Pill testing will on Saturday be available on-site at an Australian music festival for the first time since 2019.
Pill Testing Australia confirmed on social media that the free drug-checking service would be available at Canberra’s Spilt Milk festival on Saturday.
The free, confidential service will be available to festival goers on the festival grounds from 11:30am.
Canberra’s Groovin the Moo music festival in 2018 was the first in the country to trial free pill testing, and the event hosted the service again in 2019.
But that came to an end after festival organisers were unable to secure insurance for the service in subsequent years.
The announcement of on-site pill testing at a festival comes a month since the ACT became the first Australian jurisdiction to decriminalise personal amounts of some illicit drugs.
Fixed-site local health and drug checking service CanTEST has also confirmed it had extended its operating hours in the lead-up to the festival.
The service is operational from 4:00pm to 9:00pm on Friday, and from 10:00am to 1:00pm on Saturday.
Last year in the lead-up to Spilt Milk, demand for the CanTEST service was so high that 27 people were turned away.
Bronwyn Hendry from Directions Health, which runs the CanTEST pill-checking service, said getting insurance for music festivals was no longer a problem.
She said there were some dangerous drugs currently in circulation, and encouraged anyone planning to take illicit drugs at the festival to get them tested.
“It’s definitely worth getting tested, but still be cautious of the dose you take because you don’t know what the purity is.”
Acting Superintendent Rod Anderson from ACT Policing said while the festival would include a police presence, their priorities were ensuring road safety and the safety of attendees.
“We’re going to have police patrols in general duties, and also a road policing team out and about in and around the event,” he said.
“We’re going to be supporting the security team that are already at the event, and just supplementing them.
(ABC)
