Summer festivals urged to provide drug testing amid record deaths in Manitoba By: Malak Abas Posted: 5:29 PM CDT Monday, Jul. 8, 2024 Last Modified: 6:34 PM CDT Monday, Jul. 8, 2024 Updates

Organizers of Manitoba’s summer festivals have been asked to include drug-testing in their lineups, against the backdrop of an increase in drug-related deaths across the province last year.

There were 445 drug-related deaths in Manitoba in 2023 — a record high — based on initial data released by the province’s chief medical examiner — more than double the number in 2019.

Drug use at music festivals is an open secret, and poisonings and overdoses could be prevented by judgment-free access to drug testing, be it through drug-checking machines or more affordable options such as fentanyl testing strips, said Arlene Last-Kolb of Moms Stop the Harm.

“I think that if you’re (holding) an event, and you’re going to allow people to come to your event where there is lots of drug use — people are handing out stuff all the time — then you just have a responsibility,” she said.

Her group has heard about at least one case of drug poisoning at the Winnipeg Folk Festival last year, Last-Kolb said.

Overall, there are concerns harmful additives are being cut into drugs commonly associated with recreational use, such as psilocybin mushrooms and cocaine.

In Winnipeg, there are two publicly available Fourier transform infrared spectrometers, which use lasers to check the chemical compounds of drugs: one with Street Connections on Hargrave Street, and the Mobile Overdose Prevention Site managed by Sunshine House.

Operating one of these machines requires an exemption to the federal Controlled Drugs and Substances Act. Other, more affordable methods of testing include fentanyl and benzodiazepine testing strips, which are small paper slips that require only a piece of the drug and water to use.

The slips are accessible in Winnipeg. For example, Nine Circles Community Health Centre hands out fentanyl testing strips for free.

“The (Mobile Overdose Prevention Site) can’t show up at every festival. But I think (testing) strips can be there, and people that are in the harm reduction community can be there walking around,” Last-Kolb said. “There’s a lot of substance use at Folk Fest, and when we have drugs like this on the street, people don’t know what they’re getting.”

Folk Fest, which has a cumulative attendance that exceeds 70,000 annually, introduced naloxone training to security staff and first-aid teams in 2017, and notes on its website that drug-checking services are available in the city.

“The Winnipeg Folk Festival does not have the legal authority to provide drug testing as an organization,” Folk Fest spokesperson Lee-Anne Van Buekenhout said in an email.

“While testing kits are available to individuals in their daily lives, testing by organizations requires a federal exemption and specialized insurance, which the festival does not have.”

This year, Folk Fest organizers approached Sunshine House, but MOPS already operates at full-capacity, through its regular route around the inner-city, and the rules are murky about whether the unit could be operated in partnership with an organization.

It’s possible festivals could partner with Sunshine House in the future, said communications director Jenny Henkelman.

“We want to see drug checking everywhere as part of a broad range of harm-reduction services to keep people alive,” she said. “However, we are always resource-strapped and must work within our mandate and prioritize the communities that we work with all year.”

Some festivals on the summer circuit have offered drug testing in recent years. Rainbow Trout Music Festival, which will be held in St. Malo Aug. 16 to 18, handed out fentanyl and benzo testing strips last year, and offered drug use supplies and sharps disposal through Sunshine House and Project Safe Audience, which provides harm reduction services and training in Manitoba.

It also provided a quiet space “for folks exploring consciousness-expansion” that was led by a psychotherapist who offered “coping strategies that can help to transform unusual, even challenging, psychedelic experiences into extraordinary ones.”

“The Winnipeg Folk Festival does not have the legal authority to provide drug testing as an organization.”–Lee-Anne Van Buekenhout

Real Love Summer Fest in Teulon, scheduled for July 26 to 28, has had a dedicated “safer space and harm reduction” team for six years.

Anna McCrea, who co-ordinates the team, said the festival recognizes attendees will do drugs, so it wants “to support them to do so safely” by providing fentanyl strips, along with naloxone kits, safer-sex supplies and resources on safer-substance use.

“While we don’t currently offer expanded drug-testing beyond fentanyl strips, we’re definitely open to bringing it on in the future. As the toxic drug crisis we’re currently experiencing continues to worsen, these tools are only becoming more important…”

She said drug testing services are “complicated and resource-intensive,” and said it’s a difficult for a small organization to take on.

McCrea serves in a similar role for GentleFest, a festival and camping event scheduled for Aug. 23 to 25.

Organizers have introduced a lesser-known drug-checking option called reagent testing, which can be used to identify substances in a pill by scraping off some of the substance and placing it in a testing liquid, which changes colour when it reacts with different chemicals.

Test strips and reagant testing aren’t perfect — and are less detailed and accurate than a drug-checking machine — in part because the chemical makeup of additives changes frequently, McCrea said, and there’s a looming legal grey area around implicating the festival should a test go awry.

She said she recognizes that some larger festivals, such as Folk Fest, have a higher level of public scrutiny and may be less able to promote drug checking on festival grounds.

“I don’t want to say that they have zero desire to participate in this kind of harm reduction, but it is very glaringly obvious, the absence of those services at the festival,” she said. “I do think that smaller organizations have a bit more ability to bend some rules or even perceived limitations and just do things a bit more under the radar.”

It’s not impossible, however. Shambhala Music Festival in British Columbia will celebrate its 25th anniversary on July 26 to 29. The festival has offered advanced drug testing services, via the same spectrometer machine used by Sunshine House and Street Connections, since 2017.

In 2023, a prototype drug-testing robot designed by University of British Columbia researchers, which uses a new technique for checking drugs, was used at Shambhala.

“To see a festival at that size does demonstrate that there is a way to bring these services above board, because anything that’s happening for such a large organization is under a higher level of public scrutiny,” McCrea said.

All drug users deserve access to safety, regardless of outside risk factors, McCrea said, whether using is part of their everyday life or just a weekend out once a year.

“Regardless of whether we want to condone or promote these behaviours, as organizers, we do have a responsibility and obligation to do our best to support folks to do so safely.”

malak.abas@freepress.mb.ca