This week, someone leaked an early draft of the coroner's report into drug-related festival deaths. Below, you can read the main points of what the coroner is recommending. As a parent whose only son didn't come home from a festival, I totally support these recommendations.
Whoever leaked the report seems to have got what they wanted - the NSW premier has already come out saying she will ignore those recommendations. I'm saddened to think that Gladys Berejiklian has this attitude.
As many of you know, I went to Sydney to the coronial inquest, I met the parents, and what I saw was heartache beyond measure.
When I looked at those parents, I saw myself and here we are having the same discussion. And unfortunately, young people will die if we don't do anything about it.
The coroner went to great lengths to look at the evidence, and made the following recommendations:
- A NSW Drug Summit that would consider pill testing, decriminalising personal use of drugs, expanded regulation of currently illicit drugs, and 'redefining illicit drugs as primarily a health and social issue'
- Pill testing services
- Early warning systems
- Removing drug detection dog operations from festivals
- More limits on strip searches
- Better safety guidelines and features at festivals like chill-out spaces, and improved medical emergency procedures
- Peer-delivered safety services like DanceWize
- Improved education programs for young people
The coroner's list of recommendations is a good place to start. We need to provide something now. The festival season is starting and it scares me to no end thinking some parent would have to feel this ever ending heartache of losing a loved one who will never come back.
Soon, I will be in touch with a special request to help me get to Sydney, alongside the families involved in the inquest, for the coroner's report on November 8. We have a lot of work to do, and I am so grateful to have all 124,708 of you in my corner.
Never giving up, and always for Daniel,
Adriana.