Pill Testing Is Finally Being Made Permanent at NSW Music Festivals

The Minns government announced on Wednesday, 2 September 2026, that from October, pill testing, or drug checking, services will be available at select New South Wales music festivals on a permanent basis. And this much-welcomed decision by NSW Labor comprises a significant victory for the civil society campaign that had long called for the initiative that prevents overdoses to be rolled out.

This development sees the Minns government investing $4.3 million into the harm reduction initiative that began being trialled in March 2025 and involved testing at 12 different events. And the Wednesday announcement came a day after a coalition of civil society organisations, led by Unharm, sent a letter to NSW premier Chris Mins calling for permanency, six months after the trial ended.

Pill testing or drug checking services save lives. The intervention operates on the understanding that despite being illegal, drugs without any quality controls are readily available, and as people use them, they ought to at least be permitted to test them for toxicity. This results in less consumption as people ditch dodgy drugs, and it permits warnings about such substances to be publicly distributed.

The Minns government underscores in its press release that drug checking doesn’t take away the risks involved in taking illegal drugs. Pill testing is no silver bullet. These services instead allow people to make safer choices and connect with health professionals. And the majority of people using such services report that it is the first time they’ve connected with such professionals about drug use.

This state will join Victoria and the Australian Capital Territory in the provision of drug checking. NSW harm reduction orgs and crossbench MPs are now celebrating the development that comes after a decade of campaigning. But they further stress that while festival testing is desperately needed, so too is fixed site pill testing that would allow for the checking of drugs to be consumed elsewhere.

A victory for the campaign 

“This is a win for all the families who have tragically lost loved ones at NSW music festivals and who never gave up advocating for commonsense so that other families would never have to go through what they have,” said NSW Greens MLC Cate Faehrmann, who has long been a key advocate for the rollout of pill testing in the NSW parliament.

“I’d particularly like to mention the incredible work of Jen Ross-King, whose daughter and only child Alex died after she took all of her drugs at once at a music festival in 2018, to avoid detection by police with sniffer dogs.”

The 12-month NSW pill testing trial saw more than 1,800 people utilise the service, and over 1,500 samples tested. An independent evaluation of the trial found it positively changed people’s drug use. 

NSW Health is now going to determine 15 festival events to test at, based on a “higher probability of drug harm”, and NUAA (the NSW Users and AIDS Association) will run testing alongside NSW Health.

Faehrmann pointed to multiple inquiries over the last decade that resulted in recommendations for the harm reduction intervention. This included the 2019 Inquest into the Death of Six Patrons at NSW Music Festivals, along with the 2020 Special Commission of Inquiry into the Drug ‘Ice’. But it was the suggestion from the 2024 NSW Drug Summit that really brought the reform over the line.

“We continue to hear horror stories of people consuming common street drugs, like cocaine, ketamine, methamphetamine and MDMA, and overdosing from unknown, but highly dangerous, contaminants, such as nitazenes,” Faehrmann insisted. “The government has taken an important step today. Now it needs to follow the evidence and take drug checking into the community.”

High time for roll out

Uniting NSW.ACT has welcomed the move. It considers that permanent drug checking will open up a broader turn towards evidence-based harm reduction approaches to illicit substances. Uniting, a key campaigner, also leads Fair Treatment, which is an initiative that advocates for drug decriminalisation in NSW. And this is supported by over 70 partner organisations, including the NSW Bar Association.

Drug checking services are currently available in well over a dozen European nations. Pill testing was first trialled in the Netherlands in 1992, and this included the establishment of the Drug Information and Monitoring System (DIMS), which is a database incorporating all information on illicit substances gathered, and it is used to warn the public about bad batches of drugs that are circulating.

The campaign to see pill testing rolled out has involved an array of advocates, including former police, like ex-AFP commissioner Mick Palmer. And the campaign, which first peaked circa 2015, was then distinctly shot down by former NSW premier Mike Baird and then police commissioner Troy Grant, while in 2018, then premier Gladys Berejiklian denied the lifesaving intervention.

The reason politicians have baulked at testing in the past is due to concerns that they might be perceived as being soft on drugs or advocating use. This is despite advocates explaining that checking lessens use. But these days, after long debate and widespread admissions that the drug war has failed, Labor has determined that young lives saved are worth more than keeping up appearances.

Fixed site drug checking a no brainer

“An analysis found 73 percent of MDMA related deaths occurred in private residences and only 7 percent at festivals or dance parties,” said Dr Will Tregoning, the chief executive of drug law reform org Unharm. “While we know that festival drug checking works and should resume in NSW, festivals cover only a narrow slice of drug use.”

“A festival-only service can’t reach most people who use drugs, it can’t provide year-round market surveillance, and it can’t generate the geographic data needed for a robust early warning system,” the long-time harm reduction advocate added.

As he made the case for fixed site pill testing, Tregoning further pointed to a recent UNSW report that found 72 percent of fatal drug overdoses happen at home, and more than half of these occur amongst the most disadvantaged 40 percent of the community.

The CANTest fixed-site drug checking facility operating on Ngunnawal land in Canberra has just celebrated four years in operation. It has tested over 7,000 samples and issued more than 70 public health alerts about suspect drugs. CANTest also assists in the running of the 2025-launched Prompt Response Network (PRN), which is the local version of the Netherlands’ DIMS warning system.

“Community based drug checking would reach people where most of the harm actually happens, and provide continual, real-time insights into rapidly changing drug markets,” Tregoning further stressed in a 2 September 2026 presser.

“Drug checking at festivals reaches people who can get to a festival – it can’t reach the people dying at home.”