NSW makes pill testing permanent at music festivals

After many years of debate, the NSW government has announced this morning that pill testing will be made permanent at the state’s music festivals.

A trial, first recommended by NSW’s Drug Summit in December 2024, ran for a year and offered pill testing for free and anonymously at twelve of the state’s music festivals, with more than 1,800 people using the service and around 1,500 samples analysed. That trial has now been found by an independent evaluation led by the University of Sydney to have been effective in reducing risks and harms associated with illicit drug use by festival attendees.

As a result, the Chris Minns Labor Government has announced a continued $4.3 million commitment to drug checking services at selected festivals, beginning from October of this year. In practice, NSW Health will consult with the music festival industry and harm reduction organisations to identify up to 15 festivals per year to participate in the program.

Trial festivals, including Hyperdome, Yours and Owls and Laneway festivals, recorded zero drug-related presentations during the trial. Overall, the trial helped to identify that 8.1 per cent of drugs handed over for testing included an unexpected substance.

Quotes shared by members of NSW Labor this morning demonstrate the wide range of opinion still held on this heavily debated issue.

Member for Summer Hill, Jo Haylen, shared her support for education over punishment:

“Just saying ‘don’t take drugs alone doesn’t keep young people safe. Taking a harm-minimisation approach works and the evidence from our pill testing trials proves just that,” she said.

“The trial clearly shows that connecting people with health professionals can change behaviour and help keep people safe. This is a sensible, evidence-based reform that puts health and safety first while recognising that no level of illicit drug use is without risk.”

Minister for Health, Ryan Park, shared more of a typically centrist approach to drug conversation, in saying:

“Let me be clear, no level of illicit drug use is safe and drug checking services are not a silver bullet. There will always be risks involved when consuming these substances, and this initiative does not endorse drug use.”

NSW Greens MP Cate Faehrmann, a long-time advocate for pill testing and harsher restrictions on NSW Police, shared this morning her excitement at the news, but noted that the program’s reach could extend further:

“This is such a win for evidence-based drug policy and proof that people power works. But drug harm doesn’t stop at the festival gates. Next step, let’s get drug checking at fixed community sites too.”

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Though there has been much celebration at the news, the conversation has done little to address the length of time and pushback that pill testing had received. In 2019, then Premier Gladys Berejiklian introduced the ‘Festivals Act’, which saw the increase to user-paid policing costs and the introduction of a ‘high risk’ festival category, which did irreparable damage to many, forcing many to be cancelled or stop operations entirely. These restrictions were in part influenced by a series of deaths at festivals, which advocates claimed could have been helped by pill testing.

That same year, then Labor opposition leader Michael Daley “cried while receiving a 100,000-signature petition calling for pill testing to be introduced”, but wouldn’t commit to implementing the policy if elected, SBS News reported at the time. He reiterated that, were Labor elected in March, they would hold a drug summit that very year.

In contrast, today, Minister for Health Ryan Park placed this blame entirely upon NSW’s previous Coalition government, sharing, “For years, Coalition members refused to consider drug testing at festivals, and ignored the advice from clinicians, advocates and our leading experts in health.”

Labor didn’t take power until 2023, and its Summit wouldn’t take place until late the following year. 2024’s Drug Summit was widely criticised for its lack of inclusion of diverse and marginalised voices, as well as many advocacy groups. While pill testing was a result of that Summit, Minns firmly ruled out any conversation around decriminalisation, something increasingly called for by advocacy groups.

The government’s news today comes as good news to many, though the use of sniffer dogs, personal searches and strip searches will continue. These Police tactics have been found to prompt risky drug taking, with strip searches having been found unlawful by courts and legal experts. Last year an ongoing class action involving 3,000 people strip-searched by police between 2016 and 2022 had its first win, with a woman being awarded $93,000 in damages.

READ: NSW Labor ignores findings of its own drug summit to instead keep sniffer dogs & strip searches

Chris Minns’ government’s approach to decriminalisation clearly doesn’t appear to apply to NSW Police, with their tactics remaining one of the last hurdles to total safety for festival attendees, currently undermining the government’s own health response.

Until decriminalisation and policing reform are treated as part of the same evidence-based approach as pill testing, NSW's harm-reduction shift will arguably remain half-finished.