NEWS ROOM

The CanTEST Health and Drug Checking Service will continue to be funded until June 2027, as the ACT government extends its funding by $1.8 million.

Dr David Caldicott, an emergency department consultant and clinical lead with Pill Testing Australia, said festival-goers often changed their behaviour once they had their drugs tested. Caldicott said the Victorian drug-checking proposal was timely because nitazenes –...

Queensland, Australia, just committed to government-funded testing of illegal drugs. The harm reduction strategy is popular in Western Europe, where lab technicians have set up a tent at music festivals or clubs and run basic tests on party drugs. As The World’s Sarah...

The illegal use of ketamine soared in 2023 in Australia. But as ketamine rises in popularity, organised crime groups are importing dangerous chemical copies of the drug. The number of these copies on the market is “an unknown, unknown”.

It's the first time CanTEST has issued such a notice this year, and only the fourth time since operations began in Civic in mid-2022. "A red alert is something that we issue very rarely," explained Dr Caldicott. "It is a reflection of how serious we think the impact...

MDMB-4en-PINACA is a powerful synthetic cannabinoid that can lead to overdoses, even at low concentrations, and has been linked to serious harm - including deaths - in New Zealand. DMT is a psychedelic drug that produces effects similar to those of LSD.

The first of those trials of drug checking in Australia was conducted at the Groovin’ the Moo music festival in 2018, by a group that came to be known as Pill Testing Australia (PTA). The story of how that happened is discussed elsewhere (here) but “how” we do it is a...

NSW Health has issued a public health warning after about 20 people suffered severe opioid overdoses in the Penrith area in the past month. An investigation revealed nitazenes were found in drug samples related to a cluster of overdoses reported in Nepean Blue...

Because of their potency, compared with natural opioids such as heroin or morphine, they can be much more addictive and more dangerous. In January, the chief executive of the nation’s only pill-testing venue in Canberra, Chris Gough, said the detection of nitazenes in...

Queensland Premier Steven Miles toured the drug checking site before it opened for the first time. While he said police would continue to crack down on traffickers, the drug-checking site was all about harm minimisation.

Managed by Pill Testing Australia, the event-based service at the festival drew in 257 festival-goers over the course of four days, offering crucial information about the substances they intended to consume. Pill Testing Australia medical lead David Caldicott hailed...

The Pill Testing Australia clinical lead David Caldicott said it was hard to know if the clinic saved lives in 2024, but pointed to the lack of a need for paramedics as a win for safety.

“The success of QLD's first pill testing service at the multi-day festival Rabbits Eat Lettuce (REL) would not have been possible without the leadership team”, comprising of Professor Malcolm McLeod (Chemistry Lead), Dr David Caldicott (Medical Lead) and Dr Penny Hill...

Pill testing results show service’s importance to health and safety

PTA runs Qld's first ever pill testing service

Five thousand partygoers will have the opportunity to get their illicit drugs tested for purity at the iconic "bush doof" Rabbits Eat Lettuce Festival that begins on Thursday on Queensland's Southern Downs. Pill Testing Australia's David Caldicott says drug behaviours...

Pill Testing Australia executive officer Stephanie Tzanetis said drug checking was "very much something that the community wants". She said Pill Testing Australia was excited to begin expanding more testing sites across music festivals.

In January, Ms Allan said she had sought that advice after at least 10 people were taken to hospital following suspected drug use at festivals. "There are no current plans to change the policy setting on drug checking," she said at the time. Harm Reduction Australia...

CanTEST Coordinator Steph Tzanetis told ABC Radio Canberra this particular drug had been purchased from "the clear net, not the dark web". She said taking the potent drug, methamphetamine, could have resulted in the person experiencing a stimulant overdose.  "So the...

Stephanie Tzanetis is coordinator for Directions Health at CanTEST, the A-C-T's fixed site pill testing service. She's also the Executive Officer at Pill Testing Australia, which provided Australia's first on-site music festival pill testing at Groovin the Moo in...

The Victorian government is being urged to reassess its stance on pill-testing after the death of a man from a suspected drug overdose at a weekend music festival. The 23-year-old was airlifted in a critical condition to the Alfred hospital in Melbourne from Mafeking...

The NSW health department has issued a drugs warning after 11 people who believed they were using cocaine or methamphetamine recently experienced an opioid overdose.

