Victoria will soon join other Australian states in offering pill testing, with the Premier announcing the first trial site today. The Beyond the Valley music festival will be one of five events this summer to provide the service, which aims to reduce drug-related deaths among festival-goers.
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00:00As Beyond the Valley's 35,000 young revellers ring in this coming New Year, the Premier
00:11wants them to celebrate with better information.
00:13If a young person has a pill in their hand, they're at a music festival, they're intending
00:18to use it.
00:19Young people are also entitled to have access to health-focused, supportive advice about
00:26what is in that pill.
00:27We see a lot of talk on social media, we see, you know, people say that this is a common
00:31sense approach and we also see the evidence from overseas that it works.
00:35The four-day festival, held west of Geelong, will be the first of ten events over the next
00:40two summers to offer pill testing under the government's trial, which is looking at how
00:45to best roll out the service.
00:47The trial follows calls for pill testing from two state coroners and a parliamentary report
00:52that linked 50 deaths between 2018 and 2022 to MDMA overdoses.
00:58The service identifies what's in someone's drugs and how pure they are, helping young
01:03people make informed decisions and helping authorities keep tabs on the drug market.
01:08We will be, I hope, ahead of a lot of the drug intelligence that we will need to identify
01:15these dangerous nitazines and synthetic opioids that we've seen more and more of.
01:20Loop Australia will run the trial and refer young people to support services.
01:25It's been overseeing pill testing in Queensland, where the new LNP government has scrapped
01:29plans to offer the service at schoolies next year.
01:33The Victorian Liberals say they're keeping an eye on the program.
01:35The government can't manage these type of projects, so we will see, we will wait and
01:40see what they do, but I don't have any confidence in this kind of trial.
01:45On top of pill testing at music festivals, the government expects to make the service
01:48available to everyone by the middle of next year, with plans to open a permanent pill
01:52testing site in the city's CBD, close to public transport and music venues.