In an ideal world young people wouldn't use illicit drugs at all, but since they do it's important to keep them safe from "dangerous black market" products while out at music festivals and events, the Drug Foundation's Ross Bell says.
Mr Bell talked to TVNZ1's Breakfast today about a need for clarification on New Zealand law so that volunteers can implement drug testing at music events.
Mr Bell spoke out after three concert-goers were taken to hospital in a critical condition on Friday night after attending music festival Listen In in Auckland.
The incident came just three weeks after NZ First made clear it doesn't support a Labour proposal to legalise drug quality testing at music events.
But Mr Bell said the test was only one part of it. Having young people visit the sites at events could open up a conversation about their drug use.
"The whole point is to test someone's drugs, let them know what's in it, but importantly to have that conversation with them around if they're going to choose to use drugs, how to reduce some of the risk."
Drug testing at Friday night's event "would've gone a long way to keeping people safe", he said.
"We're lucky that these young people were only hospitalised, the experience from Australia is that things can be much worse than that."
Mr Bell drew comparisons to drug testing at events in Australia following several deaths from drug use. He said when people found the drug they intended to consume contained other substances, more than half chose not not to consume it.
"What we have right now is a really dangerous black market where we have a lot of new chemcicals that are being cooked up, quite dangerous chemicals, that are being sold as something else."
He also said there were dangerously high potency levels on the black market, for example one MDMA pill could be equal to three or four doses in one pill form.
"The thing around providing these kinds of services at festivals is recognising that yes we'd rather you not to drugs, but you are going to make that decision and we don't want you to die, we don't want to end up in hospital," Mr Bell said.
But when asked if police would swoop on those who used the drug testing services, Mr Bell said there had been conversations with police who were being pragmatic about managing the issue.
"Our law was passed in 1975 so there's nothing in the law that says you can't have these things at festivals. But there's enough grey language in the law to make festival owners quite nervous.
"In terms of the law change, we need that law clarified so that all those festivals that want these services can provide these services without fear of losing their resource consent or their other licenses to operate."
While they're not as advanced as a lab machine, the drug tests are able to test what's in the substance.
"Yes we want to stop drugs getting in there, but people will still make decisions we may not agree with and are there things we can do to keep them safe?"
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