I join the families of those young people who have lost their lives as a result of illegal drug use at music festivals in urging the premiere to allow pill testing sites to be set up at music festivals this summer to prevent further deaths, not in place of advising young people not to use illegal drugs, but in addition…

More than two-thirds of strip searches carried out by NSW police fail to find any illicit drugs, according to data obtained by the ABC. The data also shows less than 0.5 per cent of drug searches undertaken following detection by a police dog result in drug prosecutions. MS Greens’ David Shoebridge said the numbers strengthened his call to ban the practice.…

Professor Louisa Degenhardt, co-author and researcher at UNSW’s National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre (NDARC), said confronting false claims that drug users were undeserving of humane treatment was a “social and moral imperative”. She said drug dependency should be treated as a chronic disease and governments should adopt evidence-based policies and therapies only. […]

A police officer who conducted 19 strip searches at a 2018 music festival has admitted to an inquiry that all of them may have been illegal. The commission heard only one of the searches conducted by the officer found any drugs: a single diazepam tablet, a drug used to treat anxiety and depression, prompting the commissioner, Michael Adams QC, to…

In a statement issued on 15 October, NSW and ACT Moderator Rev. Simon Hansford said that pill testing gave greater opportunities for treatment. “Pill testing can be the first opportunity someone has to talk to a health professional about drug use and its inherent risks,” Rev. Hansford said. This trial, Rev. […]

Jennie Ross-King, who said she supported all of Ms Grahame’s recommendations, said there was a “level of contempt” for the inquiry: “If they [those who leaked the document] had any interest whatsoever in the process, then I would assume they would’ve been following the evidence and this wouldn’t have come as a surprise.” […]

The Herald still believes that the approach to fighting deaths at festivals based solely on education campaigns and tougher policing is not working. It has been in place for decades but the deaths continue. Ms Berejiklian is wary of trying something new. But the case for a highly regulated limited trial of pill-testing and changes to police tactics is building.…

A report in The Daily Telegraph detailed the draft recommendations from a coronial inquest into a spate of drug-related deaths at NSW music festivals in the summer of 2017 and 2018. In the leaked documents, NSW Coroner Harriet Grahame recommended pill testing be introduced, and that police body searches and sniffer dogs be scrapped. […]