Groovin The Moo’s Canberra leg took place yesterday, and with it came the first offical pill-testing station at an Australian festival.
One of the groups behind the push for pill-testing, Harm Reduction Australia have described it as a success, with the test being able to identify and hence prevent the use of potentially deadly pills.
Speaking with Ped TV, Harm Reduction Australia’s Gino Vumbaca explained that the trial resulted in the identification of two potentially deadly pills.“Two of the pills actually produced a chemical that is considered even in small doses quite dangerous, and potentially could create an overdose.”
The full results of the trial will not be shared until next week, however Vumbaca went on to add that “a number of people also discarded their pills when they found out what was in them, because it wasn’t what they thought they had purchased.”
Matt Noffs from the Ted Noffs Foundation took to Twitter this morning to detail results form yesterday’s testing, in which they found 50% of all samples contained substances other than the drug MDMA, and some pills had been cut with paint, sweetener and lactose.
Here is Australia’s first official #pilltesting service in numbers:
128 participants
85 samples tested
50% was ‘other’ (lactose, sweetener, paint)
50% was pure MDMA
2 of the samples were deadly
So, harm reduced.
We did it.— Matt Noffs (@mattnoffs) April 29, 2018
Again, the full results of the tests will not be released until next week, but from what we can gather thus far, it has led to broader knowledge on what pills are being circulated, how deadly they are, and that punters have discarded potentially deadly pills. In other words, it was a success.
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