Anneke Vo was found dead at the Dragon Dreaming festival on Sunday morning. Credit:Facebook "It is tragic that a young life has been lost and that a family is mourning the life of their daughter," Superintendent Zoran Dzevlan​ said. "I didn't want this event to happen in the first place. We put our objections forward to council and as a result of these drug detections, and the tragic death of a young lady, we will again be putting our recommendations forward for this event not to take place in our community," he said. The police have made the link between the festival's existence and the death of Anneke Vo – using an argument that if the event didn't happen then she wouldn't have died. If someone had died in a car accident on the way to the festival, this would be tragic too. Would the police suggest the event should be banned? I doubt it, yet in both cases, a drug-related death at a music festival and a death on the road to the festival, the death wouldn't happen without the festival.

Does it make it right to ban the festival? Festivals are places that young people go to connect to each other, to listen to music together and to create a sense of community. At Dragon Dreaming, there was music, yoga, art and permaculture classes – it was clearly an event where young people came together to celebrate life. This is what community is about. Of course, at all events that many young people attend, there are likely to be drugs, especially when there is music involved. Drugs have been part of human history since the dawn of time – be it coffee, alcohol, magic mushrooms, ecstasy or tea – people have been using drugs for energy, pleasure, or to connect with each other or with the universe. They are as important to human development as sex or shelter, one cannot expect them to disappear. To suggest people don't use drugs at a festival is as silly as suggesting people don't have sex. Just say no, doesn't work. Young people will experiment with drugs. It is as simple as that. Do you ban the festival? Ban young people coming together in this way? No, that would be like banning horse-riding when someone falls off a horse, or swimming in the ocean when someone drowns, or banning cars when someone dies on the road, a festival if a young person dies tragically in car accident on the way to that festival. No, we regulate these industries. We make people get a driver's licence, punish negligent driving, have rules and regulations to make it safer.

We could do the same for drugs. We could legalise and regulate them so everyone knows exactly what drug they are taking. We could educate people of the dangers and give people the best tools to avoid death. That won't happen. Drugs will remain unregulated at least for the foreseeable future. In which case drugs will always be more dangerous, because they will be manufactured on the black market by criminals seeking profit without government regulation of any kind. One solution that is available now, and avoids huge changes to drug law, is to have pill (or drug) testing kits at festivals, make them mandatory, even at any event where drugs are likely to be. They allow people to have their drugs tested before taking them. Pill-testing is quite common in Europe and is a simple and effective harm-minimisation policy. There, instead of trying to stop everyone from having drugs, the authorities have accepted drug use will take place and put in steps to minimise danger and unnecessary deaths. Anneke Vo may have died from drugs. I am sure we will find out shortly. If so, then she may have had a bad batch of the drug, an impurity or a concoction of drugs that her body could not handle, or maybe just because she had too much or the drugs were too strong. In any case, if there had been a pill or drug-testing kits on site, then maybe she could have had those drugs tested and avoided taking them, or taken less. And she might still be alive today. Surely banning music festivals would achieve nothing apart from destroying community gatherings, but real change, to avoid senseless and tragic loss of life can come though provision of pill-testing and maybe one day even the regulation of drugs.

Miles Hunt is a lawyer, and director of drug law reform and harm-minimisation organisation Unharm.