The findings are in on Canberra's, indeed Australia's, first pill-testing trial, and the territory government has dubbed it a success.
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A report on the trial at a recent music festival on University of Canberra land revealed some 83 mostly young Canberrans were willing to have their illicit substances tested by the medical staff.
The trial has divided opinion both in Canberra and further afield, but one of the key findings showed some 18 per cent of those participants who had their pills tested told staff they decided not take them.
While 58 per cent decided they would still take the drugs as planned, 42 per cent said they would change their drug-taking behaviour and 12 per cent said they would use less.
The number of participants was small, just 83 festival attendees actually went into the tent and had a substance tested, and further trials may elicit better, more robust findings about the practice.
If even 18 per cent of those who intially intended to take pills at the festival did decide against it, that must surely be worth entertaining the option of a further trial.
But, given the 58 per cent of those who had a substance tested still intended to take it, that aspect of the findings may yet encourage those concerned the trial could lead to legitimising the illegal drug-taking behaviour.
As a community, though, we must not be ignorant to the fact that some people, particularly those young music festival goers, are likely to at least experiment with these substances.
And if close to 20 per cent are prepared to throw their pills away, that could mean extra emergency department visits, and possibly even deaths, are avoided.
While 70 participants believed they had pure ecstacy, only 32 of the drugs tested did, with cutting agents including oil, antihistamines, cocaine, caffience, dietary supplements and even toothpaste and potentially deadly n-ethylpentylone.
Most of the services were donated, through many months of negotiations and volunteer help, and the trial itself cost just $34,000, surely a small price to pay if it even one young life was saved.
The key difficulty, should the government consider repeating the experiment, will be in convinving people with results showing high MDMA purity, or at least less damaging cutting agents, that they should consider throwing it out.
The question remains that if the practice was more widely used in Australia, whether it would lead to the criminal profiteers supplying higher quality substances, but not necessarily a reduction in actual drug use.
Pragmatists would argue young people will continue experimenting with such things irrespective of trials, and as trials are confined to music festivals or other events, they would not provide an ongoing mechanism for harm minimisation.
Perhaps a further trial, with greater numbers and data, would help to provide a stronger baseline for such decisions.
The federal government's position against such trials is clear.
But whether the territory government returns to this particular battleground is unclear, and how much political capital the ACT Greens are willing to invest in the issue remains to be seen.