Anti-science ACT Government will lose more lives to pills
The recent announcement by the Greens that the ACT Government has committed to a fixed site for pill testing establishes their anti-science position regarding the well-studied causes of pill deaths within Australia.
This ACT Government’s anti-science approach to drug policy will directly lead to more ACT lives being lost to ecstasy use. Between 2001 and 2018, ecstasy either taken alone or taken with other drugs such as cocaine or ice, took the lives of 392 Australians, yet Pill Testing Australia (PTA), refuses to red-card the substance when it is identified in a tested pill, all while ecstasy is causal in almost every party pill death in Australia.
At the 2019 ACT pill testing trial, PTA gave a red-card to any substance they identified that, according to their own definition, is “associated with increased harm / multiple overdoses / death”. Seven pills were red-carded containing a substance N-ethyl pentylone which has caused no deaths in Australia despite being consumed here for a number of years, while any ecstasy pill absent of another drug, against all scientific evidence, was given a white-card, clearly symbolising that ecstasy is not “associated with increased harm / multiple overdoses / death” in their view. 90% of the 158 pills tested in the ACT trial contained ecstasy.
Other evidence from the ANU evaluation of the 2019 trial indicated that pill testing increases the likelihood that ecstasy pills will be consumed post-testing. The evaluation stated 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.” (see p 33) The same evaluation fails to record any patron discarding their ecstasy pill after PTA’s post-test counselling on the dangers of party pills. This explains the failure of pill testing in the UK, which utilises both fixed site and mobile testing with counselling.
Statistics from England and Wales show that the introduction of pill testing did not produce any reduction in deaths as promised, nor did it appear to change the behaviour of users by getting some to quit using ecstasy, as also forecast by its advocates. While European countries have poor to non-existent statistics on ecstasy deaths, the UK keeps up-to-date figures. Pill testing operated by “the Loop” began in 2013 and by 2016 began expanding into 12 music festivals with government assent. Ecstasy use increased by 76% amongst 16-24 year olds (see Table 1.06), the most prolific ecstasy users, between 2013 and 2017/18. In 2013 there were 43 ecstasy deaths, more than doubling to 92 deaths in 2018.
The 2019 National Drug Strategy Household Survey shows that since pill testing has been vigorously promoted by the media in Australia, use of ecstasy by males aged 20-29 has increased 64% (see p 38). Of additional interest to populist politicians, the same survey of 25,000 respondents found 96% of Australians (see p77), do not give their approval to the regular use of ecstasy.
The job of governments is to save lives, but the ACT Government’s flight from evidenced-based drug poilicy will only cost more ACT lives.
Gary Christian
RESEARCH DIRECTOR
Drug Free Australia
0422 163 141