Pill testing is to be introduced at Gold Coast Schoolies schools.
Queensland is one of only three jurisdictions in the country to have legalised pill testing and its Labor-led state government is hoping to help school leavers celebrate safely.
Health Minister Shannon Fentiman said the end-of-year event would see free, confidential pill testing at a cost of $80,000.
“There is no safe way to consume illicit drugs,” he said Thursday during the budget estimates.
“But if people are determined to take these substances and we have the technology available to help them know what they contain, why wouldn’t we offer them to people?”
The Schoolies service was offered later national data showed that women aged 18 to 24 were using illicit drugs at the same rate as young men for the first time since records began.
“We want everyone attending Schoolies to stay safe and enjoy the celebrations with their friends,” Ms Fentiman said.
“Without these services, we are missing the opportunity to connect young people with health professionals.”
Pill testing of schoolchildren on the Gold Coast is to be introduced this year as new data shows young women and men were using drugs at the same rate
The National Drug Strategy Household Survey also showed that more than a third of young women had used an illicit drug in the past 12 months – an increase of 27 per cent in five years.
Queensland’s first pill-testing service was launched at the Rabbits Eat Lettuce festival over the Easter weekend, where 250 people were tested for the drugs.
Calls for standardised pill-testing programmes at festivals increased following the deaths of Dassarn Tarbutt, 24, and Ebony Greening, 22, at the 2019 edition of the festival.
Queensland, ACT and Victoria are the only Australian jurisdictions that have legalised pill testing.
Queensland has committed $1 million over two years to fund pill testing, with fixed sites set up in Brisbane and the Gold Coast.
More than half of people who brought their medications to the Brisbane clinic decided to dispose of them on site.
Health Minister Shannon Fentiman said the free, confidential pill testing would cost $80,000, but the opposition said it would abandon the plan if Labor lost the state election.
But the state opposition said it would abandon the plan if it won the October election.
“The LNP does not support Queensland Labor’s lenient stance on drugs,” said deputy leader Jarrod Bleijie.
The state government also unveiled $1.73 billion for cancer care services as part of a 10-year strategy.
Budget estimates data showed that ambulance traffic had improved and less than half of patients remained on stretchers in hospitals for more than 30 minutes.
This marked an improvement on the previous quarter but Ms Fentiman said more needed to be done and highlighted that more than 1,000 long-stay patients a night were filling up beds because they could not be relocated to aged care or disability facilities.