Another unregulated rave festival on December 8 and patron Callum Brosnan (19) of Sydney’s Baulkham Hills gets poisoned by illicit drugs smuggled into Sydney Olympic Park.
Callum, a promising AFL footy player went for a night out with his girlfriend Bianca to the Knockout Games of Destiny event organised by UK event manager Harder Styles United (HSU).
Callum ends up writhing in distress and convulsing on the nearby train platform trying to go home, but soon dead in Concord Hospital.
Callum’s the fifth rave party drug fatality in six months at the unregulated rave festivals feeding the electronic music rave culture of young Australians.
Rave Festivals are Known Drug Fests
But rave festivals are known to be simply drug fests, where drug dealers go so sell cheap backyard illicit drugs like MDMA (‘ecstasy’) for just $20 a pop to can get high.
MDMA is the abbreviation of ‘3,4-Methylenedioxymethamphetamine’ which is why it’s abbreviated. Commonly known as ecstasy, MDMA is a psychoactive/psychotropic drug type that changes brain function and results in alterations in perception, mood, consciousness, cognition, or behavior. There are many scary homemade variations. The general desired effects of MDMA type drugs are to alter sensations and increased energy, empathy, and pleasure. When taken by mouth, effects begin after 30–45 minutes and last 3–6 hours.
It’s cheaper than alcohol. That’s why young people who mainly have not much money choose it as a ‘recreational drug’.
Summer is the festival season and the recreational drug criminals know it – the backyard labs and the dealers.
Since 1999, seasoned Rave festival organisers like HSU know all about it. They have advanced deals with key metro venues in Australia during the summer ‘festival season’ (Sep-Feb). They arrange the performances (like an outfit called Psyko Punkz). They flood social media with promotion, aggressively promoting cheap mass parties, They set up a dedicated website to sell festival tickets discretly).
So they’ve worked out how to get the target young crowds (ages 18-24). At HSU’s Knockout Games of Destiny event, they raked in 18,000 youngsters.
So HSU then creates the party atmosphere – strobe lights and pulsating ‘hardstyle’ electronic dance music, sells bottled water, all rfeady for the MDMA peddling drug dealers to deliver the stimulant methylenedioxymethamphetamine genie.
“Just $20 to magic carpet levitate with me to party all night”
So MDMA users go psycho and party all night. Clean and innocent non-users of MDMA get enticed and hooked. No police, no sniffer dogs, just token security. And event managers HSU profits big time.
Happy Hardcore profiteering HSU.
But each rave event has become dodgy druggie venture into pill popping Russian roulette. The party pill MDMA is backyard. The police know it and the government knows it but they turn a blind eye.
The media wrongly call the deaths drug “overdoses”, but it’s just illicit drug taking. Just one of these things can kill.
Another sixteen patrons at the Knockout Games of Destiny event had to be rushed to hospital and three were placed into induced comas. A further 130 people sought medical treatment.
‘Recreational’ Drugs Dealing Only Encouraged
Then you get this bitch, one of the drug dealers. Thanh Truc Phan (her real name, but calls herself Tina) who got caught by chance with 400 MDMA pills in her handbag.
She’s an offspring of Vietnamese refugees and an aspiring nurse set to enrol at UTS. She smuggled the drugs into the venue in a condom up her Jewel box (internally). Some aspiring nurse. She should be banned from working in any healthcare role in Australia for life.
At $20 a pop, this dealer stood to reap $8000 at the venue that night – probably to pay for more Botox or fancy dresses like this.
Profits of crime
Callum took one of her MDMA pills and is dead.
Yet what was Thanh Truc Phan’s court penalty after admitting to supplying a prohibited drug? Well, Burwood Local Court Magistrate Louise McManus despite confirmed the offence was “a criminal offence and a deliberate act” yet only dished out 12 months good behaviour and 80 hours of community service.
Patrons if caught in possession at worst just cop a $400 on-the-spot fine. It’s not a deterrent, since another 60 drug dealers were caught with drugs on them at the HSU event. May be they were all working for HSU.
On January 12 last Saturday night, Ms Alex Ross-King (19) from the NSW Central Coast died from MDMA poisoning at the ‘FOMO‘ rave (drug) festival in Parramatta. FOMO stands for ‘Fear Of Missing Out’. Alex didn’t.
