“WON’T SOMEBODY PLEASE THINK OF THE CHILDREN!” – HELEN LOVEJOY, THE SIMPSONS
Growing up, I’ve never considered myself a festival goer. I’ve never understood the hype of “raving” at Defqon.1
That’s me personally, though. I know everyone is different. I found myself always attending nightclubs, but in reality – they’re not that entirely different.
2018 is the year where they’re acknowledging the drug use at Defqon.1 as crucial. After two deaths that have occurred over this popular festival. It’s no secret that the drug use at this festival has seen massive numbers the past few years, but the government seems to act like this is the worst case they’ve seen in Defqon.1, or any festival here, or any nightclub here in Australia.
This year, we see a 23-year-old man from Sydney pass away from a heart attack which was apparently after a drug overdose in the Penrith festival. Following that, a 21-year-old woman from Melbourne had also died that night. It was revealed by the police that 13 people had attended Nepean Hospital in order to receive treatment for drug-related issues. During this, around 700 people found help from medical staff on site. This encouraged Dr Nicole Lee to enforce pill testing to occur.
NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian vowed to officially shut down the doors to this festival once and for all due to this behaviour – she mentions that pill testing is giving a green light to drugs, and basically telling the youth of today that it’s acceptable to do drugs.
I sit here writing this article and finding myself trying to understand what banning one festival is going to do here – while we live in a privileged country – we also live in a country full of idiots, which acts as our detriment due to us being so privileged. We all grew up with the same education, whether most of us listened or not, we all knew exactly what the effect of the drugs were. People know what could potentially happen to them the second they take drugs, yet most people view themselves as invincible – or bored by alcohol. They claim that alcohol is the “worst” drug of all time so they can experiment with marijuana or MDMA.
The drug culture here in Australia is shocking, and according to this drug nation report in 2014, the top of the global list for recreational drug use. In this report, it stated that Australia came fourth for the use of cocaine – whereas Scotland came first. We really came victorious on the use of ecstasy, considering we came first, just towering over New Zealand. Our use of cannabis isn’t so high as we ranked seventh, Iceland was first with that use. While these stats may have changed, you can’t deny that we have a serious problem.
The problem isn’t solved by banning one festival, we have many other festivals in this country. Not all of them are in Sydney, too. Drugs will always find a way in the lives of our youth, and no matter what education is given to them, they will always experiment, and there’s nothing we can really do to stop that. No amount of police officers or sniffer dogs could prevent it. I have my own personal ways of preventing an issue like this, and most could say it was a radical approach – but personally, I wouldn’t mind seeing the health cover being taken away from people who willingly take these drugs and overdose, they’d then be left with a hefty bill. I suppose the same can be said in regards to alcohol abuse. It’s a whole new can of worms but I would doubt this’d ever happen.
We are faced with the sad reality that a drug culture is pushed into these events, just last year in Defqon.1, a couple of people were sprung with drugs. A 22-year-old German man was charged with drug possession and a breach of bail when he was caught with illicit drugs – to be exact, he was allegedly caught holding over 396 capsules, including ecstasy and amphetamine. Two other cases saw a man holding over 200 ecstasy pills and a woman was found with 87 pills, they were all believed to be MDMA.
In 2016, there were 77 arrests that occurred, all due to drug related offences of. Over 6 of those arrests were supply charges. RBT officers even tested over 630 people who drove that night and caught over 8 people for driving under the influence of alcohol, and then a further 44 people were caught under the influence of drugs. Over 200 people were treated for heat and drug related issues, and 6 were taken to Nepean Hospital for further treatment. A 26-year-old man even passed away during that night.
It was seen a clear problem seeing that arrests have increased since 2015, where 46 people were arrested for drug related offences.
The problem doesn’t only stem from festivals, if you walk into any nightclub these days, you’ll see this occur. In any gay nightclub, you’ll a real culture of jungle juice being passed around. Party drugs are always in the night scene, and it won’t always be seen in festivals. It’s everywhere, there’s no way to get rid of the activity – you just need to encourage safety as much as you can.
I’m speaking as someone who has also taken Amyl (jungle juice) on the dance floor of Stonewall. It gave me a high and gave me the feeling that my night was so much better after that. My previous hook ups with men on Grindr would sometimes involve Amyl. It’s an inevitable situation we all face in our lives, and nothing will stop that. Shutting down a festival won’t achieve much, it might frighten the festival goers a little bit. If they honestly were to introduce a safer culture into these events, and it has been suggested before – they would really need to consider legal pill testing, to test if the drugs are safe and whatnot. It can reduce overdosing quite remarkably.
No one will ever push drugs away from the youth of today, kids can, and will do drugs one day in their life. Stemming out a festival will only bring it more underground and cause more problems. To make an example of this, a few years ago, I would have been in high school, there was a warehouse party that was introduced to everyone. I was meant to go to this party, and I was a little upset I didn’t go. It was a party so wild, that involved many of my school friends in a giant group photo that ended up on the front page of the newspaper. It was a party that was planned to be shut down the moment another one was planned. Low and behold, another one was planned.
Teenagers were more secretive about this one, but in the end the party didn’t occur. I was told people were told by the entrance to go home immediately. It forces a more underground culture, and we’ve seen that occur for years now. I mean, it isn’t rocket science!