Page 1785 - Week 05 - Thursday, 10 May 2018
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Victoria conducted surveys at Groovin the Moo in Bendigo and spoke to young people who were festival goers. I will quote the young people, the festival goers, who were considering whether to take drugs: “The fact that they can test it and make sure that they are going to be safe is definitely a good thing”; “It could make you want to take more drugs. It would definitely give you peace of mind.”
That is exactly the point the AMA, Dr Liebie and others and experience from overseas make: festival goers are under the misapprehension that once their pill is tested it is all safe. This pill testing in the ACT is doing exactly that—it is giving piece of mind and spreading the misapprehension to young people that taking those drugs is safe—in their words it is definitely safe—and that is not the case. Sending that message should be of concern to everybody in this place. More young people taking drugs under the misapprehension that they are safe will lead to more deaths, and this is the experience overseas.
An article entitled “Pill testing sounds like a great idea but there’s a catch” says:
Countries that have gone down the pill testing route do not provide any comfort that this approach works. Britain has roughly two and a half times Australia’s population. In 2015, it had 114 deaths from NPS, a figure that has been rising every year since 2011. Australia recorded less than a dozen deaths from NPS in 2015, yet Britain has pill testing while Australia does not.
According to figures released by the Office for National Statistics in Britain, towards the end of 2016 deaths linked to ecstasy or MDMA were at their highest level in a decade. In 2010 there were eight; in 2015 the count was 57. According to last year’s global drugs survey in which more than 100,000 drug users worldwide were quizzed about their habits this is the worst time to be using MDMA in a generation.
In conclusion, when we look for solutions we need to look at all the evidence and not do as Mr Rattenbury has done and cherrypick some of it. We need to look at the medical advice, as we have done, including that from toxicologists and from the AMA. We need to look at all the legal advice, as we have done. And we need to look to places where this has been trialled, as we have done. We have seen drug deaths increase as pill testing has increased. What we find, therefore, is that pill testing does not actually reduce harm; it puts young people in harm’s way.
As one report from the UK stated, since pill testing was introduced more people are taking ecstasy than ever before and more people are dying from it. I do not want to see—I am sure no-one in this room wants to—more dying from drugs anywhere in Australia, least of all in Canberra. Young people consuming illicit drugs is a complex issue; I do not dispute that, and there is no silver bullet. I do not dispute the good intentions of the proponents of pill testing, but they are wrong. They are wrong based on the advice. They are wrong based on the evidence. And they are wrong based on the experience. It is said that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. The reality is that pill testing is not going to reduce harm; it will increase harm, and we do not support it.
MS FITZHARRIS (Yerrabi—Minister for Health and Wellbeing, Minister for Transport and City Services and Minister for Higher Education, Training and
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