Secret Garden Party has become the first UK festival to test drugs on site and allow users to keep them. Similar facilities have been provided at festivals in Germany and the Netherlands for quite some time to keep festival goers safe.
Around 200 people who attended the festival over the weekend are said to have used the testing service, which was run by The Loop in partnership with the local police and council. The Loop is a not-for-profit community interest company who, according to their website, provide ‘welfare, forensic drug testing and harm reduction services on drugs, alcohol and sexual health at UK nightclubs and festivals across Europe’.
Speaking to The Guardian, Freddie Fellowes, founder of Secret Garden Party, said he was ‘thrilled’ that the festival could pioneer such a service. ‘Harm reduction and welfare is a vital part of hosting any event and it’s an area that for too long has seen little development or advancement.’
Until now The Loop have only been able to conduct forensic testing at events on drugs which were seized by police, dropped in amnesty bins or handed over by paramedics as a result of a medical incident. Their aim was to establish what exactly was in the drugs that people were taking over the weekend and take any harmful substances out of circulation.
The organisation’s co-founder, Fiona Measham, told The Guardian that the testing facility at Secret Garden Party was ‘a big step forward’ for ensuring the safety of festival goers. ‘For the first time we’ve been able to offer the testing service to individual users as part of a tailored advice and information package provided by a team of experienced drug workers. This can help people make informed choices, raising awareness of particularly dangerous substances in circulation and reducing the chance of drug-related problems occurring.’
Among the substances found through the testing at the festival were very high-strength ecstasy pills and multiple samples where the drug that users had been sold was somewhat misrepresented – this included anti-malaria tablets sold as ketamine and ammonium sulphate marketed as MDMA.
The UK continues to have the highest rates of MDMA use in Europe, with 3.9% of 16-24 year olds reporting having used ecstasy in the past year according to the latest Home Office Crime Survey for England and Wales. With this in mind and the recent deaths of several young people as a result of taking super strength ecstasy pills, could measures to keep users safe and remove potentially lethal substances from circulation become more commonplace?
Steve Rolles, senior policy analyst for the Transform Drug Policy Foundation told The Guardian ‘the police are increasingly pragmatic about drug-taking at festivals, and this is a case of them showing leadership and recognising that the priority should be health and wellbeing, not enforcement.’
He hopes that such testing services will become ‘the norm’ at festivals and music events. ‘It is now up to others to follow’ he said, ‘to protect the health and safety of their customers. In truth it would be negligent for them not to.’
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.