As a number of results from Australia’s first ever pill testing trial surface, those behind it have shared how “baffled” they are that a large amount of illegal pills sold in Australia appear to have been cut with material other than the drug MDMA.
The trial had been conducted over the weekend at Canberra’s Groovin The Moo music festival.
Run by the STA-Safe Consortium, a non government organisation of Harm Reduction Australia (HRA), the initiative has been labelled a major success by drug reform advocates after two of the 85 samples were found to contain potentially deadly chemicals.
HRA President and Co-Founder Gino Vumbuca told PEDESTRIAN.TV that of these two samples, “…actually produced a chemical that is considered even in small doses quite dangerous, and potentially could create an overdose.”
If in circulation, these pills may have had serious consequences for festival-goers.
Earlier today, Matthew Noffs from the Ted Noffs Foundation – another group involved in the trial – tweeted out the trial’s figures. Of the 85 samples tested, 50 per cent were purely MDMA while the other 50 per cent were found to contain material other than the drug. The latter found substances like paint, glue, and toothpaste in the samples.
Here is Australia’s first official #pilltesting service in numbers:
128 participants
85 samples tested
50% was ‘other’ (lactose, sweetener, paint)
50% was pure MDMA
2 of the samples were deadly
So, harm reduced.
We did it.— Matt Noffs (@mattnoffs) April 29, 2018
Following the results, Fiona Measham, a professor at Durham University in England shared how early indicators show 1/2 of Australian drugs are being mis-sold. This is in comparison to England where 1/5 are mis-sold.
In other words, a whole lotta young Aussie folk are being sold a whole lotta highly questionable garbage and they don’t even know about it.
1st indicators are that 1/2 of Australian drugs are missold compared to 1/5 in UK. We literally just could not estimate the disparities in market misselling until the testing by @ACTINOSProject & colleagues yesterday. #TimeToTest https://t.co/p89guBGvdx
— Fiona Measham (@FMeasham) April 30, 2018
In response, Dr David Caldicott, a supervisor of the trial tweeted he and his colleagues were “absolutely baffled” by the results. Caldicott had assumed the results would have been the same or at least similar to England’s. And with numbers so high, Dr Caldicott called to at least have the tested samples sent off-site to labs for confirmation.
We were absolutely baffled- I’m the biggest nerd I know on this down here, & I just assumed the percentages would be the same as yours.
Next time we’ll be pushing really hard to either have next level gear on-site, or at least getting discards back to lab to confirm.
?Gig-related https://t.co/hl8wvLxhxP— David Caldicott (@ACTINOSProject) April 30, 2018
The complete set of findings will be available to the public later this week.
