Editorial: Drug testing at festivals is a victory for pragmatism

The Drug and Substance Checking Legislation Bill allows event-goers to get their drugs tested without prosecution and permits festival organisers to host testers. Photo / Supplied, File

EDITORIAL:

"We are not old men. We are not worried about petty morals."

So said Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards, 53 years ago, when charged with allowing his house to be used for the purpose of smoking what the law then referred to as "Indian hemp".

Richards was responding to a question about a near-naked young woman in the company of men but similarly - as the organisers of the KnowYourStuffNZ service have pointed out - few young people care what the Government or wider public thinks about drug use. Festival-goers will use drugs.

The world has largely come to accept that allowing guests to share an Indian hemp cigarette is no hanging matter, and many now also accept festival-goers will ingest, imbibe or inhale some form of mood enhancer.

Health Minister Andrew Little's Drug and Substance Checking Legislation Bill passed this week, pragmatically permitting pill testing at festivals. It has previously been carried out under threat of prosecution for handling or permitting illegal substances to be present.

We may not approve of illegal drugs being openly passed for testing and back to potential users. But use will continue. Should we resolutely occupy the moral high ground while people are permanently damaged, even killed?

The harm caused by contaminated pills - passed as ecstasy, or whatever else takes the dancing crowds' fancy - is too costly to the whole country when a cheap and simple test can at least warn those thinking of consuming them.

By all means, people should have morals - be they be viewed petty or otherwise - while allowing others to enjoy themselves and without unnecessarily depriving them of the opportunity to grow older.