The state announced a $4.3 million program to roll out drug checks at 15 music festivals each year.
GPs could play a key role as a safe landing point for young festivalgoers after using NSW’s pill testing service, but only if referral pathways are coordinated, experts say.
Announced today, the initiative would be delivered by NSW Health in partnership with peer-based drug user organisation NUAA.
It would provide music festival-goers with a free, anonymous service to bring a small sample of substances they intend to consume to on-site chemists from the NSW Health Pathology and Forensic and Analytical Science service to test for purity, potency and adulterants.
The decision followed a 12-month trial and an independent review by the University of Sydney, which found that drug-related risks were reduced, service use increased, and there were fewer urgent hospital and ICU admissions at music festivals.
Over the course of the trial, more than 1,800 individuals accessed the services, and around 1,500 drug samples were tested.
Minister for Health Ryan Park said drug checking could reduce harms and ultimately save lives, but stressed it would not be a “silver bullet”.
“There will always be risks involved when consuming these substances, and this initiative does not endorse drug use,” he said.
Minister Park said the Minns Labor Government was delivering on its commitment to listen to leading health experts and advocates, following through on an initiative the former government had long resisted.
RACGP NSW chair Dr Rebekah Hoffman welcomed the initiative and said that enabling people to check a pill’s contents before taking it was essential for harm minimisation.
She told The Medical Republic the initiative had already changed the way she communicates with her own patients.
“If I’ve got kids that I know are finishing school or telling me that they’re consuming drugs, [I am trying to make sure] that they’re aware that this is happening, and that it’s uncoupled from the police and that they’re not going to get in trouble for using these services,” she said.
Dr Hoffman said the initiative could adopt on-site GP-led services, similar to the supervised injecting centre in Kings Cross, connecting young adults to services including their usual GP – though not necessarily staffing the pill-testing tent itself.
“I wouldn’t necessarily put a GP in the tent because we want [patients] to go back to their usual GP and feel safe and empowered to have these conversations,” she said.
Understanding which drugs patients are consuming might also have implications for other management plans or prescribed medications, Dr Hoffman told TMR.
“The key thing that we’d like to talk to the government about next, though, is that the majority of drug overdoses and the majority of patients who get sick from ingesting substances in drugs they didn’t know about, actually occur in everyday homes,” she said.
“We’d really love to see [drug testing] get rolled out wider to a community base.”
Related
AMA NSW president Dr Fred Betros said the association supported the initiative, but that it had to operate under strict guidelines and medical leadership.
“There needs to be audits in place to make sure that we are getting good data coming out of this to show there is harm minimisation,” he said.
“Pill testing has to sit within the entire scope of harm minimisation procedures and interventions that we’ve got in the community, and GPs are definitely the best-placed people to coordinate that.”
Clinical Associate Professor David Caldicott, an emergency doctor at North Canberra Hospital and clinical lead for CanTEST’s fixed drug-checking site and Pill Testing Australia, said the decision was “a great move”, but told TMR the initiative should probably have been introduced 25 years earlier.
“I think the decision to introduce it is probably more political than to do with science, because the science has been decided for quite some time,” he said.
While he welcomed the funding attached to NSW’s initiative, he questioned its scale, noting that CanTEST and Pill Testing Australia’s services operated at around “one-eighth of the cost” NSW had proposed.
“It would be better to have it available to more festivals, with that expense,” he said.
Professor Caldicott also questioned the government’s decision to award itself the contract, meaning the service would be delivered in-house rather than through existing pill testing agencies.
“I celebrate with them the fact that they have so much money to spend on this. I am curious about what equipment or approach requires this expenditure, given that we view this very much as a health care investment,” he said.
Professor Caldicott said pill testing also provided a faster way of tracking drug trends, including the emergence of orphines – a class of highly potent synthetic opioids.
GPs could gain valuable exposure on how and why young people use drugs by working at a pill-testing tent, he said.
