Music festival ODs lead to questions of legalization, regulation of ‘party drugs’

The rash of suspected drug-overdose deaths at music festivals in Canada this summer has public health experts scrambling for solutions.

British Columbia's chief health officer caused a ripple this week by musing that maybe Canada should look at an experiment in New Zealand that essentially legalized so-called party drugs in hopes regulation would make the events a safer space for those using drugs.

“If we’re prepared to be very pragmatic and if we’re prepared to accept that we can’t stop people taking drugs, and if we’re prepared to try and go as far as we can to stop the unwanted side effects and the occasional tragic death from a drug, that would be one way of doing it," Dr. Perry Kendall said in an interview with Yahoo Canada News.

“If we’re not prepared to do that then I think the best we can do is what we’re doing now: trying to educate users that if despite our best advice you’re going to use drugs, how to use them in less dangerous ways.”

Both these approaches are problematic in today's Canada – more about that later – but the deaths a week ago, at the the VELD electronic dance music (EDM) event in Toronto and at Boonstock in Penticton, B.C., ought to have refocused the discussion.

People familiar with the live music scene say it's tough to get the message out to hard-partying festival-goers. This is especially the case at increasingly mainstream EDM events, which often have high-profile corporate sponsorships and don't like to acknowledge the open drug use that takes place.

Drugs and music have worked hand-in-hand for at least the last 100 years. Whether it's pot at Roaring Twenties jazz clubs, psychedelics at rock concerts in the 1960s or coke at '70s discos, drugs have long been connected to popular music.

The growth of the rave scene spurred the popularity of designer drugs such as ecstasy, and new combinations are being offered all the time. It's not about mellowing out at some folk festival, it's about amping up the dance-party vibe.

[ Related: After Boonstock, 80 end up in B.C. hospital as music festival safety questioned ]

Overdoses (ODs) aren't uncommon, but the quick succession of them this summer made news:

Toronto police said two people died and more than a dozen fell ill after taking party drugs at VELD during the August long weekend. The Globe and Mail reported police were analyzing two kinds of pills and awaiting toxicology reports on a 22-year-old man and a 20-year-old woman who died.

That same weekend a young Alberta woman died of a suspected drug overdose at the Boonstock Music Festival, and as many as 90 people were taken to hospitals mainly because of drug and alcohol consumption, CBC News reported.

A 21-year-old Alberta man also died at the Pemberton Music Festival north of Vancouver in July after being found unresponsive in his tent on the festival site. The B.C. Coroners Service said it is still awaiting toxicology on him, as well as for the woman who died at Boonstock.

RCMP spokesmen have said little, telling Yahoo Canada News the investigation into the Boonstock incidents is still open and have refused to discuss the protocol for policing at such large events. The Mounties had a large presence at Boonstock and said they had to call in more officers because of problems with event security.

Kendall said drugs, booze, a lack of readily available water at Boonstock's beachfront venue and temperatures in the high 30s (nearly 40C range) created a perfect storm for adverse drug reactions.

“When they all happen together they create challenges and that’s when you see the tragedies coming out," Kendall said.

The stimulant MDMA, which is the main ingredient in a lot of party drugs, raises the heart rate and impairs the body's ability to regulate its temperature.

"So if you’re dancing and it’s really, really hot, you can relatively easily increase your body temperature to the point where it's like shutting up an infant in a closed car on a hot day.

"Your body temperature goes up to the point where you can’t function anymore and cells in your brain and your body organs are shutting down.”

One of the victims at VELD was spotted dancing in front of one of the stages before she collapsed.

[ Related: Veld Music Festival deaths: Toronto police focus on 'party drugs' ]

Kendall said the Boonstock cases are probably an aberration and overdoses at music events don't appear to be spiking.

“I don’t think it is a huge crisis. It’s something to be concerned about and it can happen with alcohol as well as illicit drugs.”

That's true. Huffington Post reports some two dozen people were taken to hospitals for "alcohol-related" issues and illnesses while attending a concert near Boston last month featuring country star Keith Urban.

Nevertheless, Kendall and others are interested in reducing the risk of ODs at big music events.

The problem is that drug use in these settings, or anywhere for that matter, still straddles the divide between criminality and public health.

New Zealand tried to bridge that gap in July 2013 by passing legislation that would bring party drugs and herbal highs into the open for regulation. The Psychoactive Substances Act allowed the licensed sale of party drugs if testing proved them safe to use. Only one of 120 MPs in that country's Parliament voted against it.

