NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian remains wilfully ignorant of all evidence and advice, as she doubles down on her strong stance against pill testing.
Following leaked advice from a NSW coroner yesterday that recommended pill testing as a method to reduce drug-induced deaths at music festivals, Berejiklian is remaining firm in her anti pill testing stance.
“We will not go down that path because we feel very strongly that it sends a wrong message,” she told ABC News.
“It actually gives people a false sense of security because how one person reacts to a drug is very different to another person reacting and unfortunately we have seen people lose their lives by taking what is a pure substance, a pure drug.”
“What pill testing does is pick up on irregularities, however pill testing doesn’t protect people from the actual substance itself and that’s what concerns us as a Government.”
Greens MP Cate Faehrmann told The Guardian yesterday that the leaked findings from coroner Harriet Grahame should help sway Berejiklian and the state government’s mind, but it doesn’t look like that’s the case.
“The premier can’t hide from the evidence,” she said, a day before the premier would hide from the evidence.
“If the coroner hands down findings in relation to pill testing and reducing police presence, it is because that will save lives.”
“When those recommendations see the light of day, I urge the premier to adopt those recommendations, listen to the evidence and throw out the politics on this issue.”
On top of all this, the NSW government will today introduce legislation to reinstate the highly controversial and contested licensing scheme for music festivals, which was initially disallowed last month after a vote in the upper house.