Dr Green said that, without drug testing being made available to the public, it was too challenging to find out what was in a drug after a patient had suffered an overdose.

Chemistry lead of CanTEST, Australia's only fixed-site drug checking service, Malcolm McLeod told ABC RN's Life Matters that "around 10 per cent to 15 per cent of samples [are] maybe not as expected".

Gino Vumbaca, president of drug safety organisation Harm Reduction Australia, said his website receives “at least two to three emails a day” from people who want to safely test the pills that they or their children have.

A two-year pill-testing trial would cost Victoria about $3.7 million, the Parliamentary Budget Office has found, as left-wing crossbenchers pressure the state government over drug reform after overdoses at this summer’s festivals.

NSW Health is warning of the dangers of tablets which are being sold as MDMA (ecstasy) and found to contain a potent opioid (nitazene). Three people presented to Sydney hospitals over the past weekend, after taking as little as half a tablet. One patient was admitted...

A 2023 report on the first six months of Canberra’s fixed drug-testing site showed that when a substance tested was not what the user expected, they were four times more likely to discard the drug. These tests can serve as a last-ditch attempt to save a life.

Victorian taxpayers spend up to $3.9 million a year on MDMA-related overdoses in ambulances, emergency departments, hospital admissions and coronial inquiries, leading advocates to argue there is a financial case for pill testing.

Three mysterious recreational drugs have surfaced for the first time in Australia with chemists describing them as "unexpected, new psychoactive substances".

More than 60 music festival drug-related deaths over 20 years could have potentially been prevented, with experts saying the new study analysing national coronial records bolsters the case for pill testing.

Pill testing advocates have long argued the service could reduce the harm of drug taking at festivals by helping users better understand the substances they may be consuming.

How many more of our young people will needlessly lose their lives this summer due to government inaction?

It has been two years since Aotearoa's world-first law change came into effect allowing drug-checking organisations, such as the Drug Foundation and Know Your Stuff, to work legally at festivals.

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. Co-author...

Over the upcoming hot summer months young people in NSW will be heading to music festivals right across the state but unlike at Spilt Milk, young people will be denied the same chance to know more about any drugs they might be using and to have a conversation with a...

As the pill-testing debate rages on, several doctors say the conversation is swamped by political discourse and are concerned partygoers don't understand the risks in mixing certain drugs, how potency can turn lethal, and why extreme heat is deadly.

New research available at the International Journal of Drug Policy 

A step change model analysis of the establishment of pill testing in one Australian jurisdiction

Greens MP and spokesperson for drug harm reduction, Cate Faehrmann, has introduced legislation that would allow a trial of pill testing at music festivals and a fixed site across New South Wales in the Upper House today.

Pill testing could be trialled over next year’s music festival season if three minor Victorian parties get their way on Thursday, a day after the state government announced it was open to talks about decriminalising personal use of cannabis.

Pill Testing Australia confirmed on social media that the free drug-checking service would be available at Canberra's Spilt Milk festival on Saturday. The free, confidential service will be available to festival goers on the festival grounds from 11:30am.

On November 25, KnowYourStuffNZ is celebrating the two-year anniversary of the Drug and Substance Checking Legislation Act 2021. This Act made drug checking permanently legal in Aotearoa New Zealand, a world first.

The Greens have renewed their calls for free pill testing, in an urge to the Victorian Labor Government to take up an offer to establish a free pill testing trial. It calls growing calls from all around Australia, as experts say pill testing is essential to saving...

At an event at Parliament House today, PTA offered a cost-free trial of its public health based pill testing service to the Victorian Government - the offer is supported and endorsed by a variety of unions and organisations.

Between 1 January 2013 and 30 June this year, 94,535 general and strip-searches were prompted by the dogs but nearly 75% of these searches yielded no illicit drugs

Dr David Caldicott, Clinical Lead for Pill Testing Australia and CANTest, who provide festival and fixed-site health and drug checking services in the ACT, told Yahoo News Australia that Canberra has offered other states, like NSW, free trials.

The Victorian Alcohol and Drug Association (VAADA), with the support of 77 health and community organisations, published a statement on Monday pushing for the Victorian government to implement a drug-checking service and early warning system in the state.

Many of the harms people experience from using illegal drugs are a result of unregulated supply. Drugs may be contaminated, or completely substituted with something unexpected. They may also be of variable and unknown dosage or strength.