Drug use patterns, harm reduction strategies and use of drug checking services in boom festival patrons

Abstract

Purpose Recent studies have shown that people who attend electronic dance music events and use drug checking services (DCS) are a predominantly white male, highly educated middle-class population. However, there is still a lack of data beyond sociodemographic characteristics that must be addressed. This paper aims to describe the drug use patterns and protective behavior strategies (PBS) used by testers and nontesters at Boom Festival 2018 and analyze the relationship between these behaviors and the decision to use the DCS. Design/methodology/approach This is an exploratory research based on a cross-sectional design using baseline data collected at the Boom Festival from testers (N = 343) and nontesters (N = 115). Findings Nontesters presented, in general, slightly higher frequencies of use for most drugs, whereas testers tended to adopt PBS more frequently. Moreover, testers planned their drug use more often than nontesters and set more limits on the amount of drugs they used in one session. Both of these behaviors work as predictors for using the DCS. Practical implications Our data suggest that DCS might not be easily accessible to all people who use drugs, reaching almost exclusively highly educated people that already apply several harm reduction strategies. Actions should be taken to promote service accessibility. Originality/value To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this paper is the first to compare the demographics, drug use and PBS adoption of DCS users with nonusers who attended the same festival.

Challenges, policy and politics in drug checking: reflections of the TEDItorial team

“…The potential barriers to accessing DCS are greater for certain drug-using communities such as those who do not plan their consumption in advance or those who find it more difficult to postpone use, as suggested in the study by Valente et al (2022). In the context of Boom Festival in 2018, researchers compared the profile of users of DCS operating at the festival with the profile of visitors to a drugs information booth (and who did not use or did not intend to use DCS at the festival) and observed that the former tended to be more occasional drug users and to engage in more health-promoting behaviours.…”

“…In the meantime, however, and focused as we are here specifically on DCS, we support the decriminalisation of drug use because criminalisation is a barrier both to the implementation of drug checking and also to its evaluation and access (Kerr and Tupper, 2017; Wallace et al , 2022). A change in policy will also allow for the reorientation of part of the budget allocated to enforcement towards health promotion in general and harm reduction in particular, making it possible to envisage an increase in the capacity of DCS and, at the same time, the removal of other barriers to access. Alongside endorsing the principle of universal public access to DCS across communities, we also recognise that festivals can be particularly effective sites for delivering DCS because of the higher levels of prevalence of drug use by festival-goers, their lower prior engagement with health services (Kushakov et al , 2022; Measham and Simmons, 2022; Valente et al , 2022) and the added value of having the point of care located at the point of drug consumption. This means that there is a greater chance that harm reduction measures will be implemented immediately.…”

“…Alongside endorsing the principle of universal public access to DCS across communities, we also recognise that festivals can be particularly effective sites for delivering DCS because of the higher levels of prevalence of drug use by festival-goers, their lower prior engagement with health services (Kushakov et al , 2022; Measham and Simmons, 2022; Valente et al , 2022) and the added value of having the point of care located at the point of drug consumption. This means that there is a greater chance that harm reduction measures will be implemented immediately.…”

“…We can only reasonably expect users to discard substances of concern when results of analyses do not match purchase intent. According to multiple contributions to this special issue, test results do not match purchase intent for approximately 12%–17% of tested substances of concern (Barratt et al , 2022; Díaz Moreno et al , 2022; Kaskela et al , 2022; Kushakov et al , 2022; Measham and Simmons, 2022; Valente et al , 2022). When tested substances of concern do not match expectations, a robust and growing body of research (Measham, 2019; Valente et al , 2019; for a review, see Giulini et al , 2022; Maghsoudi et al , 2021) finds that service users discard these substances.…”

“…This is all the more desirable because local evidence is sometimes invaluable in order to get policymakers on board (Hutton, 2022). Drug checking is now, at least in Europe, disproportionately delivered to young adult men with an interest in electronic music (Koning et al , 2021; see also Kushakov et al , 2022; Measham and Simmons, 2022; Valente et al , 2022). The population of PWUD is much broader.…”