Photo: Daniel Grant

Festival-Goer Planning To Provide DIY Pill Testing Kits To Groovin The Moo Canberra Punters

A 22 year-old festival-goer is planning to provide his homemade pill testing kits to punters outside of Groovin The Moo Canberra tomorrow.

As triple j’s Hack report, the unemployed man bought chemicals online and has made his own pill testing kits after becoming frustrated with the number of headlines about people dying from drugs at music festivals.

“I can’t keep seeing people being hospitalised simply because they’ve taken something they didn’t mean to … if I can do anything to lower that number I feel I have to,” he told Hack.

He was also frustrated after a pill testing program proposed for Groovin The Moo Canberra was knocked back by the ACT’s Chief Minister, Andrew Barr.

The trial was put forward by Harm Reduction Australia but was knocked back by the government for not being “well enough formed” for the festival.

“It is the Government’s understanding that neither the venue nor the promoters were contacted directly to discuss pill testing at the festival and that pill testing is not being considered at any of the Groovin the Moo events around Australia,” Barr further said in a statement to triple j.

Emergency specialist David Caldicott, who would’ve been running the pill test trial said, however, that there had been many conversations back and forth with the government about it.

“Due diligence was followed and this was a very good project and we have the email trails and documents to prove that,” he said.

“To suggest that there was a superficial consultation is not a representation of the truth.”

Caldicott is aware of the 22 year-old punters plans to hand out DIY pill testing kits but believes they won’t be as affective as they would’ve have been had the trial been approved.

“There will be numerous other people trying to provide a service which is probably not fit for purpose and the opportunity that has been missed is one where serious, grown up scientists and doctors with the support of law enforcement could have done this in a way that maximised the benefit to the crowd,” he said.

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