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Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan has confirmed pill testing will now become permanent in the state following a trial period which will determine the most effective strategies.
In a video posted to social media on Monday night Ms Allan announced the trial will go ahead across music festivals this summer.
"It doesn't make pills legal but it does keep people safe. It exists around the world and the evidence says it works. This is a simple and commonsense way to save lives. That's why we're going to trial it in Victoria this Summer. People deserve to know if that one pill will kill, and if someone's asking for that information and we have the power to give it to them then why on earth wouldn't we?"
A fixed site will also open in mid-2025 somewhere in inner Melbourne, close to nightlife and transport.
Legislation will be amended later in the year to allow the trial but possession and supply of illicit drugs won't be decriminalised, with police powers for drug-checking to remain unchanged.
The change in policy reflects the state's top medical advice with five Victorian coronial recommendations since 2021 pushing for drug checking services to reduce the risk of overdose deaths.
However, it's a dramatic shift from Ms Allan's predecessor, Daniel Andrews, who was consistently opposed to similar trials.
The Victorian Premier says watching her two children grow up has impacted her stance on the issue.
"In a few years, they'll be heading off to parties, to music festivals, and like all parents I catch myself thinking - what if the worst happens? What if one of them doesn't make it home? That's every parent's worst nightmare - and more parents are living it. Our paramedics responded to more drug overdoses at festivals in the first three months of this year than during all of last year"
Dr David Caldicott is an emergency doctor and the clinical lead for Pill Testing Australia.
He says humanising the issue in the way Jacinta Allan did is a helpful approach.
"I actually thought it was quite heartwarming to see a politician fight concerns that they would share with tens of thousands of parents around Australia. The vast majority of parents around Australia, they would prefer that their kids don't use drugs. But above and beyond that they would prefer that their kids don't get killed by drugs."
Until now, Queensland and the A-C-T have been the only jurisdictions to have legalised the rollout of pill testing.
Back in 2018, Dr Caldicott led Australia’s first pill testing operation at Canberra's Groovin the Moo music festival.
He says he was inspired to push for new harm reduction tools after witnessing a young person die from pills first-hand.
"The start of this occurred when I was but a small baby doctor looking after a young man who overdosed and died from a drug consumed called para-Methoxyamphetamine. And following that event, it occurred quite quickly that the only way to stop people being harmed by that drug was to prevent them from eating it. And the best way to do that was to identify it when it was in the market and that would've been in the early 2000s. So we've been working on pill testing in Australia for probably the last 20-25 years."
Dr Caldicott is also the clinical lead for Canberra's CANTest, Australia's first fixed-site health and drug checking service.
Since their conception, pill testing schemes such as these have been maligned by some as a way of encouraging young people to take illicit substances rather than taking a hard punitive stance against them.
Dr Caldicott says the evidence shows otherwise.
"We know for a fact from the research that we've done in the ACT that it doesn't encourage drug use. What it does is it sends the message, if it sends any message, it sends the message of love and compassion and consideration for people who might not be making the right choices. And so I acknowledge that people have different opinions. I just don't acknowledge the fact that they really should be determining what we do in healthcare. In the same way as that in a day-to-day basis, we deal with people who don't believe in immunisations and don't believe in blood transfusions. I see people who don't believe in pill testing in that sort of vein. They have strong ideological opinions, but they're not scientific or medical."
Cameron Francis is the CEO of The Loop, a not-for-profit organisation hoping to develop the sustainable provision of drug checking services in Australia.
Mr Francis says the iron-fist approach seen in the so-called 'war on drugs' has failed to reduce demand and consumption patterns and in some ways has actually backfired.
"There's actually really clear evidence now that in a lot of cases, heavily police focused responses increase harm to the community. We know that sniffer dogs proliferating around music festivals results in more people purchasing drugs off strangers inside the festival. We don't see access to drugs being limited from those policing approaches. We see the market adapting and in many ways it adapts in ways that put people at increased risk of harm. So I think we could be pretty confident now after however many years of a war on drugs approach in both this country and other countries around the world that drugs have won the war on drugs and it's time for a new approach."
Mr Francis says festival-goers may also feel pressured to ingest their drugs quickly or smuggle them inside their bodies in ways that can prove dangerous and even fatal.
2022 research from the National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre found 35 per cent of respondents, and 41 per cent of drug users, reported fear of police involvement would make them avoid seeking help for an overdose or medical issue caused by illicit drugs.
The Victorian Alcohol and Drug Association has celebrated the state government's move to adopt pill testing ahead of the festival season.
CEO, Chris Christoforou says these initiatives are the most reliable way at getting young people to think twice about taking a potentially dangerous drug.
"There's international evidence that demonstrates that up to 86 per cent of people may choose not to consume illicit substances that they've already gotten once they receive the medical advice from a drug checking service. So it's an appropriate intervention, particularly with the real threats of potent synthetic opioids that could cause catastrophic consequences quite broadly."
Victoria recorded 46 overdose deaths involving synthetic drugs in 2022.
One kind of synthetic opioid is the incredibly potent nitazene, with one kind of nitazene estimated as being 25 times stronger than the deadly drug fentanyl.
In late January, New South Wales Health put out a warning about ecstasy pills that may contain nitazene and, in May, the Australian Federal Police raised the alarm regarding new imports of the substance.
The Victorian Greens spokesperson for Drug Harm Reduction, Aiv Puglielli says he's happy to see this announcement from the state Labor government but says jurisdictions across the country need to be operating with a sense of urgency.
"We absolutely need to see urgency from this government in taking this issue seriously. All the evidence and the expert advice has told us that pill testing is sensible evidence-based health-based policy that can and will save lives. With untested substances, dangerous synthetic substances circulating around the community, we know that tough talk from our cops, from our politicians isn't going to save any lives. Sniffer dogs aren't out there saving lives, whereas pill testing can and will."
