The Groovin the Moo music festival in Canberra will again be without pill-testing after prohibitively expensive insurance premiums forced the service to be scrapped.
The festival was the first in the country to trial free pill-testing in 2018, and returned to the festival in 2019, with doctors hailing the service a success.
Pill Testing Australia lead clinician and emergency medicine physician David Caldicott said he was shocked when he heard the figure insurance companies had quoted in order for the harm-minimisation initiative to resume this year, amounting to an increase of 2,200 per cent.
