But they’re wrong. I am one of those dads – one of my three offspring regularly goes to such festivals – and my views are not only as far from all of those expressed above as it can get, but consistent polling shows I am in the majority. Loading According to the latest Essential Research data, conducted in May of this year, a solid two-thirds of Australians want less heavy-weight legal action on drugs and a more health-based approach. Only about 17 per cent still think the answer lies with the law. The broad mass of the sensible electorate does not want the “war on drugs” continued, we want to sue for peace.

I really would like a world free of drugs, and if I could press a button to make it happen would do so in a heartbeat. But I am a realist. They are here, they are everywhere, and they are here to stay. I have heard about “the war on drugs” for at least 30 years. And yet I live in a city where it is common knowledge you can have drugs delivered quicker to your door than pizza! The experts all agree that law enforcement will not win the war on drugs. Credit:Viki Yemettas Who, in the real world, thinks that shutting down music festivals is going to help win that war? Who wants sniffer dogs to be a feature of life in NSW? Who can offer an example of that kind of heavy-handed prohibition on drugs working, anytime, anywhere, in the Western world? As to not having pill-testing because it sends the wrong message, we have already had this argument on the subject of safe injecting rooms for heroin users in the 1990s in Kings Cross.

The dinosaurs lost. The progressives won. And now who, seriously, wants to go back to deaths in the street? Anna Wood. who died, aged 15, after taking ecstasy. Credit:Greg White Well, pill testing relies on exactly the same principle. It doesn’t say: “Ignore the laws, and go for your lives taking pills because these little rippers are you-beauts and ready to go.”

It does say: “We still wish you wouldn’t take these dangerous drugs. But if you are going to take them, then at least let us see what we can do to take away as much of the danger as possible.” None of the above is to deny the devastation wrought on families by the scourge of drugs. It is to say that the same old tired pronouncements after every tragedy, have got us nowhere, so let us try a new, fresh approach and . . . And here we go again. For this column, too, will draw predictable fire, the nicest of which will be that I am not an expert in the field. That’s fine. Let’s go to the experts then. They are remarkably consistent. Loading Replay Replay video Play video Play video Dr Alex Wodak, who has led the fight in Sydney for decades, wrote in the Herald yesterday that drugs needed to be treated as a health, not criminal problem.

Roman Quaedvlieg, the former head of Border Force with a long career of heavyweight law enforcement behind him, tweeted yesterday: “Prohibition has never worked. It will never work. This is not China. Government can’t "shut down" events which are part of popular culture. It’ll create resentment. Drug consumption is a peripheral part of this music culture, it’s not central. Educate sure, but don’t prohibit.” Matt Noffs, of the Noffs Foundation, who, with former head of the Australian Federal Police Mick Palmer, will be launching a campaign on this subject next week at the National Press Club – agrees. Loading “How can some of our leaders still have their head in the sand about this? How many more will have to die?” Ever and always, you see people on the frontline of the war on drugs – those who patrol the borders, police the streets and deal with the fallout in the emergency wards – calling for a different approach. And the contribution of those far removed – the politicians, shock jocks, talkback callers – is simply to fire up every alarm they have and call for those on the frontline to go harder, to lock more of the dealers up, to enforce a more punitive culture, to establish a veritable police state.

At some point, sanity must prevail. Twitter: @Peter_Fitz