. “They used less than they planned, they spaced it out, they drank more water.”
The pill testing service also provided authorities with new information regarding the kinds of drugs and chemicals that are currently on the market—and the independent review found that police, festival organisers, and those operating the testing service collaborated well overall. But the biggest takeaway, it seems, was that the testing tent provided an ideal space for experts to educate young people on drugs and drug use—and that those young people did appear to listen to the advice they were given about illicit substances.
“People’s attitudes changed coming into the service,” said Dr Olsen. “People reported that they were more likely to seek information from health providers, which is great news because we know in this population of people they don’t often go to health services to ask questions about their drug use, because they’re worried about the law and being judged and things like that.”
These findings fly in the face of the Government’s unwavering opposition to pill testing. Fairfax reported last week that Berejiklian insisted she and Victorian premier Daniel Andrews “believe it [pill testing] could actually cause more deaths, by giving people a false sense of security.
“Pill testing will not solve the problem that ecstasy kills,” she declared. “I cannot say that in stronger words.”
