A leading emergency doctor has slammed the NSW government's ultimatum to festival organisers that they will be shut down if drug overdoses continue, saying it will push festivals underground and lead to more deaths.

Dr David Caldicott, an emergency specialist at Canberra's Calvary Hospital, said the proposal advocated by NSW Deputy Premier Troy Grant and backed by Premier Mike Baird was based in the regressive ideology of drug prohibition, which he likened to the "ideological equivalent to climate change denialism".

"What will happen is that these festivals will go ahead, they just won't go ahead in any sort of supervised environment," he said.

"You'll get what happened in the United States in the 1980s which was a wide variety of unsupervised raves and a vast number of people getting hurt and killed."

On Sunday, Mr Baird declared "enough was enough" after a 23-year-old woman was taken to hospital with a suspected MDMA overdose at the Field Day music festival, where 184 people were charged with drug offences.

Mr Baird flagged an overhaul of musical festival permit system, telling the Sunday Telegraph he would call on "relevant ministers to review the current system of regulating events held on public land, including the system for granting permits for public events such as music festivals".

Dr Caldicott, who has been a vocal advocate of the introduction of pill-testing at festivals, described the threat to shut down non-compliant festivals as "the last dying throes of prohibitionists".

"There are so many other things that are far more intelligent that we can do before banning music festivals. It's right up there with police dogs as an idea – it's unlikely to have any effect whatsoever and it's probably going to cause more deaths. So at least law enforcement in NSW is being consistent.
"At the moment, the health policy in Australia is create a drug-free Australia, which is ludicrous. It's never happened anywhere else in the world, why do we personally believe it could possibly happen in Australia where more people are using drugs per capita than many places elsewhere in the world?
"It's kind of like the drug equivalent of climate change denialism. The politicians are concerned about how it appears to a very vocal group of prohibitionists."

The recent spate of high profile fatal overdoses at music festivals, including Sydney women Sylvia Choi, 25, in December and Georgina Barrter, 19, at the 2014 Harbourlife festival, has failed to dent the supply and demand for ecstasy, the street name for MDMA.

In the 2015 annual survey of 700 ecstasy users across Australia, conducted by the National Alcohol and Drug Research Centre, 83 per cent of NSW users found it "easy" or "very easy" to buy ecstasy pills, powder or capsules. Nationally, just 8 per cent said the drug was difficult to obtain.
Amanda Roxburgh, who researches methamphetamine-related deaths (which includes ecstasy) at the NADRC, said the market had recovered after a big dip in ecstasy availability throughout  2009-2010, but synthetic drugs were emerging as a leading cause for concern.

"Part of what has happened in that time is the massive emergence of newer analog drugs," which are chemically analogous to ecstasy but have been slightly changed to get around criminal legislation and detection, she said.
"Often what happens is people are buying what they think is ecstasy and it's something much more toxic."

Ms Roxburgh said data collection of ecstasy-related deaths was stymied by backlogs in coronial inquests and the high demand on forensic testing. The latest available data is from 2010, when 18 people died nationally from methamphetamine as the primary cause of such death, but is not further broken down into ecstasy-related deaths.

The last comprehensive analysis of ecstasy-related deaths, published in 2009, revealed 82 deaths between 2000-2005, of which only 19 were considered to be due to ecstasy toxicity alone.
"We do have work in progress trying to update ecstasy-related deaths but we won't capture the most recent deaths because it takes quite some time to go through the coronial processes," Dr Roxburgh said.
"I suspect we are still not going to see that they are large in number."

http://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw-government-drug-approach-like-climate-change-denialism-says-doctor-20160104-glyyhp.html

They are not anywhere near the same thing also they are wrong on the lockout laws.
The only reason Lockout laws "worked" is because they absolutely killed nightlife and caused all the clubs to shut down, people can't go out anymore, how is that good policy? Aren't you supposed to be small Government?

How are festival organizers supposed to fight dangerous drug use while testing stations and other proper first aid measures are banned? I've been to festivals where you have to go through full police checkpoints and still drugs flowed like candy inside. Prohibition doesn't work and can never work.

Another point I would make is that MDMA and other popular festival drugs for the most part are actually safe when used correctly and are far safer than alcohol, In my over a decade of going to raves and parties where MDMA is widely used, I've never seen an overdose caused by it and I've never seen a single fight due to the actual effects of MDMA (it increases empathy while alcohol increases aggression).

Also another point is that the media is generally full of poo and doesn't even know what it's talking about half the time, for example, one music festival I was at a girl died from OD'ing about... 20 meters from me in the next camp site, what happened is that she died of Alcohol and GHB poisoning, but what did the media report it as? MDMA.

The fact is, drug prohibition is a failure and doesn't even make any sense, most these drugs are only dangerous because of prohibition means you don't know what you're getting, also keeping everything underground creates connections between regular people and organized crime who will always try push more dangerous drugs on you, one day you might just be buying weed or MDMA, but next the dealer is pushing Speed on you then Ice. If you were able to buy safe drugs through safe official channels, this would never, ever be an issue and you would probably see use in other dangerous drugs fall since that connection would be severed.

One only needs to look at the Colorado and Washington to see what a booming success legalization has been.

Kiron22 wrote on Jan 5^th, 2016 at 12:49pm:




The doctor is a f--king idiot too for mentioning climate change denial, he should keep his religious views out of it.

the communist ponytail supporting drugs.  how unsurprising.

give it up kiron.  you are an old out-dated commie/hippie who no longer relates to modern society.

longweekend58 wrote on Jan 5^th, 2016 at 5:16pm:


Can't wait for when they are forced to drug test pollies and you find out half the LNP are cokeheads.

Kiron22 wrote on Jan 5^th, 2016 at 5:46pm:



but you think drugs are harmless and good so what's the problem, pony-tail?

Kiron22 wrote on Jan 5^th, 2016 at 7:43pm:



we cant have the conversation because you draw the line way too far away from safety. You want drugs. You like drugs.

longweekend58 wrote on Jan 6^th, 2016 at 8:17am:


Safety? I'm backed up by scientific data, many drugs are far, far safer alternatives to Alcohol, MDMA's "danger" can be counteracted with f**ing Gatorade for goodness sake. It's non-addictive, it's got largely no proven long term side effects, it's effects are uplifting empathy.
What's dangerous about Marijuana? Oh boy? People are going to inject 6 whole marijuanas and overdose in your opinion?

For Armchair's stupid comment. Australians are not even "overdosing" on MDMA or other pure party drugs, they are ODing on GHB an incredibly dangerous substance that causes alcohol poisoning if the person is drinking or cheap research chemicals from china like PMA being sold as MDMA.

Want to stop people from ODing? Actually legalize drugs based on harm risk assessment (many have already been scientifically done) and provide real drug safety courses throughout school. Hell I would argue there should be a drug an alcohol license you need to go get before you even are allowed to buy drugs and alcohol and you need to pass a test on first aid and drug safety.

Prohibition is the biggest failure there is, you can't stop people from doing drugs, especially when half these drugs are safer, non-addictive and have better effects than alcohol.

The only people who want to do NOTHING to stop kids from overdosing is the right, you idiots still want to keep drug testing stations illegal ffs.