I'm 'coming out' about drugs: it's time get real about pill testing

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This was published 5 years ago

Opinion

I'm 'coming out' about drugs: it's time get real about pill testing

By Cate Faehrmann

I remember vividly the first time I took MDMA. I was with friends at a club in Brisbane in the early 90s. We danced all night to house music, talked nonsense with strangers, deep and meaningfully with each other. A month or so later we did it again. And again.

As a university student I lived in share houses where the marijuana plants growing in the backyard were better cared for than the rest of us. I went out with a DJ for a few years so clubbing on weekends became standard fare.

"As lawmakers we won’t save lives by sticking our heads in the sand," Cate Faehrmann says.

"As lawmakers we won’t save lives by sticking our heads in the sand," Cate Faehrmann says.

We knew there were risks but we were prepared to take them because having a good time was our priority. We were curious. We were experimenting. There was no information available on how to take drugs safely except from those around us with more experience. An older friend told me when I took my first ecstasy pill to take half and wait to experience the effects before taking any more. This was good advice.

They were the days before sniffer dogs. I could easily imagine I would have consumed all of my drugs at once before entering a venue if dogs had been around. If pill testing had been available I would have used it. The “Just Say No” message was around then too. We ignored it. Some things never change.

Since my 20s, I’ve occasionally taken MDMA at dance parties and music festivals. I know journalists, tradies, lawyers, public servants, doctors, police and yes, politicians (most well into their forties), who have done the same.

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As a politician I’ve made the difficult decision to "come out" in this way because the government’s zero-tolerance approach to drugs has not only been a catastrophic failure in stopping drug use, it is costing people their lives. It is so out-of-touch with millions of people’s reality that everyone has stopped listening.

Young people are not fools. They want us, as politicians, to "get real" about illegal drugs. Their parents want us to stop the moral crusade and listen to the evidence.

This means being honest about the nature and extent of drug use and accepting the evidence that a harm minimisation approach, where illegal drug use is treated as a health issue not a criminal one, works.

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When the millions of Australians, including every third or fourth person between the ages of 20 and 29, who have used cannabis, ecstasy or cocaine over the past twelve months hear the Premier’s message that "there is no such thing as a safe illegal drug" and "just say no" they wonder what planet she is living on.

The truth may be uncomfortable for many people and goes against the government’s "war on drugs" script but the vast majority of people who choose to take MDMA at a festival, or at a club or a private party, will do so safely and they'll enjoy it.

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An extremely high dose of almost any drug, legal or otherwise, can be dangerous. MDMA in capsule form is becoming increasingly popular. A leading drug and alcohol expert told me last week that the strength and purity of MDMA caps has been rising over the past decade. This increasing strength and the potentially deadly substances the criminals making the drugs are putting into them is extremely concerning. Despite this, people continue to take the stuff in droves.

That's why we need pill testing and other harm minimisation measures to keep our young people safe. This means greater numbers of roving drug safety personnel and well-resourced medical tents at dance festivals. It also means less high-visibility policing and zero sniffer dogs which aren't stopping people bringing drugs into festivals. It's just making them engage in riskier behaviour.

News reports suggest that a number of deaths from drugs overdoses at dance music festivals in NSW resulted from people consuming more than one MDMA pill or cap at once before entering the festival. They do this to avoid detection from sniffer dogs. It's not rocket science then to draw the conclusion that sniffer dogs are putting young people's lives at risk.

Being honest about illegal drugs also means we would manage their risks in proportion to the risks posed by other drugs. The legal ones.

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I've witnessed firsthand the damage that legal drugs can wreak on families. My parents were very heavy smokers their entire lives and both died decades too soon from cancer. For much of her adult life my mother was horribly addicted to prescription drugs. The daily cocktail of opioids, benzodiazepines and other drugs prescribed by her doctor for sleep, chronic pain and a suite of other ailments, some real and others concocted, made her muddled, angry and switched off from the rest of the world. We lost her to these drugs, all legal, well before she finally passed away.

Each year, alcohol abuse is killing 5000 people nationally and hospitalising 150,000 more at a cost to the taxpayer of $36 billion. Tobacco is even worse, responsible for more than 19,000 deaths. Tobacco smoke contains over 7000 chemicals, 70 of which are carcinogenic.

The hypocrisy of any "don’t do drugs" message from an adult who may smoke, drink alcohol or abuse prescription drugs is clear to see.

As lawmakers we won’t save lives by sticking our heads in the sand. We won’t save lives by telling the public things that don’t ring true with their own and others experience. It’s beyond time for an honest discussion about drugs if we are to keep young people safe who choose to take them. I know from experience just how many of them will.

Cate Faehrmann is a Greens NSW MP and drugs and harm minimisation spokesperson

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