Charity welcomes call for more guidance on drug-testing at festivals
It follows the inquest into the death of a 16-year-old at last year's Leeds Festival
As this year's Leeds Festival officially gets underway, a charity says expanding drug-testing at festivals would help save lives.
The Loop have spoken to us after the inquest into the death of David Celino, 16, who took a fatal dose of MDMA at last year’s event.
Following the conclusion of the inquest, the coroner Kevin McLoughlin wrote to the Home Office urging them to give festival organisers more guidance around front-of-house drug-testing – which is where people can have their drugs 'checked' to get more information about what’s in them and the strength.
The Loop carried out front-of-house testing at festivals during a pilot in 2016, 2017 and 2018 and says it had ‘very positive’ results.
Since the pilot ended, events have used back-of-house testing - where drugs which have been confiscated or surrendered are tested behind the scenes.
The Loop’s founder Fiona Measham says it then means alerts can be sent out to festival goers if a concerning substance is found to be in circulation:
“The benefit of drug testing is that you can find out information about what’s inside, at that festival, on that day, and get that information out. If there is a medical incident, that’s again another opportunity for the festival organisers to be getting out those messages as quickly as possible.
“Young people do respond to those messages. When we’ve provided our testing service at festivals, we’ve found that around half of people who get that message then take a lower dose in future. So one small piece of information can have a massive positive effect.”
Last week’s inquest heard that David Celino took one and a half ecstasy pills which he and his friends had bought from a dealer who befriended them on their campsite. The tablet was described by West Yorkshire Police as a ‘grey or black oblong shape’.
Fiona says this matches the description of ‘silver bar’ ecstasy tablets which The Loop have repeatedly raised concerns about, including during the weekend that David died after it was flagged up at a different festival.
But Fiona says she doesn’t believe those alerts were specifically pushed out to Leeds Festival goers – which could have been vital information for tens of thousands of people, even if it was too late for David:
“The concern with these pills is that they are high strength, possibly twice an average adult dose," says Fiona.
"So the alerts are warning people to be careful with those.
“That’s such an important message to get through, especially to young people who are inexperienced to drugs. David Celino had only taken drugs once or twice before, so he was very young, inexperienced, would’ve had a low tolerance.”
Fiona, who is also chair in criminology at Liverpool University, says research shows there are around six drug-related deaths at UK festivals every year, and around half of young people who go to festivals take drugs.
Around half of those drug-users will take a bigger quantity than they usually would, and a quarter take a wider range of drugs.
Because of that, she believes festivals should be a site of ‘specific concern’ when it comes to harm reduction.
She adds that when looking at how to improve safety at festivals, lessons can be learnt from other countries:
“In Australia for example they’ve done a lot more in terms of provision of ice cold water right across the festival sites, and also at many of the main stages they put tarpaulins across the whole crowd so they’re in shade.
“So additional shade might be something to think about. Quite a lot of these festivals don’t have a lot of shade at all, and people can be standing outside for many many hours in direct sunlight. And with global warming that situation is only going to get worse.
“Also having security and medics who are rotating around the site to keep an eye on people who might be the worse for wear from alcohol or drugs.
“Quite often these situations are where people might have lost their friends in the crowds.
“People might think they are asleep and don’t want to disturb them, but actually they might be slipping into unconsciousness.”
During last week’s inquest Leeds Festival organisers Festival Republic said ‘significant’ improvements had been made to the safety of this year’s event, including a new policing plan to deter drug dealers and new ‘AIR hubs’ to provide more visible support and advice.