On December 29, 22-year-old Josh Tam (22) died after taking a substance at the ‘Lost Paradise‘ drug festival on the Central Coast. Lost paradise alright. On September 15 Joseph Pham, 23, and Diana Nguyen, 21, died at the ‘Defqon.1‘ all weekend drug festival in Penrith. Defqon.1 is foreign based. It was concocted in the Netherlands back in 1999 by rave event company Q-Dance. Q-Dance was set up and continues to be run by leftists Wouter Tavecchio and Wildrik Timmerman, both advocates for legalising illicit drugs like MDMA.
‘Defqon’ is a play on the U.S. Military term for being in an alert state or ‘defense readiness condition’. So in rave terms it’s all about staged loud “hardstyle” electronic dance music, “hardcore techno”, “hard house”, “hard trance”, “psychedelic trance”, “terrorcore”, “speedcore”, replete with the strobe lighting and of course encouraging the “hard drugs”, like “speed” (methamphetamine). It’s so that ravers can be in an alert state to party all night and beyond.
Harder Styles alright. This MDMA pill is dubbed the ‘Blue Punisher’
Greens Proposed Pills Testing Doesn’t Work
Extreme anarcho-Lefties like The Greens simplistically propose to just legalise these drug fests. They want to allow the pills to arrive at the rave festivals to get checked. They reckon this pills testing is the way to go. For both those who take or deal. How would you distinguish? How would this be a deterrent to illicit drug taking? It clearly wouldn’t be.
The Greens hairbrain scheme is to set up 18 community pill testing centres that would run after-hours and offer free testing of drugs for purity and dangerous substances. They would also establish a national drug testing agency to oversee the programme.
The Greens reckon all this would cost $16 million over four years. Is that perpetually, so every four years $16 million?
Who pays? The users won’t. They pay as little as $20 per pill. So they’re not going to pay another $30 per test.
The users get their drugs either before or while inside the festival. So their not going to then head off to some testing centre and return.
What if there’s a big batch like Thanh Truc Phan’s 400 in her condom? Is the testing just a sample or of each pill? What if on of the pills is different to the others but looks the same, say disguised but actually with a lethal effect like a ‘blue punisher’ with quadriple the MDMA concentration or with wicked shit mixed in? What if the testing doesn’t detect a toxic psychotropic substance and the user dies? Who is liable? At the Groovin The Moo trial, 125 people used the drug testing service, and two highly toxic chemicals were found in the results.
What if that one’s missed and the user dies? Do the parents of the deceased then sue the drug tester for failing to detect? Who tests the health of the users, since some may be intolerant or have an allergic reaction.
A pill testing trial was conducted by the STA-Safe consortium at the ‘Groovin the Moo‘ rave festival on Sunday April 29 2018 at University of Canberra. It was organised by pro-drug legalisation outfit euphemistically named ‘Harm Reduction Australia’. The testing was dodgy, scant and inconclusive. The tests were conducted in a makeshift tent at the festival grassy site relying upon an infrared spectrophotometer. This technology is limited and typically costs $20,000 each.
The Bruker Alpha II Fourier Transform Infrared (FTIR) spectrophotometer used at the ‘Groovin the Moo’ rave festival
Of the 20,000 attendance numbers between the festival start of 11am and close at 9pm (so over ten hours) only 129 patrons managed to be were tested so hardly a representative sample. In order to test all 20,000, about 150 machines plus expert technicians skilled on the machines, plus qualified chemists and medical staff and counselling would be needed. The cost of the 150 machines alone would be $3 million. That’s only one festival, and there are dozens held around Australia every year.
Only 83 presented MDMA-type pills were tested throughout this particular festival in the tent. The tests were for chemical concentrations of MDMA plus for unknown compounds additives, which could be almost limitless and perhaps undetectable. Remember these MDMA pills are made in dodgy backyard labs with any number of additives included.
