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Dr Matthew Dunn
#1 Victorian uni for graduate employment1
#1 in the world for sport science2
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#1 Victorian uni for graduate employment1
#1 in the world for sport science2
#1 Victorian uni for course satisfaction3
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Drug-taking is a divisive topic – it’s the sort of thing guaranteed to spark family arguments around the dinner table. Whatever your personal feelings may be around taking illicit drugs, though, one thing is clear: a lot of Australians do it.
While there have been plenty of ideas over the years about how to manage drug use and keep people safe and harm reduction strategies are gaining traction as a result. These strategies can be known as either drug checking or pill testing – terms that mean essentially the same thing, though pill testing has historically referred more specifically to drugs in pill form such as MDMA.
But how does pill testing work and are these policies effective ways to prevent drug-related harm? With the help of Deakin University’s Matthew Dunn, we investigate.
Aussies are known worldwide for our relaxed attitude to life and it’s safe to say that mindset extends to our nation’s drug use. So relaxed are we that 47% of Australians have used an illicit drug in their lifetime and 18% did so in the past year, with cannabis the most commonly used drug.
These numbers begin to paint a picture of the drug-related harm that’s occurring in our community. In 2022 alone, 2356 Australians suffered drug-induced deaths – the vast majority of which were caused by opiates.
The response from governments has been varied – everything from drug crime crackdowns to opening safe injecting rooms and pill testing at Australian music festivals.
There are plenty of possible methods for addressing drug abuse, but Australia has taken a harm minimisation approach for the past 40 years. In 1985, there was the launch of the National Campaign Against Drug Abuse (NCADA) – a drug policy in Australia which recognises that drug use isn’t going anywhere, and that reducing harm is the best way forward.
This policy, which covers illicit drugs as well as alcohol and tobacco, is now called the National Drug Strategy and is three-pronged: reducing demand, reducing supply and reducing harm in Australia with pill testing and similar policies.
We know that drug use is common in Australia – as we said before, nearly half of our country’s population will use drugs in their lifetime. On top of that, users say that some drugs are not difficult to acquire, with drugs like cocaine and crystal methamphetamine reported as ‘easy’ or ‘very easy’ to obtain. With so many drugs available, it’s clear that there is logic behind the push for harm minimisation strategies like pill testing in Australia.
Australians clearly use drugs, both legal and illicit, in large numbers, with the most reliable domestic data reported in the National Drug Strategy Household Survey. But how do we compare to other countries for drug use?
Well, according to Sewage Core Group Europe (SCORE), Australia ranks pretty highly when it comes to using some drugs. SCORE uses wastewater in Europe, Asia and Oceania as a more general indicator of usage trends (rather than specific user data). Our most represented drugs according to SCORE include methylamphetamine (which includes speed and crystal meth) for which we ranked second out of 30 nations, and cannabis, ranking third out of 20.
Laws in Australia tend to change over time, which makes sense since life in Australia is different today from when our nation first formed. It means that the first drug laws don’t seem all that relevant now, such as the 1905 law cracking down on opium smoking, which was likely racially motivated.
Since the National Drug Strategy came into effect in the 1980s, governments have slowly shifted towards health-based, harm minimisation policies. Some drugs, like cannabis, have been decriminalised in recent years (like in the ACT) or been made legal for medical purposes.
There has also been a move towards drug checking and pill testing in Australia as part of the harm reduction policy.
When summer hits and festival season rolls around, it’s a time to celebrate – but it’s also a time for a little bit of caution.
Following some tragic overdoses at festivals in 2024, the Victorian government announced an Australian pill testing trial for Hardmission Festival, Pitch Music and Arts Festival, Ultra Music Festival and The Warehouse Project.
But first, what is pill testing?
‘Drug checking, sometimes still referred to as pill testing, is a service whereby a person can have their drug checked by chemically analysing a small sample of the drug by a trained chemist,’ says Dunn.
‘The person then has a direct discussion with trained drug-checking staff about the results of that chemical analysis; this includes tailored advice such as the potential risks and how the drug may interact with other drugs or medications the person has used or intends to use.’
The idea is that, if people are going to take drugs at a festival, pill testing Australians and initiatives like the Victorian pill testing trial can at least help determine if the drugs they’ve got are likely to cause harm.
Pill testing in Australia works by taking samples of a drug to determine what it is and how pure it is. However, it’s not always done by the same method.
‘There are different testing techniques, and these can vary depending on whether a person is accessing a fixed site or a mobile site at a festival,’ says Dunn.,
But the idea is that, armed with the knowledge of what they’re actually taking, people will make the right call.
‘We know that even those people who have been consuming drugs for many years may not have had the best, or any, drug education at school. Being able to get high level testing results and tailored education can really help reduce harm related to drug use,’ Dunn says.
For experts like Dunn, pill testing in Australia is a no-brainer – it’s just the right move to make.
‘There are so many positive benefits to drug checking,’ he says. ‘We can tell people whether the drug they purchased is what they expected it to be, if it contains something that is going to cause serious harm and if it’s going to be really strong or not.’
While there are more pros than cons with pill testing, any negatives are usually based on the testing tech itself, not the policy or idea of pill testing.
‘One of the cons is that some techniques aren’t as sophisticated as others; for example, the old-school pill testing that used reagent kits tells a person less than some of the higher-level techniques,’ Dunn says.
Trials show that pill testing is an effective policy, helping to weed out dangerous drugs and give people the chance to make informed choices, and this is the idea behind the Victorian pill testing trial. Dunn agrees, noting that it’s all about figuring out what’s actually being consumed before it can do any damage.
‘Depending on the analysis techniques used, drug checking can tell us the content and purity of the drug,’ he says. ‘This includes whether the drug contains substances that aren’t expected, as well as how strong the drug may be.’
There are plenty of drug prevention programs that are conducting drug checking or pill testing in Australia. Most state governments provide guidance on drug prevention and harm reduction and here in Victoria the BetterHealth site offers some handy places to start, such as GoodSports, DanceWize and Red Frogs.
While the idea of personal testing kits definitely has its merits, Dunn says that it’s not all that likely that drug tests will be sold at chemists considering the push for broader public pill testing in Australia.
‘It is unlikely that testing kits are going to become more widely available,’ he says. ‘Testing kits are a good harm reduction option in the absence of other options, but if states roll out more fixed and mobile testing options, we may not need to have testing kits sold in pharmacies.’
There’s definitely a push for drug decriminalisation in Australia – and we’ve already seen some level of that in places like the ACT. For his part, though, Dunn doesn’t see change coming any time soon.
‘Drugs are a sensitive issue in any country, and we see reform happening at a glacial pace, he says. ‘I think it will be a very long time before we see illicit drugs decriminalised in Australia.’
