Why Queensland’s Pill Testing Ban Could Cost Lives

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:12):
My Heart podcasts, year more kiss podcasts, playlists and listen
live on the free iHeart apps. Robin Kidd now with
Coorios the podcast. Now we're speaking with Cameron Francis, who's
on the phone with us right now. He is the

(00:32):
CEO of the Loop Australia. They manage pill testing sites
in Queensland. I imagine today is a pretty dark day
for you, Cameron.

Speaker 2 (00:41):
Yeah, look, it really is a dark day for us,
and I think it's a dark day for Queensland. A
decision like this goes against the scientific evidence. We've got
really clear evidence that drug checking or pill testing is
effective at reducing drug use and helping people make better decisions.
So yeah, we're going backwards in Queensland. Why would they
do this?

Speaker 1 (01:00):
It doesn't make sense to me, particularly if we're the
only state in the country.

Speaker 2 (01:05):
Yeah. Look, I've asked myself the same question, and you know,
I think, really it's ideology. This is not about science.
And you can tell it's about ideology because the only
comments from the government are these sorts of empty statements
about there's no safe way to take drugs, and we
know that that's the case, and what we do is
explain the risks of drug use to people. And when
we do that, we know that about fourteen percent of

(01:26):
people that came through our service throw their drugs in
the bin after talking to one of our staff, and
twenty one percent of people take less drugs. They reduce
how much they're taking once we explain the risks of
overdose to them. Can I able to answer me?

Speaker 1 (01:40):
So when you have the tent set up at the
fest falls or the private function or wherever you go,
does that mean that cops or whoever.

Speaker 2 (01:48):
Is there can't then take those drugs off those kids.
So there's no sort of amnesty, there's no kind of
special bubble that protects people. Instead, there's just a Queens
and Police operational guideline to not know conduct person checks
in the vicinity of the service. And this is actually
an operational guideline Queens and Police have had in place
for more than thirty years that managers other tops of

(02:10):
drug and alcohol services too, like needle exchanges or opioid
treatment clinics as well. So those clinics involve engaging with
the same kinds of people, and we just asked that
police don't conduct person checks in the vicinity. Quentin Police
have always been really really supportive of our work and
they understand the benefits of drug checking and so you

(02:30):
know there, I know for queens and police, it doesn't
create any difficulties for them. They support the work that
we do.

Speaker 1 (02:36):
Well and knowing that, Like at the moment, I've certainly
hearing this a lot in the US that people are
dying because they're putting fentanyl into drugs and it's killing people.
So yeah, while there is no safe way to take
to take drugs, there's definitely a dangerous way, and that's
by not knowing what's in it at all, and so
by taking this taking this failsafe out, it just feels

(03:00):
like it's a recipe for people getting killed.

Speaker 2 (03:03):
Look, it definitely is. I mean, in the last week
in New South Wales there's a cluster of ten opioid
overd all across New South Wales, in Sydney and in
northern New South Wales in cocaine that's been contaminated with heroin.
That's not the first time we've seen that happen. We've
seen in Victoria last year three people using cocaine had

(03:24):
a synthetic nitazine in there. And those ninazines are so potent,
Those people overdosed within minutes and all died. So all
around the world we're seeing this, and all across Australia
we're seeing drugs becoming more and more dangerous and more
dangerous contamination in the drugs circulating in Queensland. Now, we've
got no way of knowing that that's happened until people die.

Speaker 1 (03:43):
So what are you going to do?

Speaker 2 (03:44):
Cameron?

Speaker 1 (03:44):
Is there any do you have any grounds of trying
to get this law overturned.

Speaker 2 (03:49):
Look, we're looking at all of olptions, but you know,
we've worked on the advocacy to make this happen for
many years now, and we work really closely with families
who have lost people to overdose and that is the
thing that keeps us going. So we're not going to
stop our advocacy. And now that the government's made this decision,
we're going to make sure that they're held to account
for it and we're going to make sure that every

(04:10):
time that we see some of these harms happening in
our community, will be out there reminding everybody of this
decision that the government snuck through last night.

Speaker 1 (04:18):
Thank you, Cameron, thanks for joining us. Mate. That's cam
Francis the CEO of The Loop Australia Film