Darroch Ball
Leader
Sensible Sentencing Trust.
The issue of ‘pill testing’ at festivals has been debated over the past few years and now with a parliamentary majority, Labour has passed legislation to make it legal for this upcoming season.
It means having ‘testing tents’ set up at festivals that test the purity of illegal, non-addictive, recreational drugs, that have been smuggled into the festival through the security and police checkpoints.
It tests the purity of the drugs and then lets the consumer take them away and decide whether to take them or not.
One of the problems with the testing data and statistics is that the information gathered is done so by survey questionnaire, in the middle of a festival, when festival goers have likely already been indulging. The data is anecdotal, assumed, and has never been scientifically gathered. An example is when it is stated that an individual ‘decided not to take the pill’ once they were told it was dangerous. Firstly, the individual only ticks a box indicating ‘they won’t take it’, then walks out of the tent with the bag of pills still in their pocket. There is no confirmation of whether they actually took the drug or not, nor more importantly, whether the group of their mates waiting outside were told what the results were, or whether they all still took them or not. It’s all assumed.
Even the data the pill testing organisation ‘know your stuff’ provide shows that close to half of those who are told the pill has contaminants unsurprisingly tick the box saying they will ‘still take the pill’.
However, the argument is that ‘if even only a few people don’t take it then it’s worth it.’ Of course, that is true but unfortunately, the reality is not that one dimensional.
The real problem isn’t the proportion who decide to not take the contaminated pill, it’s the increased total number of people who decide they will still take the contaminated pill in the first place. That’s the danger number. And that number will increase.
There’s the rub. These testing stations won’t reduce the number of young people bringing in and taking these illegal, unregulated, untested drugs – they will only ever increase those numbers.
This is the problem when we have an ideological-driven government policy trying to be applied to the real world.
The often ignored issue is that because the government has given the ‘ok’ for drugs to be taken at these festivals, more people are going to bring the drugs, and more people will think the risk-taking will be mitigated by getting a ‘green tick’ from the testing tent.
That is the false sense of safety these pill testing stations will bring. The fact is there is no such thing as a ‘dangerous dose’ of an illegal drug because there is no ‘safe dose’. The fact that more people will bring in the drugs, and consume the drugs, more people will be hospitalised and there is a higher chance that more people will overdose or worse. That’s an unwanted and worst-case scenario – but that is the very real possibility.
Festivals have quickly turned into drug-taking cesspits. That will be proven in a few days’ time. The seriously misguided good-intentions of the government are at risk of being stung by the pointy end of reality – that these drugs are illegal for a good reason. They are dangerous. And by taking this step to give the back-handed ‘ok’ to young people is a serious recipe for disaster.
In a couple of days, the festival season will start. Let’s just hope that what I think is going to happen is completely wrong.
