A War on Music !

We have a drug culture here in New South Wales and where it openly manifests itself seems to be wherever live music is played.  Most events where the audience is measured in thousands ends with a death in the crowd and usually a host of peopled carted off in ambulances suffering from drug overdoses.

This has absolutely nothing to do with the festival organizers.  It seems that young people need the mood enhancing effect of what they term " party drugs " to enjoy their night or day out and despite the best efforts of the police and other law enforcement measures the supply of drugs seem unstoppable.

In what many see as a desperation measure, the New South Wales government is imposing an alternative to their earlier threat to ban music festivals.  This takes the form of requiring event organizers to have doctors, paramedics, ambulance crews and their vehicles and a heavy police security contingent standing by to treat those adversely affected by drugs.   The cost of this is to be borne by the event organizers and in many cases could run well in excess of a hundred thousand dollars for a big national music event.

Basically, this seems destined to drive live music venues out of existence in this state.  The cost of this impost will certainly be reflected in the admission price, resulting in smaller crowds - and many music festivals deciding to move the venue to another state.  This government initiative seems little more than a declaration of war on live music in New South Wales.

The only thing that is new - is the cost of police and paramedics becoming a charge against the event organizers.  They attend all music festivals as a matter of course and this is  paid by the government at present and it clearly represents a move to drive the music festivals out of business by saddling them with impossible costs.

By now we should have learned something.  Ordinary, law abiding young Australians have developed a determination to take the risk by imbibing unknown substances with the expectation of mood enhancement and this usually runs parallel with the enjoyment of music.   Party drugs are an accepted item in " young Australia " and that is not going to change, despite the risk of sudden death.

The other factor that is impossible to ignore is that such drugs are keenly sought by this party crowd, and supply will always be met when demand delivers easy profits to the people who run the drug trade.

If loading music festivals with treatment and security costs achieves the objective of closing down the music scene we may be creating a bigger danger.  Decades earlier we had the staging of such events at secret locations deep in the bush.  The venue location was a secret only revealed late and revellers journeyed by car, and that resulted in drug affected people driving home after the event with consequent casualties.

We long ago lost the war on party drugs.  Now we would be wise to start learning how to live with them.