We spent a day at the drugs testing station at Shambhala festival in Canada

A young man named Aaron stands under the blistering Friday sun, nervously awaiting a chance to speak with someone at the Harm Reduction tent. As his turn nears, he carefully produces a small square of tinfoil from his pocket and unfolds it to reveal six tabs of what he believes to be high-quality blotter acid.

After sacrificing a miniscule portion of a tab to the tester, Aaron anxiously waits as the results come back. Negative. There's no LSD in the tabs. Further testing reveals them to contain 25i, which is a research chemical that has been known to cause fatalities in extreme cases. Disappointed, but simultaneously relieved to bodyswerve a potentially fatal mistake, he tosses the blotters in the amnesty box without hesitation.

"I wanted to take acid, not this 25i shit", he says, before sauntering off to the festival ground, presumably on the hunt for the real deal.

The explosive rise of festival culture in recent years has brought with it a dramatic spike in drug misuse and overdoses, with the two tragedies reported at HARD Summer two weeks ago bringing the spotlight on dance music culture once more. Forward-thinking festival coordinators have sought to mitigate these tragedies by providing convenient access to drug education and testing. One of the events at the forefront of this movement is Shambhala, which strives to provide the safest possible environment for responsible drug use, though curiously prohibits alcohol on the festival ground.

The Harm Reduction station (a term ubiquitously used to describe the approach of drug education over abstinence) is operated by ANKORS. 14 years ago, the organization expanded from its original goal of halting the spread of HIV/AIDS to provide free and easy drug testing, non-judgmental assistance and clean paraphernalia at festivals like Shambhala, operating independently but in cooperation with the event's medical services.

This openness at an event translates to a considerably more responsible, laidback vibe. This year marked the 18th Shambhala festival and it continues to cement its place as one of the most forward-thinking and progressive events on the North American calendar. Thanks to a festival-wide ban on alcohol and year-round stages that don't require building permits, corporate sponsorship is almost non-existent and government intervention is minimal at best. DJs and promoters encourage everyone to pick up trash, and look out for anyone that might be struggling to cope with all that freedom.

Spanning four days in the stunning Salmo River Ranch in British Columbia, Shambhala boasts a line-up that gives a big nod to the roots of the festival, but also brings in some massive house and techno names, most notably letting certified jolly house dude Claude VonStroke and his label Dirtybird take over the Pagoda stage. Dusky, DJ Harvey, jackLNDN, Jauz, MK, Skrillex and scores more made sure that the festival had good music alongside the openness and transformational vibes.

In the late morning of the first day, a long line of curious drug users sprawls out and around a large black tent that's simply marked 'Harm Reduction'. All are waiting for a turn to find out if the stuff in their baggies is actually the primo gear their dealers swear by. One by one, people are asked what substance they want to test and then directed to a testing booth within the privacy of the tent. Test after test comes back with strange, sometimes baffling results.

Aussies Andrew and Max, 23 and 24, proudly place their gram bags of coke on the table, eager to find out if they got what they paid for. A tester asks for a small piece to be broken up into three piles and separated onto notecards, then three separate tests are conducted by mixing the samples with different reactive chemicals in separate glass vials. After the reactions occur, the tester brings the samples into the light to compare the colors of the chemicals in their vials against charts that show different cutting agents and purity ranges. The Aussie boys are crushed to find out that their coke is heavily stepped on, with their test returning a light amber shade that indicates low-medium purity.

"Coke is about $400 a gram in Australia, so even though the shit isn't pure, I don't feel like we got ripped off," Jake says.

The most controversial and adulterated drug at a lot of North American festivals is Molly, often sold as a capsule form of MDMA. Violet, 23, has doubts about the purity of hers due to its black colour. The tester explains that the drug's hue has little to do with the purity or composition and almost exclusively indicates nothing more than the process by which it was made.

The initial test results reveal that the the substance is mostly MDMA, however a second test finds the pills to also contain TMA-6, a dangerous amphetamine analog. Although her Molly isn't completely pure, Violet doesn't want to put it all to waste. For several minutes the testers inform her of the various risks surrounding TMA-6, at which point she thanks them for their time and leaves, drugs intact.

"My mom told me to be safe," says Violet, "so I came to Shambhala."

Due to demand for the initiatives, harm reduction and medical attention services at Shambhala are separated in an effort to make drug testing easily accessible to all. ANKORS worker, Chloe Sage, explains that Harm Reduction is as much about education as it is prevention, with half of the booth dedicated to information pamphlets on every drug and drug combination imaginable. She also teaches drug and sex education to middle schoolers, and sees her work as an alternative to the failing approach at drug education taught by initiatives like Drug Abuse Resistance Education.

25-year-old Canadian Julia comes in to test a vial of acid that she bought locally. After accidentally dropping a larger sample than intended onto the testing dish, the tester is quick to return a positive test result. Though the exact purity can't be accounted for, Julia is excited that she hasn't been duped into poisoning herself with 25i or another common acid counterfeit. "Even though I've already taken a bunch of this stuff, I'm really happy that I finally got it tested" she says.

Many in the industry are demanding that on-site harm reduction services like these become standard at festivals and clubs. While the bigger raves are struggling navigate the legal minefield that comes with offering these services to a oung audience, some smaller events, like Shambhala and California's Lightning In A Bottle, are embracing a full-scale harm reduction program that puts them at the cutting edge of progressive recreational drug policy.

Over 3,500 tests are conducted over five days, with the most common drugs being MDMA, ketamine and acid. Unlike the tragic events of Hard Summer, and Calgary's Chasing Summer (which reported 17 overdoses), not a single casualty was reported at Shambhala this year, and there can be little doubt that we owe that to a culture of openness and education towards drug use.