Pill testing is difficult to evaluate. The best we can do is to decide on the balance of probabilities whether the benefits outweigh the risks. But where else do we argue that community members are safer if they don’t know what they’re taking?

Would older generations tolerate a supply of drinks where the alcohol content could be anywhere between that of beer and whiskey? Or where their alcoholic drinks could be contaminated with toxic ingredients which had not been tested for lest increased drinking be inadvertently encouraged?

In public health and harm reduction a critical principle is "never let the best be the enemy of the good". In the face of a serious threat from HIV in the 1980s, some political leaders argued that the "best" the community should aim for was people never injecting drugs. Fortunately saner voices prevailed. The "good" that was accepted was reducing the spread of HIV among people who injected drugs by providing sterile injecting equipment.

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In the current debate, ministers argue that the "best" we should aim for is that young people attending music dance events would lose their desire to take drugs at these events and that law enforcement would make these drugs virtually unavailable. A more realistic appraisal is that young people will continue to want to take drugs, police will continue to be unable to substantially reduce the availability of drugs and that pill testing will substantially reduce, but not eliminate, the risks of drug taking.