After Australia’s first fixed-site pill testing facility opened in Canberra, experts are calling for the program to be expanded to every state across the country.

The site named CanTEST allows attendees using illicit drugs to test them for dangerous substances, as well as to check their potency.

The six-month pilot program is run by Pill Testing Australia and is free to use.

Perth’s National Drug Research Institute director Professor Simon Lenton says pill testing is the way forward when it comes to managing drug use.

“We want to reduce the number of people who have unintended consequences from taking pills or other drugs that have different substances in them to what they think that they are buying,” he says.

“We want people to be informed about the substances they are taking and make a rational decision based on all the information before them. We know that drug checking, not just pill testing but checking of all substances, has been shown to reduce fatalities.”

Dr Lenton says pill testing sites at popular music events have also proved to be effective in saving lives.

“That kind of model [pill testing] has been shown to have a significant impact on the number of people at a festival who need to get taken to a hospital for emergency treatment or drug related overdose,” he says.

“The evidence is pretty clear that drug testing, informing people in a context of a broader discussion about their drug use, really is an affective harm reduction strategy. Criminalising people doesn’t work, and we need to understand that reality.”

Curtin University student Nathaniel Crummer says pill testing sites help to save those who may have purchased potentially lethal drugs.

“It’s only encouraging safety really,” he says.

“I’d feel lucky in that situation as well knowing that I had the opportunity to do that [test the pill],” he says.

Australian National University medical school’s clinical lecturer Dr David Caldicott has been campaigning for pill testing in Australia for more than two decades. He says new permanent pill testing sites such as CanTEST allow researchers to become more aware of exactly what people are consuming.

“For the same duration of time we were campaigning for pill testing in Australia, pill testing has existed in the Netherlands. I hope it becomes nationwide,” he says.

“This [CanTEST] allows us to take a snapshot of not what is being shipped into the country, but at a far more granular level what is being consumed by people. From an analytical perspective we can monitor the market very closely, in a way that hasn’t really been possible in Australia so far.”

Dr Caldicott strongly believes pill testing helps shift the stigma behind drug use and generates a more compassionate conversation rather than the divisive “evil” and “immoral” perspective people have adopted of drug users.

“The real secret sauce about the pill testing program is the creation of engagement between people who use drugs and with peer workers who can sit down and chat to them about the wisdom or otherwise of their choices,” he says.

“We are trying to establish a system that embraces best practice, treats the patron as a potential patient rather than a criminal.”

Both Dr Lenton and Dr Caldicott agree the new fixed-pill testing site is a step in the right direction but it may take some time for them to be implemented across the country.

“The general public has been pitched a story by very powerful entities for a hundred years. To reverse those stories takes a certain amount of effort and it also probably needs the buy-in of governments to help reverse those stories as well,” says Dr Caldicott.

“I think it is inevitable that you are going to see other jurisdictions taking this on and I think the timing is important now,” he says.

“Unfortunately, you’ve got a demographic that for the last two years has been locked up because of COVID and my suspicion for this summer is that it will be a very active party season. So now is the time to be introducing measures that might counter some of the potential harms.”

Under the CanTEST model drugs presented for testing are not confiscated.