About 55,000 people attended Electric Picnic last weekend at Stradbally in Co Laois.
The festival is nearly twice the size it was 10 years ago. And for many of those who attend, taking something not especially legal is fundamental to the experience.
There are roughly 100 gardaí on-site now each year to police the goings-on, but in 2017, for the first time, the Ana Liffey Drug Project was on hand to deal with the issue of drugs in a more collaborative way.
The project, one of Dublin’s best known (it’s been operating for nearly 40 years) ‘harm reduction’ services, was making its festival debut in the Picnic’s welfare tent, alongside the Irish Red Cross, at the Jimi Hendrix campsite.
Source: Cianan Brennan, The Journal.ie, 09/09/17