David Caldicott is an Irish Emergency Consultant, working in the Bush Capital of Australia. He holds conjoint academic positions with the University of Canberra, and the Australian National University.
He’s been involved in the campaign to introduce pill testing in Australia since the early ‘00s, initially in South Australia, and more recently, and successfully, in The Australian Capital Territory, initially at festivals with Pill Testing Australia, and then at a fixed site service, with CanTEST. He is the clinical lead and co-designer of both.
He was involved in the creation of WEDINOS in Wales, and the ACTINOSProject in the ACT. He has an interest mass gathering, festival and disaster medicine, and the toxicology of illicit drugs. He is a passionate advocate for evidence-based drugs policy, particularly from the service provider’s perspective. His work in this space has brought him around the world, and allowed him the opportunity to take the aspects of overseas elements best suited to the Australian medicolegal environment, to create a drug checking service built for Australia. He is also the co-author of one of world’s only ethical frameworks for the delivery of drug checking, the Trans Tasman Charter.
He balances his voluntary work on pill testing with a full time clinical position, and the co-wrangling of many small and future activists- with the infinite patience and tolerance of the only adult in his family, his wife.