A number of drugs received licences, but the experiment was abruptly cancelled last May. Large numbers of adverse reactions to the newly sanctioned "legal highs" that sent users to hospitals, along with evidence some were addictive, triggered a public backlash. A ban on animal testing hampered efforts to improve safety.

The New Zealand government revoked the interim licences it had handed out and warned possessing the previously approved drugs now would result in fines, and the possibility of jail for distributors in what had been, according to the New Zealand Herald, a $140-million business.

While the New Zealand experiment appears to have failed, Kendall said the idea could still have merit if it could be shown to reduce the risks associated with taking the drugs by ensuring the dosages and ingredients are known.

“A lot of people think it’s common sense; the basics are common sense," he said.

“Anything that can make drug use safer is something we are interested in," Dr. Jane Buxton, harm reduction lead at the B.C. Centre for Disease Control, agreed.

Kendall admitted that while the B.C. government is committed to harm reduction, there's no appetite in Ottawa for effectively decriminalizing party drugs, just as the federal government is resisting the idea when it comes to marijuana.

That leaves harm-reduction advocates to fall back mostly on public-awareness campaigns and education, which only have limited effectiveness.

[ Related: Squamish Music Festival goers warned to watch for unsafe party drugs ]

“We can say 'do not take drugs' but people are still going to be looking for that high when they are attending that festival, not everybody but there are some," Buxton said in an interview.

Buxton said the centre's message has been to tell people to not take drugs, but if they do, make sure they're not alone, ask for help if they're having problems and to not take too much, mix them,or drink booze with them.

Testing kits, similar to what police use to quickly test seized drugs, are available, allowing users to determine what's in the pills they just bought. But, their effectiveness is limited.

“They may offer some benefit in that they can tell whether some substance is or isn’t present in the pills you're taking," Kendall said.

"They can’t tell you the purity or the dosage and they can’t necessarily tell you whether there’s other stuff in there if the drug kits don’t test for it.”

But while event organizers usually have some level of medical aid available, they're often not keen to have proactive harm-reduction workers on their sites.

“A lot of time it’s hard for us to get into the bigger festivals," said Lori Kufner, co-ordinator of TRIP! (aka The Toronto Raver Information Project), a Toronto-based harm-reduction group founded in 1995 by a group of concerned ravers.

“A lot of the festivals don’t want to bring the fact that people do drugs to the forefront, sort of trying to hide the fact that people are doing drugs at their events. So they don’t want us necessarily being their with our information cards and testing kits and what not.”

Kufner said promoters worry having groups like TRIP! on site would be seen as tacit approval of drug use, a form of condoning that activity at such events. Promoters also worry they're vulnerable to being charged with permitting drug use, though Kufner said in her experience that hasn't happened.

Eli Klein, a Toronto music promoter and 20-year veteran of the club scene, said the mainstreaming of EDM has raised the stakes for organizers.

Between events attracting a few hundred people to a basement somewhere or a vacant warehouse, EDM has grown to pull in tens of thousands.

Klein, who handles much smaller events, said attendance at Digital Dreams on Toronto's waterfront last June, doubled to about 50,000 in two years. VELD, held at a suburban Downsview industrial park, drew about 30,000 people.

Klein also said most events try to prevent illicit drugs from slipping through, though the quality of the screening can vary.

“But you can’t catch everything, and there are going to be guys there whose entire M.O. is to sneak drugs into the festival and then sell them en masse."

Klein, who's 34 and the father of two young children, said the scene also seems to have changed since he was young. There's a herd mentality ranging from what to wear to what drugs to take.

People seem to see it as a badge of honour to party to the edge of oblivion.

“The consumption culture is different. There’s this whole thing of 'let’s get as f---ed up as possible.'

“A lot of what I’m seeing is just a lack of education. It boggles my mind that a kid would take 10 pills and that anyone would be shocked that that person overdoses.”

Kufner said her group has also noticed festival-goers mixing drugs, perhaps unaware of the potential for dangerous interactions. It also makes overdoses harder for paramedics to treat.

Kufner said TRIP! has countered resistance from festival organizers by training people attending events to be peer educators. They can intervene if they see someone in apparent distress but who's reluctant to seek medical help.

"They might not want to talk to security or even paramedics if they think they’re going to get kicked out or get in trouble or something."

Whether it's public-health officials or people who know the music scene, there's agreement: sensible, non-judgmental solutions are needed to reduce the risk of drug deaths at festivals. Kendall said this is because keeping drugs out seems unrealistic.

“That’s pretty difficult, I think, short of giving everybody a body-cavity search," he said.

"If you can’t keep illicit drugs out of jails, I’m not sure how you’re ever going to keep them out of festivals.”