BT Young Scientist Exhibition: A statistical study of the public’s attitude towards testing drugs for contaminants at music festivals – before and after being informed of this harm reduction method.
We would like to congratulate Transition Year Student Caoimhe Lynch from Kinsale Community School for receiving a highly commended rosette for investigating the publics attitude towards testing drugs at music festivals.
For this project, Caoimhe received a total of 783 survey respondents. Of these, almost two-thirds had attended at least one music festival. Some of the key findings were as follows:
- 89.7% of respondents believe that drug testing should be provided free at music festivals. Once respondents were provided with a summary of the Durham University study findings provided by Caomihe,which highlighted the potential benefits of providing free drug testing services at music festivals, the majority increased further to 721 respondents (92.1%) who believed that drug testing services should be provided for free at music festivals.
- 72.3% of survey respondents have been offered or know someone who has been offered drugs at a music festival. A deeper analysis of this result by age demographic showed that 57.4% of respondents in the under-15 age category had either been offered drugs or know someone who has been offered drugs at a music festival.
- 79.6% of survey respondents believe that drug users do not think of the potential consequences before taking drugs at a music festival.
- A minority of 22.9% of survey respondents believe that providing free drug testing services would encourage drug usage at music festivals. This decreased to 20.7% after respondents were made aware of the potential benefits of providing free drug testing services.
Caoimhe's project demonstrate that there was a large majority of respondents in favour of providing free testing of drugs for contaminants at music festivals in Ireland.
Source: Drugs.ie,17/01/20
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