NSW to resume pill testing at music festivals but reject community rollout despite health group calls
Quick Look
New South Wales will resume pill testing at up to 15 music festivals annually from October following a successful 12-month trial, but will not extend the service to the wider community despite calls from health and harm reduction groups, while maintaining the controversial use of sniffer dogs and searches that experts say encourage risky pre-loading and have led to unlawful strip-searches.
AI-generated summary
Why It Matters
New South Wales conducted a 12-month pill testing trial at music festivals that ended in February, testing 1,480 drug samples across 12 festivals. The trial was free and anonymous, allowing festival-goers to submit substances for purity and potency testing. An independent evaluation by the University of Sydney found that unexpected substances were detected in 8% of samples and high-dose MDMA in 4% of tested samples, prompting changes in user behavior.
Drug testing will resume at New South Wales music festivals from October, but will not be rolled out into the wider community despite calls from peak health and harm reduction groups, while the controversial use of sniffer dogs and searches will continue.
On Wednesday the state government announced NSW Health will consult with the music festival industry and harm reduction organisations to roll out pill testing at up to 15 music festivals each year.
There will be no change to the use of sniffer dogs at music festivals, a government spokesperson confirmed, which has been found to prompt risky drug taking. Police, security guards, bag searches and sniffer dogs at music festivals can lead to riskier drug use as people may “pre-load”, or take all of their substances at once, to avoid detection.
Detection of drugs through sniffer dogs has also been used by police to justify strip-searches, which courts and legal experts have found to be unlawful.
The testing rollout follows a 12-month trial which ended in February and which saw 1,480 drug samples tested across 12 NSW music festivals.
The trial was free and anonymous, and meant festival goers could hand over a small sample of substances they intended to use to health staff to test for purity, potency and contaminants.
An independent evaluation led by the University of Sydney, also made public on Wednesday, found people changed their approach to drug taking after getting their drugs tested, particularly when substances differed from what they expected.
Unexpected substances were found in 8% of samples, while high-dose MDMA was found in 4% of MDMA samples where a dose could be calculated. High doses of MDMA increase the risk of organ failure and death, especially in hot environments or when combined with other substances.
A range of unexpected psychoactive substances were detected through the testing, including ketamine analogues (human-made substances which copy ketamine’s chemical makeup, but can produce different and dangerous effects) and heroin.
The University of Sydney evaluation also surveyed people about their views towards pill testing and found “a consistent concern … was the conflict between policing activities (such as drug detection dogs) and access to the service site, which may have dissuaded potential service users from accessing harm reduction services”.
A report from a landmark summit into how to reduce drug-related harms, published in 2025, recommended NSW consider ceasing the use of drug detection dogs and strip-searches at music festivals.
The chief executive of Unharm, Dr Will Tregoning, said the searches need to be scrapped.
“Drug detection dogs are intensive operations that have a track record of clearly contributing to increased overdoses,” he said.
“People see the dogs and take all of their drugs at once out of fear of being detected, and we know police have been strip-searching people at an industrial scale. These searches are also deeply traumatic for people, and affects predominantly young people.”
Ahead of the announcement, peak health and harm reduction groups including the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners, the Alcohol and Drug Foundation, and Unharm wrote to NSW’s premier, Chris Minns, and health minister, Ryan Park, on Tuesday calling for pill testing services to be offered in the community.
The ACT and Victoria have both moved beyond festivals to fund community drug checking, where staff provide people with the results along with non-judgmental health and harm reduction advice.
“Drug checking at festivals reaches people who can get to a festival. It cannot reach the people dying at home,” the letter says.
“We ask you to commit to a next phase of drug checking in NSW that includes community-based services, designed for the communities they serve and independently evaluated from the start.”
The letter said that 72% of fatal drug overdoses in Australia happened at home in 2024.
Minns told budget estimates in August that there were no plans to roll out testing to the community.
What to Watch
AI outlook — possibilities, not facts
NSW Health will consult with music festival industry and harm reduction organisations to implement pill testing at up to 15 festivals per year starting October
Very likely · Within months
Continued use of sniffer dogs at music festivals will persist despite evidence linking them to risky pre-loading and unlawful strip-searches
Very likely · Within months
Open Questions
- What specific criteria will determine which 15 music festivals receive pill testing services annually?
- How will the NSW government address the documented link between sniffer dog presence and increased pre-loading behavior that raises overdose risk?
- What alternative harm reduction strategies is the government considering to address the 72% of fatal overdoses occurring at home in Australia?
