What will the drug testing look like?

“We are delighted to be able to work in partnership with Boomtown this year to help reduce drug-related harm on site”, said Measham, the President of The Loop, 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”.

Why Now?

Many times music festivals can be the breeding ground of unsafe, tampered drugs and the people that sell them. Over the years several drug overdoses and deaths have happened at music festivals because of synthetic drug use. So The Loop is aiming to solve this growing problem by making sure BoomTown is a fun and safe environment for attendants. The issue is not so much convincing festival organizers that it is a good idea, but getting police to prize safety over criminalizing people. This allows them to come forward with their drugs without fear of being arrested on their way out of the testing tent.

BoomTown will increase security to stop dangerous drugs from entering the festival grounds to begin. And with drug abuse rates the highest they have been in 10 years, there is no room for lack of safety control when possible. BoomTown will also have a section of its website dedicated to raising awareness of current dangerous drug trends at festivals and further educational information.