Page 5458 - Week 14 - Thursday, 30 November 2017
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It is not just public statements that raise these concerns. Academic research papers raise the same issues. A report titled “Pill testing at music festivals: can we do more harm?” in the Internal Medicine Journal of November 2016 says:
… pill testing at best gave an artificial shine of safety … The failure to detect an agent that could be life-threatening is of great concern. On-site testing will thus not solve this problem and could lead to other problems of an unpredictable and tragic nature.
Let me go to another: “Ecstasy pill testing: harm minimization gone too far?” in Addiction, by researchers from the Institute of Psychiatry of Kings College London and the Toxicology Unit of St George’s Hospital Medical School. The authors state:
Pill testing of any description does not guarantee safety, or protect the consumer against individual responses to pills.
They say:
The belief that pill testing may be viewed as a harm reduction approach is based upon the assumption that the knowledge made available to users from testing will in some way influence their drug-taking and lead to behavioural change. However, evidence for this is not substantiated.
The authors say that, in a recent UK study, subjects indicated that if the quality of pills became worse, 20 per cent would take more, and if pills were thought to improve, 40 per cent would take more.
Let me turn to some legal issues, because it is not just medical issues that are at play here. I will go to legal experts to make my point. Let me go to an article headed “Pill testing enters legal minefield”. The Canberra Times reports:
People conducting Canberra’s pill testing trial could face criminal charges unless the territory's Criminal Code is amended, a lawyer says …
He said while it appeared ACT Policing had agreed not to prosecute anyone involved in the trial, it didn’t make it legally sound …
He was also concerned about possible civil lawsuits if someone who had their pills tested had an adverse reaction.
He said he couldn’t see how the private agency would not be liable, saying any disclaimer could be useless.
In an article in the Sydney Morning Herald last year, a top prosecutor says that punters are not legally protected by pill testing programs at music festivals. I quote:
ONE OF Australia’s top silks says people who run and use pill testing programs at music festivals could be arrested …
Former NSW Director of Public Prosecutions Nicholas Cowdery, who is currently an adjunct professor at the Sydney Institute of Criminology, says if police enforce laws correctly any illegal drug user or tester is “liable to arrest and prosecution”.
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