Page 1783 - Week 05 - Thursday, 10 May 2018
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video
bits that support him, but when the evidence is viewed in totality, the argument against pill testing is strong.
The first myth that must be debunked is one that assumes that the vast majority of medical opinions and groups support pill testing. That is simply not true. Many medical professionals and professional bodies have raised serious concerns about pill testing, and their quotes on the record prove it. I will turn to that from the national president of the AMA, Dr Michael Gannon:
And the last thing we would want to do is give people a false sense of security about taking illegal drugs cooked up in someone’s bath tub.
I do not think that statement from the president of the AMA should be ignored. Toxicologist Andrew Leibie from Safework Laboratories said public statements made by politicians that the trial would help keep people safe were potentially misleading. He said MDMA is not a safe drug and many of the deaths that have occurred across Europe this year have actually been due to MDMA. When discussing dangerous drugs, toxicologists should not be ignored. And nor should the state health commander of Ambulance Victoria, who recently said:
… it’s a poison. You can test a poison all you like, it remains a poison.
Many academic journals have also raised concerns, and I will quote from some of them. The internal medicine journal in November 2016 said pill testing at best gave an artificial shine of safety and that the failure to detect an agent that could be life threatening is a great concern. It said on-site testing will not solve this problem and could lead to other problems of an unpredictable and tragic nature.
We have heard a lot of concerns—the AMA, toxicologists, heads of ambulance services and numerous pieces of academic research. If this were any other area of public health policy and such concerns were being raised by such groups, there is no way that policy would proceed in the ACT or anywhere else.
Another area of concern to the Canberra Liberals is the legal uncertainty that has arisen. I cannot find a single legal opinion that supports the notion that the operation of pill testing in the ACT is legal, nor has any advice been provided to the opposition to the contrary. An article in the Canberra Times says that pill testing enters a legal minefield. It reports that a lawyer said people conducting Canberra’s pill testing trial could face criminal charges unless the territory’s Criminal Code is amended and that while it appeared ACT Policing had agreed not to prosecute anyone involved in the trial, it did not make it legally sound.
Another article entitled “Pill testing trial without adequate legal protection, lawyer says”, states:
Paul Edmonds, a solicitor at Canberra Criminal Lawyers, said no legislation had passed ensuring that there was a dedicated area where participants in the trial wouldn’t be held criminally liable for drug possession.
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video