Pill testing could return for the Spilt Milk festival next month. Negotiations are underway with an insurer to cover the controversial service where people can take their drugs to be analyzed.
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"I am hopeful. We do think we've found someone," Gino Vumbaca, president of Harm Reduction Australia which promotes pill-testing, said. "If we can get this insurance, then we'll be back."
Insurance has been the big block against the return of an on-site place for people with drugs to get those drugs tested before consuming them or not.
But now negotiations with an insurer are in their final stages.
A deal's not done until it's done, of course, but Mr Vumbaca is hopeful after failing to get anywhere with hundreds of other insurers. If he is right, pill-testing at the festival on November 25 would be there just after possession of small amounts of drugs was decriminalized on October 28, so making penalties light.
He said insurance brokers on behalf of Harm Reduction Australia had held meetings with big companies in London and Japan to no avail. Companies which insured pill-testing in New Zealand didn't want to do the same in Australia, he said.
Before the pandemic, Canberra was a pioneer of pill testing at festivals in Australia. The last time it was used was at Groovin the Moo in 2019 - but since the pandemic, insurers have had very cold feet.
There is a pill-testing site at the City Community Health Centre in the city centre (open on Thursdays from 3pm to 6pm and Fridays from 6pm to 9pm), but those who believe that such testing helps people lower the risk say testing at festivals would be even better.
Festivals in Canberra tried out the system in in 2018 and 2019. ANU researchers then evaluated the trials and concluded "that the service impacted positively on patron knowledge, attitudes and behaviours".
The people who ran the previous festival service and the current city-centre service say that the detailed chemical analysis of drugs identifies ingredients, including contamination. They say they do not advise people to take the drugs and do advise them of the dangers of taking them.
"We never tell anyone that their drug is safe," David Caldicott, the doctor leading the permanent testing site run by CanTEST, said.
Mr Vumbaca said drug users were told: "The safest way is not to use the drug. However, if you are going to use this drug, this is what you need to do, and if there is a problem, this is what you need to do."
He is hopeful that the on-site festival testing can return - "That would be fantastic" (though he adds: "There's oft a slip twixt cup and lip.")
Insurance is needed, he said, for fear of "vexatious" claims. "If we don't get insurance to provide a service, I can't in all honesty, expose our providers to random and vexatious complaints," Dr Caldicott said.
One possibility would be, for example, that a person had their drugs analysed, was given the full medical briefing, left the testing site but who then harmed themselves through some other cause - and who decided to consult a no-win-no-fee lawyer.
If a deal with an insurer is now done, the other hurdles would be much smaller. They would be: approval from the ACT government but that is likely to happen, and from the festival organisers.
Dr Caldicott said the organisers had already agreed in principle.
In 2018, the ACT became the only jurisdiction to allow testing.
Between 2017 and 2019, six young people died in New South Wales because of MDMA (ecstasy) toxicity or complications of MDMA use at music festivals.
In an inquest, the state's coroner urged a pill-testing trial, but the then state premier Gladys Berijiklian rejected the idea.
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But it was taken up by the ACT so pill testing took place at the Groovin the Moo festival in 2018 and 2019.
In 2019, the service detected seven instances of a lethal ingredient to a drug. All seven participants with the substance discarded the pills when they found out what was in them.
It is not clear why insurance companies are so reluctant to underwrite a festival pill-testing service. Dr Caldicott said that no actuarial calculation (of risk to the insurer of a big pay out) justified the reluctance.
Mr Vumbaca said the companies which had declined wouldn't give a detailed reason beyond saying there was "a risk appetite issue".
Apart from the ACT, only Queensland has shown any enthusiasm for pill testing at festivals.
Over the weekend, two men died and 10 other people were taken to hospital after attending Sydney music festivals. Police said they were waiting for autopsy reports, amid speculation the men died after taking illicit drugs.
Steve Evans
Steve Evans is a reporter on The Canberra Times. He's been a BBC correspondent in New York, London, Berlin and Seoul and the sole reporter/photographer/paper deliverer on The Glen Innes Examiner in country New South Wales. "All the jobs have been fascinating - and so it continues."
Steve Evans is a reporter on The Canberra Times. He's been a BBC correspondent in New York, London, Berlin and Seoul and the sole reporter/photographer/paper deliverer on The Glen Innes Examiner in country New South Wales. "All the jobs have been fascinating - and so it continues."
