Pill testing is coming to the 2025 Yours and Owls festival.
Presented March 1st and 2nd, Yours and Owls will become the first fest in New South Wales to trial pill testing, and the first in Australia to host a government-run testing facility .
Previous festivals with the green light to test gear have done so with programs run by private companies or NGOs.
Announced today, February 19th, by the Minns Labour Government, punters will have access to a free service run by a government agency, led by qualified staff from NSW Health, by peer workers, health workers and analysts “who will clearly communicate the limitations of drug checking,” reads a statement.
“We enthusiastically welcome this move by the NSW Government. Pill testing is something we have been fighting for, for some time now,” says festival co-founder Ben Tillman.
“While Yours and Owls maintains a zero-tolerance policy to illegal drugs, we are realists and see the abstinence-only approach as unhelpful. Pill testing is not a panacea.”
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However, he adds, “It is a proven harm minimisation strategy that has been successfully implemented in many countries overseas for the past 20 or so years.”
The testing facilities are made possible by a year-long trial announced last December by the Minns Labor Government, a sea-change decision that advocates are convinced will save lives.
At the 2025 show, guests will have the opportunity to have their substances analysed for purity, potency and adulterants, before chatting with a qualified counsellor.
An amnesty area will be provided within and directly around the testing tent. Illicit drugs are still illegal in NSW, organisers warn, and the law very much applies for anyone caught selling drugs. Also, state police will be on-site undertaking checks that may involve sniffer dogs and strip searches.
The Australian Festival Association applauds Yours and Owls for “leading the way” on this breakthrough.
“This is an important moment for harm reduction in NSW. Festival organisers have long called for evidence-based approaches that prioritise health and safety,” comments AFA managing director Olly Arkins.
“We know from trials in other jurisdictions that these services don’t encourage drug use,” adds Arkins, “they provide lifesaving information that helps reduce harm.”
Yours and Owls 2025 will be presented at Wollongong Foreshore, South Beach, Dharawal Country, with a stacked lineup featuring internationals, Fontaines D.C., Denzel Curry, The Kooks, Goo Goo Dolls, plus local talent Brad Cox, Allday, The Veronicas and more.
This pill-testing trial in Australia’s most populous state represents a paradigm shift from previous successive Liberal leaderships, in particular the Berejiklian-led government, which took a hardline approach.
It was the former premier Gladys Berejiklian who, following a spate of drug-related deaths at open-air events, instigated a strict licensing regime for music festivals.
That tough – and expensive – set of rules came into force in early March 2019 and was blamed for a succession of festival collapses, including Psyfari and Mountain Sounds festivals.
Festival producers at the time said they were unfairly targeted, and lumped with unreasonable costs that would force their events to run at a slim margin, at best. Or bankrupt the show, at worst.
While NSW is embracing statewide trials, it’s not the first to take the plunge.
Last month, the Victorian state government announced four more local events where mobile pill testing trials will take place, including Hardmission Festival (February 8th), Pitch Music and Arts Festival (March 7th-11th), Ultra Music Festival (April 12th), and The Warehouse Project (April 25th).
Before that, Beyond the Valley supported a “highly successful” trial, the first at a festival in Victoria which enabled punters to test drugs on site, while Queensland’s Rabbit Eats Lettuce festival ran its own trial in 2023.
Talk on pill testing finally became action when, in April 2018, the Groovin the Moo festival in the Australian Capital Territory became the first to test drugs. Producers of the show later confirmed two potentially deadly samples were identified and half the drugs tested were found to contain no psychoactive substances.
In a sign of just how far the needle has moved, Yours and Owls organisers will provide media with a walkthrough on the final day of this year’s festival, to observe how the testing facility operates.
Visit yoursandowlsfestival.com.au for more.
