By CHRISTIANE BARRO

Student unions from universities across Australia are seeking to take the first step to introducing drug-testing kits at their university.

President of Students for Sensible Drug Policy (SSDP) at the University of Melbourne Nick Kent said 20 unions were looking to set up SSDP chapters, a starting point that could potentially lead to the implementation of harm-reduction kits.

SSDP is an international organisation dedicated to harm reduction associated with drug use and the promotion of sensible and compassionate drug policies. 

The University of Melbourne student union will distribute these kits from mid-October and will hold a training session in the next couple of weeks that will use sugar or aspirin to demonstrate how these kits should be used.

“People who come to that initial training session or launch will be given priority picking of the harm reduction packs which at this point will be quite limited in number,” Mr Kent said.

The SSDP will help other unions introduce harm-reduction kits, after this pilot program is reviewed and implemented in full by next year. The kits have testing substances that react with a sample of a pill,  causing a colour change. That colour indicates what is – or isn't –  in the pill. 

“Once we’ve set up the program and have all the literature and we have a step-by step guide of how it was implemented on our campus were happy to provide that to all other student unions,” Mr Kent said.

Monash University Student Association president Abigail Stapleton said she would encourage next year’s student union to look at introducing drug-testing kits.

 Ms Stapleton said it was a positive step towards opening up a conversation about substance use at universities.

“It’s a really good way to monitor and manage drug use rather than just pretending it doesn’t happen which is what many universities do at the moment,” she said.

Mr Kent said he was in touch with several students from Monash University who expressed interest in setting up an SSDP chapter for next year. 

“As interested harm reduction advocates, I have no doubt that they will be looking to implement this on campus as well,” he said

Coordinator of DanceWize, a program of Harm Reduction Victoria, Stephanie Tzanetis said Australian universities needed to implement tactics that seek to reduce the damaging effects of illicit drug use.

“The implementation of all kinds of harm reduction strategies needs to be broadly applied across Australia including on-campus. Pill-testing is one of many harm reduction tools and should always be coupled with thorough harm reduction education,” she said.

Ms Tzanetis said the drug-testing kits, although restricted in the information they could provide, were a step in the right direction towards harm reduction education.

“They can provide an indication of a drug's composition but they do provide an indication which is a starting point to make people more conscious of their health and the potential risks involved with illicit drug use,” she said.

Mr Kent said students were discouraged from bringing their drugs and using these kits on-campus.

“That handling cannot happen on campus and that’s not something we can do as a student union,” he said. 

“It’ll be made pretty clear in the harm reduction packs that they’ll face potential repercussion from the university and Victoria Police if they are to bring substances on campus,” he said. 

Mr Kent said any student union, university of drug user should view this as “a first step” towards overcoming “the current status quo where people are taking drugs with absolutely no understanding of what’s in them”.