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Beyond The Valley music festival will become Victoria's first pill testing site, Premier Jacinta Allan has confirmed, with more to be unveiled.
About 35,000 people are expected to attend the three-day festival which runs from December 28 to January 1 and will be held at Barunah Plains in Hesse, west of Geelong – about a 1.5-hour drive from Melbourne's CBD.
Allan said this would be the largest Australian event to provide this service, and evidence showed lives were being saved by changing behaviour.
“We are not going to bury our heads in the sand,” she told reporters on Sunday.
“If a young person at a festival has a pill in his hand, he intends to use it, but he deserves that health-oriented information.”
How do pill tests work at Beyond The Valley?
Allan said the pill testing service would be open from 1pm to 7pm every day of the festival and could check whether pills, capsules, powders and liquids contained potentially lethal substances.
A consortium – led by the Youth Support and Advocacy Service, Harm Reduction Victoria and The Loop Australia – will run the service, supported by Melbourne Health and the University of Melbourne.
“We are aiming to get up to 200 samples through the lab per day,” said Cameron Francis, CEO of The Loop Australia.
The machines used could produce a result in minutes and identify “almost anything” – but they cannot provide an indication of purity and in some cases may not detect traces of harmful chemicals, Cameron said.
He said The Loop Australia's “biggest concern” was the purity of MDMA, which had “increased” globally.
“We know that as that purity increases, there are risks of overdose.”
Experts and authorities have also raised the alarm this year about nitazenes – which can be up to a thousand times more powerful than morphine – which in some cases .
What about the police?
The possession and supply of illegal drugs remains illegal, and police off-duty drug control powers remain unchanged.
“The legislation provides for confidential access to the pill testing service,” Allan said.
“Legally, outside that service, the responsibilities of Victoria Police continue, and it remains illegal to possess or use illegal drugs.”
Where else will pill testing be rolled out in Victoria?
Beyond The Valley will be one of ten festivals offering these services.
The others have yet to be named, but Victoria's Mental Health Minister Ingrid Stitt said pill testing will be offered at five festivals this summer, and another five in 2025-2026.
Stitt said the state government wanted to test the service in a “good mix” of regional and metropolitan locations.
The state government will also open a permanent pill testing site in central Melbourne by the middle of next year, which is expected to remain a permanent fixture at the end of the 18-month trial.
Where else are pill testing services active?
In January, Allan sought advice from the health department after at least ten people were taken to hospital for suspected drug use at festivals.
Victorian paramedics responded to more overdoses in the first three months of 2024 than in all of 2023, many of which occurred around festivals and other events attended by young people, Allan said.
Her predecessor, Daniel Andrews, rejected proposals for similar processes.
With the Australian Associated Press.
