Britain | Drug-testing at music festivals

Cocaine or concrete?

Revellers get the chance to see if their illegal drugs are what they claim to be

Good clean fun

BACKSTAGE at many of Britain’s summer music festivals, suspicious pills and powders seized from tents are analysed by lab technicians. Usually it is to advise on-site doctors and police on what symptoms to look out for in people who become unwell. But this year, for the first time, festival-goers have been given the chance to get their illegal drugs tested before they take them.

At the Secret Garden Party, a Cambridgeshire bash on July 21st-24th, a non-profit organisation called The Loop manned a tent where partygoers could drop off their drugs anonymously, before returning later for the results. As police turned a blind eye, technicians analysed nearly 250 drug samples, mostly of ecstasy, cocaine and ketamine.

Or at least, that was what they claimed to be: in reality the bags of “MDMA crystal” being sold for £50 ($66) per gram turned out to be brown sugar; some suspiciously hard, grey pills were made of concrete; and several samples of “cocaine” and “ketamine” were in fact ground-up anti-malaria tablets. Even the real drugs varied dangerously in potency: the strongest ecstasy pills were five times as potent as the weakest.

Festival drug-dealers are a particularly dodgy bunch, says Fiona Measham, a professor of criminology at Durham University and co-director of The Loop. Ripping people off in their home town carries the risk that “if they bump into them again they’d get battered. At a festival they can disappear into the crowd.”

But does the testing encourage more drug use? It is too early to say, but there is some evidence that it does the opposite. After getting their results back, only half of those at the Secret Garden Party said they would take the drugs; one-quarter said they would throw them away. Of the remainder, some said they would track down the dealer to remonstrate. “Customer satisfaction” may become a higher priority, says Ms Measham.

The Loop will next take its tent to Kendal Calling, a festival in the Lake District which begins on July 28th. Five other festivals have made inquiries. Those held on private land, as the Secret Garden Party is, may be more open to the idea than festivals in public places. Last year a plan to bring drug testing to Parklife, a shindig in a park in Manchester, was vetoed by the city council.

The programme also represents a test of the new government. In 2013, as home secretary, Theresa May dismissed a proposal to pre-test drugs at a nightclub in Manchester, arguing that “if somebody has purchased something that the state has deemed illegal, it’s not then for the state to go and test it for you.” Yet so far the Home Office has made no criticism of The Loop’s project. That is perhaps the most encouraging result of the weekend.

This article appeared in the Britain section of the print edition under the headline "Cocaine or concrete?"

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