Australian National University researchers say MDMA, otherwise known as ecstasy, contributed to more than 65% of all drug-related deaths at Australian music festivals. The report found there were 64 drug-related festival deaths over the past two decades. One of the report's authors, Dr David Caldicott, is also the clinical lead of pill testing Australia.
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00:00 We've spent some time trying to persuade young people not to consume more than one type of drug at any given time.
00:12 And it doesn't appear that that message is getting across in the way that we would prefer.
00:17 Certainly a substantial number of people are using more than one drug at the same time.
00:23 And the problem associated with that is that we know that alcohol and ecstasy don't play well together from a toxicological perspective.
00:31 And of course, alcohol can change the way that you think about your safety when you're considering using other drugs.
00:40 So people who are drunk or under the influence of alcohol make less wise decisions about their subsequent drug use during the evening.
00:48 We've obviously looked explicitly at music festivals, which I think most people involved in this space regard as a bit of a high risk environment for drug related harm.
01:00 Remember from our study, not all of the deaths associated with music festivals are in fact caused by drugs, just the majority of them.
01:10 So we probably need to consider what works and what doesn't work.
01:16 One of the things that we know, for example, from this study is that one young consumer died as a consequence of taking all of their drugs at the same time because of fears associated with detection from sniffer dogs.
01:32 And that's obviously a problem. Sniffer dogs have a significant popularity with people who are trying to prevent drug consumption.
01:42 But there's no evidence associated with their use with reduced harm or reduced drug consumption.
01:49 In fact, quite the contrary. And we know from having done an economic analysis that if you were to take, for example, the budget associated with sniffer dogs in New South Wales alone,
02:00 you could probably run a federal pill testing program which would contact and touch the hearts and minds of young consumers in a far more meaningful and pragmatically useful way.
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