NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian's vow to shut down Defqon.1 festival following two suspected drug overdose deaths this past weekend has been dismissed as a comment "coming from a place of fear".
Kieran Palmer of Ted Noffs Foundation, who were instrumental in Australia's first-ever pill testing trial at Groovin The Moo in Canberra last year, says that the results of the trial proves that there are alternatives to simply shutting festivals down.
"The Premier's comments really are coming from a place a fear rather than fact," Palmer told The Music today.
"This debate is no longer about what we think might work. We have the evidence, we have decades of evidence, to tell us that getting tough on drugs and shutting down the festivals and telling kids to just say no - none of that works. None of that actually changes the landscape or changes people's decision making or behaviours or anything like that.
"We now have evidence that we have something at our disposal that actually does keep people safe, does keep people alive. We need to be doing [pill testing]."
As well as the deaths of a 23-year-old male and 21-year-old female, two festivalgoers were taken to hospital in a critical condition, 700 more were treated on site and 10 were charged with drug supply offences.
"In the polling that we've conducted...majority of people are ready for [pill testing]," Palmer continued.
"Majority of people actually get the fact that we live in one of the most privileged countries in the world, we've still got young people dying needlessly in this sort of way, we've been doing the same thing for such a long time. It's not working.
"Majority of people, and this is not just young people, it's older people and families and parents, are ready for a change and something new. We can keep saying zero tolerance... but this stuff keeps happening and parents are scared and rightfully so."
If Defqon.1 was to return in 2019, Palmer says Noffs Foundation would "love to see some sort of pill testing initiative".
"We know that these are some of the environments that illicit drugs get taken into," he said.
"The assumption that we can make is without anything like pill testing there, people bring drugs into the festival and they take them and they hope for the best. It's an extremely dangerous way of doing things.
"What we would love to see is if people make the choice to take drugs into the festival, that there's something there that can actually give them information that they can make far, far better decisions."
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