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Boomtown to offer free drug testing

By Andy Malt | Published on Monday 3 July 2017

The Boomtown festival has announced that it will offer on-site drug testing at this year’s event. The service will be provided by The Loop, which launched a similar programme at last year’s Secret Garden Party.

Last month, The Loop’s founder Fiona Measham said that she expected the service to be in operation at around ten festivals this summer – up from two last year. This includes a number of Festival Republic-owned events.

“We are delighted to be able to work in partnership with Boomtown this year to help reduce drug-related harm on site”, said Measham in a statement. “We will be providing our free, anonymous, drug safety testing – MAST – for the first time at Boomtown this year and hope that this will help inform all services on site, as well as festival-goers, who may encounter substances of concern”.

The testing service allows festivalgoers to test a small amount of their drugs to find out what they’ve actually bought before they put it in their bodies. Clearly a valuable service, the issue is not so much convincing festival organisers that it is a good idea, but rather getting police to prize safety over criminalising people, allowing them to come forward with their drugs without fear of being arrested on their way out of the testing tent.

To that end, Boomtown has agreed to tighter security elsewhere on the site in order to try to prevent drugs reaching the event in the first place. The festival will also have a section of its website dedicated to raising awareness of current dangerous drug trends at festivals and further educational information.

The sold out event will take place on 10-13 Aug.