ABOUT: Pill Testing at Victoria's Pride Street Party
Victorian Pill Testing Service (VPTS)
Original announcement from the Premier - Pill Testing Coming To Victoria’s Pride Street Party | Premier
The Victorian Government’s Pill Testing Service will be on-site at Victoria’s Pride Street Party to provide festival-goers with life-saving drug checking and harm reduction advice.
Here's some info:
In October 2024, the Victorian Government passed legislation providing the legal framework for mobile and fixed site drug checking services for the delivery of an 18-month pill testing service implementation trial.
The trial includes a fixed site in metropolitan Melbourne and a mobile service at various music festival sites delivered over 18 months. The trial will be evaluated, testing different models of delivery to continuously improve service delivery and will provide the information necessary to determine the service model, location and funding for a permanent service.
More information
If you have any questions about the service, please email harmreduction(at)health.vic.gov.au and info(at)vicpilltesting.org.au or visit www.vicpilltesting.org.au to find out more about the Victorian Pill Testing Service.
The Victorian Pill Testing Service is a free, legal and confidential service that analyses the contents of drugs and provides harm reduction advice to help people make safer, more informed choices. People accessing the service won’t need to show ID or answer any questions that they don’t want to answer.
The equipment can test the makeup of most pills, capsules, powders, crystals or liquids. It can identify harmful substances, including dangerous synthetic opioids, like fentanyl and nitazenes.
The service is staffed by scientists who analyse samples, and trained peer workers and harm reduction experts who provide tailored information and support. It is a safe space for people to ask questions and get help without judgement.
The Victorian Pill Testing Service is funded by the Department of Health to cover staffing and analysis costs and is operated by a consortium of trusted and experienced harm reduction and healthcare organisations – the Youth Support and Advocacy Service (YSAS), The Loop Australia, Harm Reduction Victoria (who run Victoria’s DanceWize program), with support from Youth Projects, Melbourne Health, and Metabolomics Australia (University of Melbourne).
Victoria's pill testing trial started during the 2024-25 music festival season with a mobile service. The service supported more than 1500 people across 5 events and tested close to 1,400 samples - making it the largest pill testing trial in the country.
The service’s focus on harm reduction is working. For 65 per cent of service users, it was the first time they had ever spoken to a health professional about drug and alcohol safety. Almost one in three people said they would take a smaller amount after having this conversation.
Notifications on substances of concern were issued by the service at events so festival goers could make safer, informed decisions. Two statewide drug alerts/advisories were also issued to the public following the detection of highly potent and unexpected substances with unpredictable effects.
Arrival. When a patron visits the service our team will greet them, explain the drug checking process and advise on wait times to drop off their sample(s) off for testing. They may be required to queue to drop off their sample(s) depending on the demand on the service at the time.
Drop Off. The patron provides their sample(s) to a scientist. The sample is photographed and labelled with a unique ID and this ID is provided to the patron.
- For multi day events: The sample is then transferred to an onsite laboratory where it is analysed by a team of scientists and results are recorded. The service user is advised of wait times and then returns at a later time to collect their results. While wait times can sometimes be relatively short, service users can return at any point after their results are ready, including the following day.
- For single day events: The sample is tested while service users wait.
Results. Patrons can have a confidential chat with a harm reduction worker who will give them their results along with harm reduction advice, with the option for patrons to safely dispose of any substances if they want to.
Watch this video to understand how the service works and what the infrastructure looks like: Victoria’s Pill Testing Service: How does it work?
Yes - using the VPTS is completely legal. Patrons can’t be arrested or charged for using it. The legal protections only apply within the VPTS area and patrons must be carrying a non-traffickable amount of drugs within the service area. The VPTS only requires approximately 10mg or about the size of a matchstick head. The usual laws around possession, use, and supply of drugs still applies outside the service.
Victoria Police are committed to ensuring patrons are safe to access the service.
The VPTS will use the following equipment to test substances at events:
- FTIR Instruments: that can identify the major chemical compounds of the sample being tested
- GC-MS Instruments: that can detect compounds that are at lower concentrations and identify high dosage MDMA pills
- Immunoassay Testing Strips: that can detect specific drugs at very low levels of the sample
- Reagent Tests: that can test samples that are otherwise difficult to measure
