• Music festivals are offering to test the safety of people’s drugs, and police increasingly like the idea

    “Every time there is an event now, people are asking: why aren’t you providing a pill testing facility? Why are people needlessly dying?” said Gino Vumbaca, who works for one of the organizations involved in last year’s test run, the International Harm Reduction Association […]

  • Doctor-turned MP Kerryn Phelps floats pill-testing trial

    The doctor-turned federal MP who once argued the controversial case for Australia’s first heroin injecting room has intervened in the debate over pill-testing, warning political resistance to government-sanctioned drug taking at music festivals was costing young lives. […]

  • LNP frontbencher says pill testing should be considered in Queensland

    Member for Moggill Christian Rowan, an addiction medicine specialist, said he did not condone drug use but substance misuse was occurring, and pill testing should be considered. […]

  • Time to call a truce in the war on drugs

    Is it time to call a truce in the war on drugs? Dr James Freeman looks at the evidence; and the evidence shows prohibition has failed, and decriminalising drugs ought to save lives and deliver both social and economic benefit. […]

  • ‘They deserve to die, we don’t care’: Callous messages in the wake of music festival drug death

    Calls for pill testing to be allowed at events where the consumption of illicit and potentially dangerous substances is likely has ignited a fierce and bitter debate. Adriana Buccianti, whose son Daniel died in early 2012, has copped many of those remarks — total strangers gleefully telling her that her gentle, hard-working chef deserved what he got. […]

  • New Zealand embraces pill testing as Australian politicians resist

    As Australian politicians continue to rule out pill testing at music festivals, New Zealand appears to be embracing the controversial practice. The country’s Police Minister Stuart Nash said on Tuesday the idea of independent pill testing tents was “a fantastic idea and should be installed at all our festivals”. “The war on drugs hasn’t worked in the past 20 years,…

  • What is pill testing?

    The Australian Medical Association. And Professor Alison Ritter, from the National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre, lists several reasons to pilot pill testing. They include that pills exposed as dangerous have been found to leave the black market; ingredients of tested pills start to correspond to the expected ingredients over time; pill testing changes behaviour once the ingredients are exposed; and…

  • Former Police Commissioner: We Need Pill Testing Not More Arrests

    I have become a spokesperson for the national campaign for safer, saner drug laws ‘Take Control’ because all the available evidence points to pill testing being a proven and genuine means of reducing harm and danger and saving young lives — not just talking about it. How can governments look parents in the eye and say they are doing everything they…

  • Pill Testing Debate Erupts After Two Deaths at Australian Festivals

    Speaking to the ABC, Harm Reduction Australia president Gino Vumbaca called for a rethink on drug testing. “The continual reliance on law enforcement, extra policing, extra (sniffer) dogs, severe penalties, that all happens, but we see what happened at the music festival in New South Wales and festivals around the country,” he told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. […]

  • How pill testing could change Australian music festivals

    Pill testing could help warn others about dangerous batches of pills at Australian music festivals and deter drug suppliers from selling “contaminated drugs,” according to Dr Alex Wodak, president of the Australian Drug Law Reform Foundation. […]