Music festivals, drugs and pill testing

By Josh Butler

As New Year’s Eve rolls around, music festivals are the hottest tickets in town to help partygoers usher in 2016.

From the Falls Festivals’ three locations down the east coast, to Field Day and Lost Paradise in NSW, Beyond The Valley in Victoria and Southbound in WA, tens of thousands of revellers will celebrate the new year with friends, music, late nights and alcohol - and, for many, illicit drugs.

In 2015, the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare’s National Drug Strategy Household Survey reported 27 percent of Australians aged 20-29 had used illicit drugs in the preceding 12 months, with eight percent having used ecstasy in that period. The 2014 United Nations World Drug Report found Australians had the highest rate of ecstasy consumption on Earth.

Sadly in recent times, the combination of music festivals, alcohol and drugs has had devastating and tragic consequences. The deaths of Georgina Bartter, Sylvia Choi and Stefan Woodward in the last year have become the tragic shorthand for the consequences of illicit drug use, among several other music festival deaths believed to be related to drugs.

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Thumbnail CC Flickr Retinafunk