DRUG TEST DEPARTMENT

Drug testing at Glastonbury? Sounds like an ideal job if not a little
risky, eh? However, now the Green Party has introduced the Ecstasy Kit to
Britain you needn't dabble with the unknown. Special report by Ralph Moore
and Tommy Udo.

Ecstasy Testing Kits (a chemical test to detect the presence of MDMA and
its cousins MDA and MDEA in ecstasy tablats) are now being sold in the UK
by the Green party.

The kits consist of a chemical reagent that determines the presence of MDMA
(Ecstasy) or amphetamine. In other words, if you buy an E the kit can tell
you, to a certain extent, what it's likely to do to you.

A good thing, you'd think? Not so, according to government- appointed drugs
tsar Keith Halliwell and his media cronies. They would obviously prefer
that you didn't take any E at all and will not broach any argument along
the lines of, 'the kids are gonna take it anyway so at least it's a good
idea that they might have some warning as to its effects'. In short, they
want the kits banned.

NME used the kits to test a variety of pills circulating around this year's
Glastonbury Festival. Taking a scraping from a pill stamped with a Nike
tick, the kit turned a pale yellow hue which indicated that no MDMA was
present at all. The second - a 'Mitsubishi' - turned purple, a sign that
MDMA was present. A second 'Nike' pill turned orangey-brown, suggesting
that it was amphetamine-based. Two other unmarked plus also turned an
orange-tinged colour. A test on a line of pure MDMA powder confirmed that
the kit was working correctly: the powder congealed with the liquid and
immediately turned a deep purple-black. Our tests proved, then, that four
of the five pills teeted at Glastonbury were speed rather than MDMA-based.

In Amsterdam a place known for is lenient policy towards drug use, kits
have been widely available for sometime. With the growth of the rave scene,
drug agencies such as the city's Safe House Project send workers to raves
and parties in the city and set up tables testing pills sold as ecstasy,
giving clubbers advice on what they contain and the risks involved.

Green Party spokesman Shane Collins explained their policy: "We saw what
was happening in Holland with the testing kits and thought it was a good
idea to let people get information. Also, because in Holland people knew
what they were buying, a lot of the really duff stuff started turning up
here. The main thing we're trying to get across is that people can make
informed choices. Information is power and we really want to empower people."

Release, the UK-based drugs advisory and campaigning body set up in the
late-60's to provide legal help to people arrested for possession as well
as providing medical advice to users, has had a tent at Glastonbury since
the festival's inception. Their spokesman Ciaran O'HYagan gave a cautious
welcome to the E-testing kits.

"I'd never been too sure about the whole E-testing argument but a recent
survey into dance culture found that 77 per cent of people said they wanted
pill-testing. Drug services up and down the country should be pushing for it.

"People are taking drugs! So let's make sure they're taking the right
drugs. That might sound a bit strange because people die from Ecstasy but
the numbers of people who die from Ecstasy am very small - we've got to
bear that in mind."

At the moment Release can only carry out drug tests at illegal raves and
parties because of the 1997 Public Entertainment Licenoes (Drug Misuse)
Act, a Private Member's Bill introduced by then Tory MP Barry Legg. Put
simply, any club where there is, in the view of the police. 'a drug
problem' is liable to have its licence revoked immediately by the local
authority.

"I'm sure there are club owners who would like to have us in," said
O'Hagan. "But at the moment it isn't possible."

A spokesman for the Metropolitan Police confirmed that, while the testing
kits were not illegal, anyone who tested a pill for a friend and gave it
back to them would technically be supplying them with a Class A drug and
could receive a jail sentence.

Meanwhile, at this year's Glastonbury. Avon & Somerset police made their
most concerted effort yet to wipe out drug use. They even had their own
computer-aided kit on site in an attempt to turn nound prosecutions more
quickly. By Friday evening of the festival they had arrested 60 people for
possession, as opposed to 30 in the same time last year. Five weeks before
the festival, the police made a sweep of known dealers in the area and
arrested over 250 people, seizing drugs with a street value of over
A31million.

Inspector Keith Jones was dismissive of the high street kits, saying, "We'd
obviously warn against taking drugs in the first place. There's no quality
control in the production of drugs and to have a machine to test them is
very hit-and-miss. I would urge people not to use testers. Drugs kill people."

More recently, Keith Halliwell condemned the kits as a "money-making
scheme" that will encourage drug use.

However, backstage at Glastonbury, John Peel and Keith Alien were among
those expressing support for the kits.

"I'm a red wine man myself." Peel told 'NME'. "But people are going to take
these things anyway and if this kit can tell them that what they're taking
is not what they think they're taking it seems to me not unreasonable."

Keith Allen added: "It's bad news for the dealers but it's good news for
punters."

"We accept that there's a danger with MDMA," says Shane Collins. "But how
much of a danger is it compared to skiing or horse riding and do we really
want this big brother nanny state or do we want to make people aware of the
dangers and let them make up their own minds?" --- The Green Party Drugs
Group can be contacted on 0181 678 9420

Checked-by: Mike Gogulski