Music

Nova Scotia's Evolve festival abandons drug testing for insurance purposes

by Richard Howard

Yet another awesome idea brought down by the man. Nova Scotia’s Evolve Music and Awareness Festival attempted to add a bold feature to their event: free drug testing. No, not as an opportunity to relive the breathalyzer game you played in college to see how messed you were – this was an attempt to let festival goers test the quality of illicit drugs to ensure they weren’t tainted or a different drug entirely.

Defending the idea, event producer Jonas Colter said that the purpose of the tests would have been to “drugs that could see them sent to hospital or maybe even a worse tragedy” and would have consisted of commercially available drug testing kits available to any concert goer want to confirm the identity and purity of their drugs.

Evolve’s insurance company, however, was not at all down with the plan. Fearing liabilities such as attendees who used the kits becoming sick anyway, Evolve’s initial insurance provider pulled out. Unable to proceed without insurance, Colter looked high and low but was unable to find any companies willing to take on the risk. As a result the festivities will begin today – without drug testing.

The whole thing is pretty unfortunate because initiatives like this (which have successfully been instituted at events such as B.C.’s Shambhala Festival), while controversial, are pretty inline with suggestions concerning more effective ways to prevent overdoses. “A lot of these drugs are garbage and we [were] hoping that the kids [would] throw them away and that we can pass them onto the RCMP and that they can dispose of them,” Colter said. The RCMP, however, sided with the insurance companies. One Sgt. Brian Rehill offered the following PR-friendly but factually bereft statement: “The RCMP is all about public safety. However, we don’t support any initiatives that will condone illicit drug use, and these kits do condone illicit drug use.”

So instead, we’re going with the same logic as “let’s not offer condoms to kids, because that’ll totally stop them from having sex.” Good job, guys.