Adriana Buccianti will never forget the day police arrived at the door of her Melbourne home to tell her that her son Daniel was dead.
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"My world fell apart when police arrived at my door," she says on a change.org petition campaigning for pill testing. "There's no other word to describe it but horror."
Daniel, then 34, died of a drug overdose at the Rainbow Serpent music festival.
"No parent should go through this heartache, no one should die from having fun, a better world is possible," Ms Buccianti said in Canberra on Monday, describing Daniel has not only her son but her best friend.
When the police left that day, Sunday January 29, 2012, Ms Buccianti made herself and her son a promise. He would not be just another drug statistic, but a catalyst for change.
Ms Buccianti has since become an advocate for pill-testing and on Monday joined the Family and Friends of Drug Law Reform in Western Park for a remembrance ceremony. She called for a nationwide change to drug policy, pushing other states to take the ACT's lead on pill-testing at festivals, because it saved lives.
"It provides an opportunity for health professionals to have hard conversations with drug-takers about the risks and health concerns of pills," she said.
At the ceremony at a monument in the park families lay flowers and personal items, including shoes of the dead, and listened while the names and ages of those lost were read out.
President of Families and Friends of Drug Law Reform Bill Bush has been involved in drug reform since he volunteered at Arcadia House in the 1970s. The event was an opportunity for people to grieve in public without shame, and to draw attention to the inappropriateness of using the criminal law as a response to a public health issue, he said.
Criminalisation of drugs was just as harmful as the negative consequences of drugs.
ACT Minister for Health Rachael Stephen-Smith said she hoped the ACT's recent decision to legalise cannabis would mean fewer people coming into contact with the justice system, which she believed was just another form of harm.
Ms Stephen-Smith said the ACT government was committed to harm minimisation.
The ACT was the first jurisdiction in the country to introduce pill testing at music festivals. People attending Grooving the Moo last year and this year were able to have their pills tested to check for a range of substances and their purity.
This year, 234 people had pills tested, with MDMA (ecstasy) was the predominant substance identified, followed by cocaine, ketamine and methamphetamine. Most were expecting MDMA but the drug was relatively pure in only 67 per cent of cases.
Other jurisdictions have resisted pill testing, despite a string of deaths at festivals.
Ms Stephen-Smith also pointed to the ACT's impending drug and alcohol court, which would prioritise treatment over prison.
"There isn't one simple answer, but for every individual this is a health issue," Ms Stephen-Smith said.
Founding member of Families and Friends for Drug Law Reform Marion McConnell said she couldn't believe that 24 years after the remembrance ceremony began deaths were still occurring.
"I never thought I'd still be doing this 24 years on, I guess it takes time for social progress and for people to recognise the wrongness of the laws," she said.
