Let Concert Goers Take Drugs

[mushroom25]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-south-west-wales-37456638

is it more important for event organisers and their guests to respect the law, or for organisers to ensure concert goers are safe when the law is inevitably stretched? and, if an inevitability of lawbreaking is to be tolerated, at what level of offence should the line be drawn?

[237SJ]

I think that would be very hard to police. If concert goers are allowed to take drugs the security staff or whoever is going test them would find themselves being sued if someone was taken ill from a bad batch that had had the all clear

[Mamyalynne]

I hope the event went well, believe it was rather wet out there at Singleton Park.


This issue is always a difficult one, knowing where to draw the boundaries is hard.

[whiskeryron]

What a load of c.r.a.p. People attending concerts if suspect should be tested for drugs & if found to be positive refused admission. End of.

[andy-hughes]

What an utterly bizarre notion!

Firstly, because it makes the laughable assumption that concert-goers live and act in a separate universe from the rest of us

Therefore, when they leave their concert and walk or drive home under the influence of their ‘tested’ drugs, when the crash their cars, or walk under buses, that will simply be for our wider society to sort out.

Also, what constitutes ‘safe’ drugs’? The effect of any drug is based entirely on the body chemistry and the experience of the person consuming it.

I take 10 mg of Citalopram a day. If I took 20mg, I would understand and be able to deal with the temporary effects. If my wife took 20 mg of the drug, she would be in bed for three days while the effects wore off.

My son in law likes a beer. He can drink four pints in an evening, and be perfectly social and lucid. I am tee-total, if I drank more than two pints I would be vomiting as a prelude to unconsciousness.

And as a final point, how long does the testing procedure take? Who pays for it?

This is PC right-on barminess and as usual it has not been thought through for a single moment.

[ummmm]

Tested drugs...I have no problem with that.

[woofgang]

so the organisation who stated this is of course totally neutral on the subject and not prejudiced at all then?

[RATTER15]

I remember 12 years ago at the Stonehenge Summer Solstice, everybody and his wife was smoking weed even while stood next to the police, there was very clearly a very large blind eye being turned, nobody made any attempt to conceal what they were smoking, including myself.

It really made a mockery of the police and I imagine the police found it very difficult to be in that position.

[andy-hughes]

Using the charity’s logic – that some people at concerts will ‘inevitably take drugs …’ – should we start testing every person with car keys leaving a UK pub or bar, on the premise that some people in pubs and bars ‘inevitably drink and drive …’?

[ummmm]

Ratter...you think that's bad. At Glastonbury people were openly snorting coke and the police just walked on by.

[ToraToraTora]

I prefer to snort lemonade myself.

[andy-hughes]

ummmm - //Ratter...you think that's bad. At Glastonbury people were openly snorting coke and the police just walked on by. //

I think the police are mindful of a useful adage – pick your battles.

I don’t imagine a couple of police officers, with back-up unable to reach them, are going to attempt to make a drugs arrest at a festival, it’s simply not a workable solution.

Yes the law must be upheld, but if by upholding one law, you are facilitating the breaking of another one – public order, and seriously considerable consequences to innocent people – then you have to turn the proverbial blind eye.

[mikey4444]

I have a zero tolerance of drugs, although I know that isn't universally popular here in AB. This sounds to me like the Police are just giving up.

[Gromit]

People going to this festival will also drink alcohol, which will have a very similar effect. If we were aware beforehand that some bottles of beer were dangerously poisonous, then it would go without saying that people would welcome a simple safety test of the beer, to make sure it didn't kill anyone.
That is exactly what is being proposed here. Products can be tested to make sure of their authenticity and safety.
Whether one drug is legal and another isn't is beside the point. It is a public safety concern and if a simple test makes the public safer, of course it should be done.

[jno]

sounds like a sensible idea. Nobody takes drugs in the hope that they're contaminated. Whether concertgoers would trust the authorities to leave them alone while they took their drugs to be tested, I don't know.