Written at the close of the NSW Drug Checking Trial, Drug Checking Lead Clancy reflects on their time in the role. Drawing on a year of insight they ask a deceptively simple question: if most harm reduction happens invisibly, in communities, without any professional input at all, what are we actually measuring when we evaluate the services we can see?

The music was loud, the crowds were sweaty, and somewhere in the thick of it all, near the medical tent, in the middle of a mosh pit, or crouched beside someone on the grass, there were the wolves.  

DanceWize NSW have just wrapped up another summer festival season, and boy was it a big one. 

As the season winds down and the team takes a well-earned breather, we asked some of the crew to reflect on what it's been like out there on the ground. 

If you’re at a music festival in Australia and police are patrolling with drug sniffer dogs, you know you’re in NSW. On Monday, May 5, the NSW Supreme Court began hearing a class action suit brought on behalf of more than 3000 festival goers over unlawful strip searches between 2016 and 2022.
[CW: sexual assault; descriptions of invasive police searches]