00:00As Beyond the Valley's 35,000 young revellers ring in this coming New Year, the Premier
00:11wants them to celebrate with better information.
00:13If a young person has a pill in their hand, they're at a music festival, they're intending
00:18to use it.
00:19Young people are also entitled to have access to health-focused, supportive advice about
00:26what is in that pill.
00:27We see a lot of talk on social media, we see, you know, people say that this is a common
00:31sense approach and we also see the evidence from overseas that it works.
00:35The four-day festival, held west of Geelong, will be the first of ten events over the next
00:40two summers to offer pill testing under the government's trial, which is looking at how
00:45to best roll out the service.
00:47The trial follows calls for pill testing from two state coroners and a parliamentary report
00:52that linked 50 deaths between 2018 and 2022 to MDMA overdoses.
00:58The service identifies what's in someone's drugs and how pure they are, helping young
01:03people make informed decisions and helping authorities keep tabs on the drug market.
01:08We will be, I hope, ahead of a lot of the drug intelligence that we will need to identify
01:15these dangerous nitazines and synthetic opioids that we've seen more and more of.
01:20Loop Australia will run the trial and refer young people to support services.
01:25It's been overseeing pill testing in Queensland, where the new LNP government has scrapped
01:29plans to offer the service at schoolies next year.
01:33The Victorian Liberals say they're keeping an eye on the program.
01:35The government can't manage these type of projects, so we will see, we will wait and
01:40see what they do, but I don't have any confidence in this kind of trial.
01:45On top of pill testing at music festivals, the government expects to make the service
01:48available to everyone by the middle of next year, with plans to open a permanent pill
01:52testing site in the city's CBD, close to public transport and music venues.
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