REPRISING THE REASONS FOR NO PILL TESTING
As Australia moves towards the warmer months of the year with a higher concentration of music festivals, and as Pill Testing Australia will most certainly renew its efforts to get government sponsorship for pill testing, it seems only prudent to review the evidence from last summer which makes pill testing not only ill-advised, but foolish.
- Pill testing worldwide uniformly assumes that ecstasy causes few pill deaths, and that other drugs mixed into ecstasy pills cause most deaths. The opposite is true here and worldwide. In Australia, according to the science, 95% of deaths are from ecstasy pills where no other drug was found in the pill. Any pill testing which fails to red-flag every ecstasy pill is ignorant of the science.
- The Australian National UnREPRISING THE REASONS FOR NO PILL TESTINGiversity evaluation of the 2019 Canberra pill testing trial found that “those who received a test result confirming the substance to be what they thought it was were likely to take as much or more than originally intended” (p33). Pill testing thereby increases the likelihood of ecstasy use, the very substance responsible for almost all Australian pill deaths.
- The same evaluation cited no users who were counselled out of taking ecstasy by the pill testing operation. Remember users were more likely to take ecstasy once verified, not less likely.
- The UK, with pill testing introduced in 2013, and expanded in 2016 to 12 festivals, saw more than a doubling of pill deaths between 2013 and 2018.
The evidence-base militates against any notion of pill testing and Drug Free Australia urges Parliamentarians to make decisions according to the evidence and the evidence alone.
Gary Christian
RESEARCH DIRECTOR
Drug Free Australia
0422 163 141