Big Day Out teen dies of suspected drug overdose
A 17-year-old girl has died from a suspected drug overdose after attending Perth’s Big Day Out.
The girl collapsed at the music festival at the Claremont Showgrounds yesterday and was taken to a first aid post, before being transferred to Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital, where she died early this morning.
Friends of the teenager told police she had taken an ecstasy tablet before she arrived at the event.
They said she then took more tablets as she waited in line because she was frightened she would be searched by police.
While the girl’s family has all of my sympathies… could there POSSIBLY be a better argument for harm minimisation? Zero-tolerance is clearly lethal.
The BDO organisers claim there was nothing they could have done to keep this girl from harm. Disagree. There was quite a lot they could have done, merely with the stroke of a pen.
MDMA by itself is not quite as hazardous as some of the other crap dealers mix in their pills. However, in the black market, there’s no truth in advertising. Kids wind up doing their testing in the worst possible way, on themselves.
Pill testing, which would reveal the true content of pills or at very least, an ‘amnesty box,’ where kids who change their minds while waiting in line could deposit pills without fear of arrest, could have saved this girl’s life.
Now a 17 year old girl is dead and all the cops and BDO will say is ‘not our fault.’
*sigh*
-weez
3 Comments so far
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Most teens always have taken drugs, are taking drugs and always will take drugs.Illegality kills the user.
Most people have always had a drink, have a drink and always will have a drink. Make it illegal and death will follow with unscrupulous people making drinks with the wrong kind of alcohol.
Police action is responsible for a dramatic increase in excessive drinking, pill popping and it’s related violence. Pills don’t smell, alcohol is legal and has replaced marijuana which you can smell a mile away. But never let facts stand in the way of politics and police propaganda.
Yep, Mel… you’d have thought that someone would have worked out in the 1920s that prohibition doesn’t work, other than to give you a bunch of Al Capones- and dead people in their wake.
The comments from the cops and BDO organisers in this matter are totally reprehensible. ‘She’s dead because SHE was a LAWBREAKER- not because of anything WE did or didn’t do’ is the essence, as though eating a pill and going dancing should merit capital punishment.
*doublesigh*
Comment by weez 02.03.09 @ 3:30 pmWA Police are making no apologies for the sniffer dog operation at Sunday’s Big Day Out, saying it was part of a harm minimisation attitude.
Either WA Police don’t know what the definition of ‘harm minimisation’ is- or they are actively obfuscating.
Comment by weez 02.04.09 @ 5:38 amLeave a comment
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