Govt right to move on drug testing

The Herald reported:

Festival hosts will be able to have drug-checking services at their events this summer and neither of them will face prosecution.

Health Minister Andrew Little revealed this morning that the Government will pass an urgent law to provide legal breathing space for drug-checking in time for the summer festival season.

I’m all in favour of this. It is a fact of life a significant number of people at music festivals will have party pills or other drugs. Would be better if they didn’t, but we live in the real world not an imaginary one.

The problem is sometimes what they think they have been sold isn’t what is claimed, and it can kill. There have been quite a few deaths from synthetic drugs.

So allowing a festival to provide a service for people to test if the drugs they have won’t kill them is laudable. Death should never be the price someone pays for wanting to pop some party pills at a music festival.