A 22-year-old Queensland man has died in Gosford hospital overnight after consuming an ‘unknown substance’ at Glenworth Valley’s Lost Paradise music festival.
As reported by ABC, a man and a woman were also sent to hospital after taking a substance but they remain in a stable condition.
Over 11,000 people have flocked to Lost Paradise festival since it kicked off on Friday, the festival will end on New Years Day.
In this time police have handed out 50 court attendance notices for drug possession while three people have been charged with drug supply offences. This includes a 23-year-old man who allegedly possessed 80 MDMA pills and 65 bags of cocaine and a 21-year-old Sydney man who allegedly had 100 MDMA pills on his person.
The Lost Paradise death follows on from the two highly publicised fatalities at Sydney’s Defqon1 festival back in September which led NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian to threaten to shut the event down.
After forming an expert panel to look deeper into deaths at music festivals new offences were introduced by the Government in October that meant people caught supplying drugs that led to death can face up to 25 years in jail.
The push for pill testing is being felt throughout the music industry after Canberra’s Groovin The Moo festival’s first on-site pill testing scheme was deemed a success by organisers.
Despite this and despite being asked in an open letter signed by industry giants such as MusicNSW, Chugg Entertainment, Secret Sounds and more to consider pill testing it was not considered by the expert panel.
Berejiklian has consistently argued against pill testing, claiming it would give punters the “green light” to take illicit substances.
Lost Paradise is advertised as a drug-free event.
