Deaths at these festivals are on the increase. Some say to stop it is to test the illegal substances passed around at shows to see if they’re safe. Others have a different, more practical idea.
Don’t test substances. Teach our children the dangers of taking unknown, illegally manufactured drugs.
Why are young people ingesting random substances anyway? I was taught not to put foreign things into my mouth. It was a simple rule. I survived because of it.
Another essential life rule was: “Don’t accept things from strangers”.
It seems these basic rules don’t apply anymore. Good commonsense has left the community. Now, many parents and citizens expect government departments to clean up the mess and pick up the pieces by stepping into the festivals, testing the pills for free, and sheltering the kids from legal proceedings if what they find breaks the law.
I got through my formative years just fine and learned that each of us is responsible for our actions—not the government, not the police, not the medical profession, not school teachers, and not the church. We must stop thinking someone else should fix our problems and look to ourselves instead. We need to take responsibility for our actions and accept the outcomes of bad ones.
Yes, there are broader questions to be asked about why kids are so willing to consume unknown drugs, why illegal drug use is a growing community problem, or it’s a community problem, therefore a community solution, or how illicit drug manufacturers come to live with themselves when kids are dying.
My response cuts out asking and answering all of these questions. It gets to the heart of the issue.
If you or I go to a festival and pop something into our mouths, get sick, or die from it, what happens to us is called consequences. The law of life takes precedence. The same would happen if we jumped off a cliff. Jumping off cliffs is dangerous. No one needs to test cliffs to know they are dangerous. Cliffs are dangerous because they are cliffs. Drugs at concerts are the same. Don’t eat them! They are dangerous!
Stop these well-intended medical officials testing pills at music shows. Instead, teach our children danger-commonsense from the first day of their life and reinforce it to our last one! If they still take illegal pills and die, let us accept that we did our best and leave it at that! Don’t pursue others to fix what was an inevitable situation. It won’t change a thing for the better.
As you can tell by the tone of my writing, I don’t care much for festival pill testing. Their presence gives teens (and parents) the impression (an illusion) that festival drug taking is safe. That’s just wrong. It’s misleading and careless. It teaches our children nothing about mistakes and consequences.
Mistakes are real, and the consequences of bad decisions are real, too—some of them have dire outcomes. That’s what life is about. A death once every so often reminds others of how delicate life is when it’s misused. You can’t escape poor judgements or outright stupidity. It starts and ends with the person who places a pill on their tongue and swallows it. Nobody else is responsible for that.
The risk-takers will swallow the substances to show the doubters and fence-sitters the truth about poor decision-making. Let nature take its course, and don’t hide it from the young ones. No one should need to die, but it happens. Use the horrific story as a teaching tool so they can become better decision-makers in the future. While young people are willing to take risks, the consequences remain.
Don’t cover up those risks by testing the pills. Teens should assume that all festival pills are harmful; therefore, all of them will kill. Simple. Leave it at that.
If that’s not enough, I have one alternative idea for a safe and effective solution to the problem at today’s music festivals.
Flood the festival with inexpensive diarrhea pills, but call them something like ‘rainbow lovers’. Use the profits to provide the festival with extra portaloos, toilet paper and water stations. The results should resolve the drug issue immediately.
Nothing is more embarrassing to a teen than having a bad case of the runs, especially when they’re out with their friends.
Don’t test pills at festivals. Let the chemicals in these party tablets remain mysterious and dangerous. They’re illegal anyway! Why test something illegal? Handing a pill back to a teen after testing is unlikely to happen, as it becomes a duty-of-care issue. Imagine a death occurring after returning a pill. No care worker would willingly do that whether it’s said to give a safe thrill or not. That’s why teens won’t get their pills tested anyway. They didn’t buy them to get them tested!
Give us back our common sense instead. We certainly need some!
-Michael (Author)
Discover more from Michael Forman – Author of Dark Fiction & Drama
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