A partygoer who smuggled drugs into the recent Harbourlife dance festival in Sydney has detailed his involvement in the Australian festival scene’s drug culture in an op-ed for The Daily Telegraph. In the piece, the anonymous reveller recounts the ease with which he enters festivals carrying illicit substances.

“I have been going to music festivals since I was 18. Me and my friends are pretty experienced and well-immersed in the festival culture,” he opens. “I can tell you that it’s definitely considered the social norm to take drugs at these events.”

According to the partygoer, the presence of sniffer dog-armed police patrols do little to deter him or even apprehend him. “The sniffer dogs do nothing. I was sniffed by the dogs and walked into Harbourlife with six MDMA capsules in my underwear,” he explains.

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Harbourlife was recently thrust into the headlines after 19-year-old reveller Georgina Bartter died during the event. Her death is suspected to have been caused by an overdose or allergic reaction to her alleged ingestion of one and a half pills during the dance party.

“Most people won’t put them in their pockets, they will put them in the last place they expect police to check, usually underwear because to find them police would have to get you naked and strip search you,” the unnamed partygoer continues.

“I think with MDMA the dogs have a really low success rate,” he opines. “I think they’re more successful with powders, like cocaine and heroin. When it comes to ecstasy and MDMA, it’s just luck of the draw.”

The reveller admits to concerns about “being pulled up and charged”, however, he claims that it’s a risk that he and other partygoers “seem more than willing to take”, suggesting that the risk is worth the ultimate reward of “feel[ing] good” during the events.

“I met plenty of people using MDMA at Harbourlife,” he states. “There was a corporate lawyer from a well-known law firm. He was there with his wife and they took a large number of pills, I think he took four.”

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“It’s far more prevalent than people think. And it’s not junkies taking these things, it’s people with white collar jobs. That’s how widespread it is. I get them through a social network, through friends. That’s how the vast majority of people get them — it’s not the dodgy underworld bikie dealers.”

“A friend of mine gets them for me on the Thursday night from a drug dealer. I usually go to two or three festivals each year and I’ll usually take MDMA. But I don’t do it on the weekends, unless it’s a 21st or something.”

For some, like the NSW Police, it’s the dance culture itself that is to blame for the ingestion of mind-altering substances so ubiquitous in the scene. As Tone Deaf reported, in a recent statement, police superintendent Mark Walton highlighted what he referred to as the “intimate” and “intrinsic” link between EDM events and drug use.

“I’m concerned that these electronic music events are consistently intimately associated with illicit psychoactive drug use,” he said. “It does not matter what location they are held in, there is no doubt the nature of the entertainment is intrinsically linked to that drug use. Quite simply, you do not know what you’re taking.”

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