According to the machine manufacturer Bruker, common compounds can include other psychoactive drugs, polymers, monomers, plasticizer, fillers, building materials, cosmetics, excipients, organic and inorganic chemicals, biochemicals, fibres, proteins, fatty acids, lipids, natural products, silicon containing compounds, solvents, pesticides, pollutants, semiconductors, dyes, paints, coatings, food, food additives, minerals, lubricants, surfactants, kidney stones, pharmaceuticals, and other drugs’.
What you don’t know you don’t know, so what does a test pass mean? Well, nothing conclusive.
Here’s actually what was detected:
In one case N-Ethylpentylone was detected with a hit level of 919. This is a dangerous drug that has recently emerged and has been responsible for mass casualty overdoses in New Zealand.
Pills Testing is just Drugs Legalisation by Stealth
Pills testing will only encourage vice, drug addiction and be an immoral slippery slope to mainstreaming MDMA at a massive human and health cost to Australian society.
So-called ‘harm reduction’ interventions like the ‘pills testing’ rhetoric is just a leftist incremental pathway towards normalizing drug use in society by stealth. Like a little bit of cyanide won’t hurt you?
How can a ‘recreational’ drug like MDMA be non harmful given it causes the following typically known symptoms?
- Large pupils
- Jaw clenching and teeth grinding
- Heightened senses (sight, hearing and touch)
- Excessive sweating and skin tingles
- Muscle aches and pains
- Nausea and reduced appetite
- Fast heartbeat
- Increased blood pressure
- Dehydration
- Heat stroke
- Extreme thirst triggering excessive drinking water (can cause death)
- Floating sensations
- Perceptual changes, such as visual and auditory hallucinations
- Out-of-character irrational behaviour
- Anxiety
- Irritability, paranoia and aggression
- Vomiting
- High body temperature
- Racing heart beat
- Convulsions
- Death
The very nature of drugs is that the concentrations vary, the chemical compositions varies and the options for ingredients are almost unlimited. So how can you test for every chemical. You simply can’t. The proposal is a phony con designed to blind side the ignorant.
Extremist Dr Ricardo Di Natali hasn’t thought about all that. Having abandoned saving Australia’s natural environment since Tassie Christine Milne resigned, The Greens ideology has gone full-blown leftist extremist. On the issue of MDMA drug use at rave festivals, The Greens mindset under fails to accept that MDMA is harmful and therefore wrong.
But then Dr Di Natali and his nutter MPs also want to ban sniffer dogs and legalise marijuana. He’s definitely on an immoral slippery slope. Frankly look at all his other hair brain schemes.
Illicit drugs are prohibited for a reason. They cause unnacceptable physical and mental harm to the users and those around them. They can kill. The use of illicit drugs has been prohibited internationally since 1912, almost an entire century, because of international agreement that the general community has a greater right to protect itself from the harms of illicit drug use than does an individual user to use a harmful substance recreationally.
Currently there is still significantly greater public support for the continued prohibiting of illicit drug use than there is for legalizing and regulating the use of these substances.
Distinctions between ‘soft’ and ‘hard’ drugs are entirely artificial, and titling cannabis ‘soft’ does not lessen the extensive harms of the substance where the spread of health harms is even more diverse than for other illicits. Arguments that the health harms of illicit drugs are caused by lack of government regulation of their purity and strength are not supported by the evidence.
The use of drugs changes behavior and causes criminal activity because people will do things they wouldn’t do if they were rational and free of the drug’s influence. If drug use increases with legalization, so will such forms of related violent crime as assaults, drugged driving, child abuse, and domestic violence.
Read More from Drug Free Australia’s Arguments Against Drug Legalisation
A Three-Pronged Solution
Rave festivals are an illicit drug fest culture, widespread and long let to go well out of control.
1. Stop and Deter the Event Organisers
Under most state liquor laws it is illegal for a venue to sell alcohol to a minor, with penalties of up to $11,000 in fines, and/or 12 months imprisonment and the suspension or cancellation of a liquor licence.
So why are the rave festival organisers like HSU not treated consistently, especially since MDMA is illegal?
They are obviously encouraging drug taking at these rave festivals. MDMA has become a key component of the rave festival culture. How about a $500,000 fine mandatorily imposed upon an event organiser for the first offence (for drug dealing caught at the venue), then upon a second offence another $500,000 fine mandatorily imposed as well licence cancellation?
