What's happening about drugs this summer?
There are concerns that current illicit drug-fighting strategies are insufficient, and that new measures are needed to ensure public safety because the upcoming festival season won’t see the amnesty drug bin trial continue, and sniffer dogs will be staying in the kennel this summer.
Pill testing has occasionally been used in the Eastern states, but it's not a service provided in WA. It involves people being able to put samples of their pills through a chemical test to see if there are any poisonous substances in them. But it's been eight years since the last serious discussion over the use of this harm reduction strategy.
Dangerous substances such as para-methoxyamphetamine (PMA), ketamine and even methamphetamine, often get put into pills sold as ecstasy.
3rd Degree recently reported on the dangers of a ‘bad batch’ of drugs that was circulating on Perth's streets. A spokesperson for WA police, Sergeant Greg Lambert, said that there is a lot of uncertainty around the ingredients in so-called ecstasy.
“There is no quality control and you simply don’t know what’s in the drug and drug dealers will use anything available to them to cut down the quality of the drug,” he said.
“What people are buying is not what they think and it really is a case of buyer beware.”
Sgt. Lambert also said the police and government will continue to target drug dealers and aim to keep as much illicit activity off the streets as possible.
The current State Government has recently flagged intentions to overhaul the cannabis laws, making possession laws even tighter.
Enlighten Harm Reduction, a volunteer activist group, advocates harm reduction by promoting chemical or ‘pill’ testing as a vital strategy.
While pill testing is not done in WA, pill testing kits can be bought from several sources online, including Enlighten, for around $30.
They work by mixing scrapings of the pills with a regeant, which turns the substance a different colour depending on its makeup. But test users are warned that some substances will not show up.
A spokesperson for Enlighten said around 90 per cent of the National Illicit Drug Strategy funding is used to reduce supply and demand, adding: “Harm reduction, or minimisation, is simply one part of Government's current drug strategy. Unfortunately it is over shadowed by supply reduction and demand reduction.”
Supply reduction uses traditional law enforcement to stop foreign drugs from entering the country. Demand reduction involves ad campaigns to convince people not to use drugs.
Enlighten believes harm minimisation is neglected.
“Critics of harm reduction feel that it somehow negates these other two approaches when in fact it complements and strengthens the whole,” said Enlighten’s spokesperson.
The theory behind harm minimisation is that some people are going to take drugs regardless of campaigns attempting to convince them otherwise.
“Harm reduction exists as a necessary function of the limitations of the two other approaches.
“Some people will always take drugs. These people need to be helped. The alternative is to simply give up on part of society,” said Enlighten’s spokesperson.
In a story by the 7.30 Report in 2001, Paul Dillon of the National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre said there is controversy surrounding pill testing.
“It doesn't necessarily identify the most toxic, the most harmful, or even the chemical that's most abundant in the tablet,” he said.
“I think also it gives a false sense of security to people that, because it may identify MDMA, or the substance that people are actually looking for, when they use an ecstasy, that that somehow implies that that tablet is safe or harmless.
“And that's just incorrect.”
Enlighten say on their website that they no longer do on-site testing, but they strongly believe everyone should have access to adulterant testing, because “the rise of casual recreational drug use has meant that this section of society is no longer disenfranchised fringe dwellers but people from all walks of life”.
