The Victorian Government will launch the first of 10 pill testing sites at a popular music festival over New Year’s Eve.

Pill testing machines will be available at the Beyond the Valley festival, a four-day event held on the Barunah Plains near Hesse, west of Geelong.

The festival is expected to attract around 35,000 people, which would make it the biggest event in Australia to ever feature pill testing sites.

Premier Jacinta Allan said it would provide a conviction-free zone for Victorians to control their drugs safely.

“We know this harm reduction strategy works, it works to save lives,” Allan said.

“We’re not going to bury our heads in the sand, we recognize… that if a young person is at a festival with a pill in their hand, they’re going to use it.”

Beyond the Valley is the first of five festivals to host pill testing this summer, with a further five to be announced for summer 2025/26.

Minister for Mental Health Ingrid Stitt said the introduction of pill testing trials came at a particularly crucial time.

“We know the pharmaceutical market is becoming more volatile,” Stitt said.

“We saw last summer some of the really negative effects of people taking drugs when they didn’t know what was in them.”

Eight people were left in a critical condition after a suspected drug overdose at a Melbourne rave in January.

In July, the Department of Health issued community warnings after a dangerous synthetic opioid, nitazene, was found mixed with cocaine in Victoria.

Testing to target MDMA purity issues

The pill testing sites will be run in partnership with The Loop Australia, a not-for-profit organization that is also behind drug control services in Queensland.

The Loop Australia CEO Cameron Francis said the service uses gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GCMS) machines to detect virtually any substance.

“Pills, powders, liquids — we can identify and quantify almost anything that comes up,” Francis said.

Festival goers will be able to see drug test results within minutes.

Mr Francis said of particular concern was the strength of MDMA (ecstasy) pills available to Victorians.

“MDMA purity is our biggest concern heading into the summer,” he said.

A report by the Parliamentary Budget Office found that MDMA played a contributing role in 50 fatal drug overdoses in Victoria from 2018/19 to 2021/22.

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