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AAP
AAP
Politics
Callum Godde

Victoria won't follow Qld on pill-testing site trial

Victoria's premier is refusing to follow Queensland's move to roll out pill testing.

The Queensland government has flagged plans to run at least one drug-checking trial site within six months after tabling legislation to decriminalise illicit drug possession.

Other states and territories have been urged by the nation's peak doctors' bodies to follow suit but Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews has categorically shut down the idea.

"The government is not introducing a pill-testing trial. Queensland can do that if they choose to, we aren't," Mr Andrews told reporters on Tuesday.

Victoria and NSW have resisted pill-testing sites despite them being recommended by multiple coronial inquests into drug-related festival deaths.

The ACT became the first jurisdiction to sanction a fixed pill-testing site last year following previous trials.

Royal Australian College of General Practitioners president Nicole Higgins said people will continue to take illicit drugs despite repeated warnings and governments cannot pretend otherwise.

"Every time festival season comes around in particular, we learn of young people with their whole lives ahead of them dropping dead from overdoses," Dr Higgins said in a statement on Monday.

"It doesn't need to be this way; we can look at what has worked overseas and in the ACT and save lives."

Mr Andrews argued pill testing sends a dangerous message to users.

"I don't think you can take these drugs at any level and be safe," he said.

"Pill testing can often give people a sense that it is safe to take those drugs. The pharmacology, the evidence, is very, very clear."

The Andrews Labor government was opposed to setting up a supervised injecting room but later relented to a trial after almost 40 heroin-related deaths on the streets of Melbourne suburb Richmond.

Mr Andrews said the controversial North Richmond facility has saved countless lives, as his government waits on the completion of a drawn-out report into the recommended location of a second site in Melbourne's CBD.

"There have been thousands of overdoses, not one person has died in that injecting facility. That process has worked," he said.

Mr Andrews denied there was an equivalence between the two issues and wouldn't be drawn on whether further expert advice could ultimately sway the government.

The Victorian Greens have questioned when the premier will "stop sticking his head in the sand and realise the war on drugs has failed".

"There is 20 years of evidence from the UK, Europe and North America, and two successful trials in Canberra that clearly shows pill testing protects young people," the party's drug harm reduction spokesperson Aiv Puglielli said in a statement to AAP.

"Daniel Andrews is the last remaining barrier to pill testing in the state of Victoria."

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