By Lisa Visentin
- Drug expert vows pill testing trial at music festivals
- Mother who lost son to drugs calls for pill testing
- Pill testing 'ridiculous': NSW Premier
Large-scale civil disobedience and mass arrests are being factored into a plan to roll out the first ever pill testing at NSW festivals before the end of the year, as the NSW Deputy Premier flagged that organisers could be charged with drug supply and manslaughter.
The pilot program - the first of its kind to provide mobile laboratory-grade drug testing in Australia - would be carried out inside a van staffed with toxicologists, and shielded from police by barriers of supporters willing to risk arrest to protect others from prosecution, drug law reform advocates said.
Will Tregoning, the founder of drug law reform agency Unharm, said the civil disobedience model was necessary after the NSW government reaffirmed its staunch opposition to pill testing on Monday.
"We absolutely have to create that sense of trust around the service.
"One way we will be doing that is by ensuring there are very many supporters of the service present to essentially created a buffer from police activity for consumers accessing the service."
He said the buffer zone was designed to hamper police efforts to identify who was in possession of the drugs, potentially leading to mass arrests.
Mr Tregoning is one of three drug reform advocates - along with president of the Australian Drug Reform Foundation Alex Wodak and emergency medical specialist David Caldicott - spearheading the pill-testing pilot program, which was revealed by The Sun-Herald on Sunday.
He said the pilot was still "months away", but there had already been a "flood of support" including from a number of festival promoters.
While the initial trial would be held in the most receptive state, he said organisers were committed to trialling the service in NSW by the end of the year.
"It need not be in NSW first but the pressure on NSW is not going to stop. It's going to happen here."
Mr Wodak said $100,000 would be crowdsourced to run the pilot program, the bulk of which would be used to buy the laboratory testing equipment, and cover the travelling costs of toxicologists and technicians who he said would provide about $40,000 of pro bonolabour.
"We're getting [donation] offers already. I think people are very interested in this. I think some philanthropic types will come out of the woodwork."
At least $15,000 of the raised funds would be used to have the trial independently evaluated by scientists, he said.
On Monday, Deputy Premier Troy Grant slammed the proposal as a "very dangerous regime that the NSW government fundamentally rejects".
He said those connected with the pilot program were risking "a lot of legal jeopardy" including prosecution for drug possession and drug supply, as well as more serious consequences for giving the all-clear to a pill that could prove fatal.
"[If] these pills go wrong and kill someone, they may well be vulnerable to manslaughter charges," he told 2UE radio.
Mr Grant also questioned the logistics of testing large numbers of pills but conceded: "I don't know a lot about the engineering of the pill testing, or how it's made up or the science behind it exactly."
Mr Tregoning said education was a core feature of the pill-testing service, and would involve on-site analytical chemists to interpret test results and a safe disposal bin for users to discard toxic drugs.
"If people are in possession of substances that place them at a really high risk, we want them to throw them away and the best way to do that is to provide them with information.
"As long as government continues to stand in the way of this service, they are making it more likely that people will die."