Yours & Owls pill testing trial "really positive", NSW Health Minister says

Dharawal Land/Wollongong-based festival Yours & Owls, which took place this last weekend, was the first in the state to be part of a brand-new pill testing trial.

Today, NSW Health Minister Ryan Park labelled that trial as "really positive".

Read: NSW announces it will introduce pill testing trial from 2025

"To see it happen and taking place on an iconic festival that is Yours and Owls over the course of the weekend was really positive," he said.

Yours & Owls caters to a wide variety of musical tastes, this weekend hosting artists like Miss Kaninna, Denzel Curry, JPEGMAFIA, Fontaines D.C and The Veronicas, as well as dance-aligned producers and DJs Honey Dijon, Salute, Tom Trago, dameeeela, Crescendoll, Mincy and many more.

Nearly 30,000 people visited the festival over the festival's 2 days, and Minister Park shared that around 100 people chose to use the pill-testing trial to check a range of drugs, including MDMA, ecstasy and cocaine.

"Around 90 per cent of the drugs tested matched what the user thought they were getting," Mr. Park shared.

He also shared that, based on punter feedback, the remaining 10% of drugs contained substances that they had not intended to purchase.

"It wasn't what they had purchased. It wasn't necessarily extremely high potency, but it wasn't what they had originally thought," he said. "And that's why they made a decision not to proceed and use that drug.

"Which is one of the aims we obviously want to have in terms of making people more informed about what they have purchased and then the potential harms," he continued.

Those who used the service also undertook a discussion with a health expert, with the intent to ensure that punters "were informed about the potential harms and all of them were informed about what they could do to minimise the harm over the course of the weekend," he said.

With 30,000 people visiting the festival over the weekend, and the service promising total anonymity for its users, there appear to be two reasons why it may not have been more popular.

The first concerns the service's visibility, as Wollongong Greens Councillor and paramedic Jess Whittaker vocalised. She claims the tent's "discreet layout" may have confused patrons, while Mr. Park said it was clearly marked.

The second is a high-visibility operation targeting drug use, conducted by NSW police and involving sniffer dogs. Councillor Whittaker echoed the concerns made by medical professionals, festival organisers and lawmakers many times before, that the presence of police and sniffer dogs could increase dangerous drug-taking, before punters even had a chance to have them tested.

Read: PSA: Are you prepared for the dangers of synthetic opioids?

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Jack Colquhoun is Mixmag ANZ's Managing Editor, find him on Instagram.