Page 5462 - Week 14 - Thursday, 30 November 2017
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including a review of pill testing approaches implemented overseas. The pill testing service at Spilt Milk was to be provided by the Safety Testing and Advisory Service at Festivals, known as STA-SAFE. STA-SAFE is a consortium of harm reduction advocates and non-government organisations led by Harm Reduction Australia.
Testing was to be provided in conjunction with advice regarding the potential harms of illicit drugs, as well as advice about the potential toxicity of any identified or unknown substances. In the week commencing 10 October, the Spilt Milk organisers announced that they would not go ahead with the pill testing trial. This was disappointing and represented a lost opportunity to trial an innovative approach to harm reduction.
The fact remains that the consumption of illicit drugs carries an inherent risk of harm and young people are at particular risk. The age demographic for major music festivals in the ACT is 15 to 30 years old, an age cohort among which we know that risk-taking behaviour is prevalent. In 2016, 31.6 per cent of young adults and 9 per cent of teens said they had taken an illicit drug in the last year.
Wastewater testing can also tell us about the presence of drugs in our community. In December 2016, when the Spilt Milk festival was held, ecstasy levels detected in the ACT’s wastewater were more than three times higher than in August 2016. While we cannot know for sure whether these drugs were consumed at the festival, the data does suggest a higher presence of ecstasy in the community around this time.
Illicit drug use and/or misuse of pharmaceuticals or use of drugs for non-medical purposes remains one of the most important behavioural risk factors for disease and death in Australia and is particularly damaging to young people. Drug use is the fourth most important risk factor for disease and death in people under 25. Preventing and minimising the harms associated with drug use in our young people and the broader community remains a priority for this government.
We remain absolutely committed to the three pillars of harm minimisation, which recognise that some problems like illicit drug use are intractable and that sensible evidence-based measures are needed to respond to these harms. The three pillars of harm minimisation focus on demand reduction, supply reduction and harm reduction. These form the cornerstone of the national drug strategy, which was released in July 2017 and will continue to guide actions in the ACT and right across the country. We are in the process of developing an ACT drug strategy action plan in response to the national drug strategy. I look forward to further work on that in the next few months.
Other priority harm minimisation approaches to be progressed under the plan include delivering the alcohol and other drug safer families pilot project. This is a component of the government’s safer families initiative. The ACT Alcohol Tobacco and Other Drug Association (ATODA) has been engaged to scope and design the pilot project and has been working closely with the alcohol and other drugs sector to progress this work. Implementation is scheduled to commence in the first half of 2018. There is also, of course, significant work underway in the development and implementation of a drug and alcohol court.
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