'Deadly' substances found by landmark Australian pill testing operation

Australia's landmark pill testing trial at the Canberra leg of Groovin' The Moo festival found 'deadly' substances in two samples, one of the experts has said.

Matt Noffs, a member of the STA-SAFE group who ran the operation, tweeted the alarming stat along with figures stating there were 128 participants and 85 samples tested.

"50 per cent was 'other' (lactose, sweetener, paint), 50 per cent was pure MDMA," he wrote.

"Two of of the samples were deadly. So, harm reduced. We did it."

Fellow STA-SAFE member Dr David Caldicott told Music Feeds the group's instruments identified dangerous N-Ethylpentylone in one of the samples.

“The beauty of what we were doing, was that within minutes — literally three minutes — the commander of health at the venue and also the Chief Health Officer were advised,” he told the website.

“Immediate realtime data for healthcare responders, so it just worked perfectly.”

Dr Caldicott said five festival-goers decided to destroy their pills and “a quarter to a third” told testers they would no longer be taking them.

“Probably, we altered the way that the majority of people were going to take their substances, in a manner that rendered them far less likely to end up in hospital"

He told Music Feeds the group had already had a lot of interest, "so I expect we might be busy over the next couple of years."

Scott Carbines is Mixmag's Australian Digital Content Editor, follow him on Twitter