The evaluation confirms that the Australian front of house pill testing model developed by Pill Testing Australia reduces the harm for people that may engage in drug use at festivals. It also vindicates our own belief and confidence in the model we can deliver. Media-Release-10th-Dec-2019-2Download […]

Dr Caldicott said health policy should be based on research, not opinion. “Telling young people not to take drugs is about as useful as telling them not to have sex before marriage,” he said. “We obviously need to do something new because we have a whole generation of young people ignoring what they are being told and a wide variety…

The criminalisation of illicit drugs is causing more harm than good, a prominent former judge has said, calling for criminal offences relating to personal drug possession to be abolished. […]

Over the coming months, music festivals will face much higher scrutiny than ever before, particularly in light of findings of last year’s coronial inquest. The NSW government remains under increasing pressure to change its current tactics for policing drugs at music festivals, particularly its stance on pill-testing as a harm minimisation measure, which it has steadfastly refused to consider. […]

Pill Testing Ambassador & Community Service Announcementhttps://mailchi.mp/350223bc99ce/media-announcement-2nd-december-2243025 […]

A year-long parliamentary inquiry in Western Australia has recommended that pill-testing be introduced in the state and sniffer dogs be dispensed with. It follows a similar call in New South Wales in spring and current pushes in Victoria and Tasmania. This weekend marked serious alarm as summer kicked off with one death and numerous overdoses in festivals along the East…

There is an unfair expectation on music festivals to go beyond what any police force or government have been able to do and stamp out drugs. And yet authorities refuse to listen to the evidence and expertise of the nation’s health bodies, the NSW coroner, the many parents of those who have died, and recently the City of Melbourne. […]

More than 20 heads of department at Sydney’s St Vincent’s Hospital have urged the Premier to scrap strip-searching and adopt a pill-testing trial amid an anecdotal rise in the number of panic ingestions at music festivals. The unprecedented appeal from senior staff at the frontline hospital for drug and alcohol emergency admissions follows a recent incident in which a teenage…

From our experience, we believe pill testing at festivals has the added advantage of bringing a young person face-to-face with a trained counsellor before they ingest the drug. Evidence to the coroner demonstrated that none of the young people had ever spoken with an expert about the risks of MDMA or the potential danger of mixing drugs and alcohol. […]