Drug Amnesty Bins Will Be Introduced to NSW Music Festivals This Summer

While the debate surrounding pill testing at music festivals rages on, the NSW Government has announced it'll introduce a different harm-reduction technique: amnesty bins.

Premier Gladys Berejiklian today said that the State Government has okayed the use of drug amnesty bins at festivals from December 28, which will allow punters to discard any illegal drugs without fear of getting caught and facing prosecution.

The decision comes after a festivalgoer died from a suspected drug overdose at Strawberry Fields Festival in country NSW last week, bringing the total number of festivalgoers who have died from drug-related deaths in NSW over the past three summers to seven.

Introducing amnesty bins was one of the recommendations made in an inquest into the six festival deaths, alongside launching a pill-testing trial and removing sniffer dogs. While the NSW Government hopes the amnesty bins will help reduce the number of drug-related deaths and injuries at festivals, not everyone agrees that it will be an affective harm-minimisation technique in isolation.

Emergency specialist and pill testing advocate David Caldicott told The SMH that introducing amnesty bins would have "no impact whatsoever" and Sniff Off — a Greens-backed group that has long been calling for this sort of harm-reduction measure  — labelled the amnesty bins green light "a small win".

"While this is a small step in the right direction, the fight's far from over," the group said in a Facebook post. "Especially when Gladys and the Liberals continues to rule out pill testing and NSW Police continue to illegally strip search people."

The Premier remains firmly opposed to pill testing, reiterating her stance after the most recent festival death in a statement to The Age: "Pill testing will not solve the problem that ecstasy kills. I cannot say that in stronger words."

While pill testing remains off the table for now, the NSW Government has also announced plans to expand education campaigns and improve cross-state information sharing about the toxicology of drugs found at music festivals.

Amnesty bins will be rolled out at NSW festivals from December 28, 2019.