Page 2119 - Week 07 - Thursday, 20 August 2020
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Mr Rattenbury’s motives because I know he will not like that. I know this is a genuine view he has and it is something he has been pursuing for a long time. It seems to me that in this debate today we broadly share a view of what we want to achieve—minimising harm, particularly for young people, who are using drugs and alcohol. We are not going to always agree, though, on the best ways of achieving that.
For example, with the cannabis debate that we had previously, we wanted the same outcome but we had a different view on how that could be best achieved. That is the case when it comes to pill testing. We have litigated this before and my view has not changed. I do not have a black and white view of this; it is one of those issues that has arguments for and arguments against and we have listened both in this place and to experts in the field. There are many different views out there on the efficacy of pill testing.
When I consider all the factors, I come down on the side that it is not the right way to go, and I draw that from the government’s report on pill testing at Groovin’ the Moo as an example. There were 83 tests conducted and, of those, when it was found that there was a high concentration or high purity of MDMA, 94 per cent said they would take it and three per cent did not make it clear what they were going to do. In essence, if people are told their MDMA is pure, regardless of concentration, they take it. That the problem because MDMA is the poison, in many ways, that is killing people at festivals and elsewhere.
Experts have expressed caution. Toxicologist Andrew Leibie said that statements that pill testing would help keep people safe were potentially misleading and that pill testing is based on the false assumption that if you know what you are taking it is safe, something that is absolutely untrue. MDMA is not a safe drug. As the state health commander of Ambulance Victoria said, it is a poison. You can test a poison all you like; it remains a poison. Toxicologist Dr John Lewis doubted its effectiveness in detecting other dangerous chemicals, saying it will not work and it is fraught with dangers. The Internal Medicine Journal said that pill testing, at best, gave an artificial shine of safety and it is this artificial shine of safety that can be so dangerous.
A real-life example of this artificial shine of safety is that, after the Groovin’ the Moo festival here in Canberra, the ABC went to the Groovin’ the Moo festival in Bendigo and asked a couple of young people what they thought of this rolling out. Some of the young people said the fact that they can take it, test it and make sure that it is going to be safe is definitely a good thing. Well, the problem is that you cannot make sure it is safe. You are telling people what is in it, but you cannot make sure it is safe. That is the nub of the problem.
Another young festival-goer said it could make you want to take more drugs and would definitely give you peace of mind. I do not think we want to be giving young people peace of mind that when they take MDMA or other drugs it is safe to do so. That is not harm minimisation, in my view. My view is not the outlier here; this is the view shared by state and federal governments across Australia and by many officials that work in this space.
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