Would this not effectively stop and deter the event organisers to crack down on the drag racketeering involvement?
Apparently a human life is worth around $7 million, especially when aged around 20 like the recent drug fest victims. At least $1 million will go some way toward recognising the value of human life being criminal taken at these drug festivals.
2. Stop and Deter the Drug Dealers
In New South Wales, the parliament in November 2018 passed the Community Protection Legislation Amendment Bill 2018 which introduces jail terms of up to 20 years for those who supply drugs which cause death. It sounds like being tough on crime. But the judiciary are mostly former defence lawyers and civil libertarians. They will just ignore this maximum penalty and keep dishing out wrist slaps.
The penalties need to have a mandatory minimum custodial sentence in order to get the drug dealers out of the community, prevented from repeat offending, as a punishment and so an effective deterrent. A sliding scale of mandatory sentence length needs to be imposed according to subsequent offending. Judicial discretion needs to be removed as the judges constantly demonstrate that their soft-on-crime good behaviour slap on the wrist approach toward offenders falls well short of the justice expectations of victims families and of the wider community.
Lengthy custodial sentences would be an effective deterrent. Reintroducing and applying the death penalty to illicit drug dealers and illicit drug manufacturers and importers supplying a commercial quantity would be more effective.
3. Deter and Rehabilitate the MDMA Drug Users
Australian governments have not yet found a solution to effectively deter and rehabilitate the growing illicit drug epidemic destroying lives, families and communities, notably ICE (Crystal methamphetamine). It’s a brain altering stimulant in the same genre as MDMA, but far worse in potency, mood changing and harmful effects.
This bodes poorly for anyone entrusting Australian governments to then find a solution to effectively deter and rehabilitate MDMA users.
So ignorant Australian governments should seek wisdom from jurisdictions that have proven to have been effective. This does not mean adopting policies of leftist legalisation like in certain U.S. Democrat brainwashed states or The Netherlands. Recall that the Defqon.1 Weekend Festival was founded in the Netherlands
But apparent deterrent success for illicit drug users has been proven in Portugal. It’s a myth that Portugal has legalised otherwise illicit drugs. But it has effectively dealt with deterring and rehabilitating the drug users. In order to begin a strategy and programme to deter and rehabilitate MDMA Drug Users, Australian governments at all levels would be wise to learn from the Portuguese initiative.
Portuguese family doctor Álvaro Pereira has been recognised as identifying an effective solution to Portugal’s illicit drug addition o the 1980s that had addicted all levels of Portuguese society – indeed one in every 100 Portuguese was battling a problematic heroin addiction at that time.
Pereira was behind the effective solution, offering no magic wand or one-size-fits-all solution, just medical treatment.
Finally the government in 2001 regulated that those caught with a personal supply might be given a warning, a small fine, or told to appear before a local commission – a doctor, a lawyer and a social worker – about treatment, harm reduction, and the support services that were available to them.
The opioid crisis soon stabilised, and the ensuing years saw dramatic drops in problematic drug use, HIV and hepatitis infection rates, overdose deaths, drug-related crime and incarceration rates. Read More
Such an approach at least offers a hope of being better that what Australian governments are currently doing – bugger all.
Australia Day Drug Fest Looms
HSU has another big drug fest scheduled for Australia Day at the same place, Sydney Olympic Park.
It’s called the ‘Hardcore Til I Die‘ fest (HTID). HTID’s branding is “Happy Hardcore”. There’s a clear message there. Dealers bring ya drugs and patron’s bring ya cash. HSU can help you party to death on Australia Day!
Harder Styles United (HSU) is UK-based. It’s a rave event company based in Northampton, Northamptonshire in Britain, described as a “Party & entertainment service“. HSU is owned and managed by one Christopher Roy Lambert (fake name?) registered at 8 South Parade, Doncaster, South Yorkshire, DN1 2DJ. United Kingdom. Lambert previously traded under Sidewinder Events Limited but got into trouble.
HTID is another corporate exploitative rave event described as a “party & entertainment service“. HTID is organised from a foreign private company of the same name again, HTID Limited, established in 2004 and registered at 19 Portland Place, London, W1B 1PX United Kingdom.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fi2XCsPKlY8