13 years ago, the NSW Ombudsman found the sniffer dog program was a failure: the vast majority of searches didn't uncover drugs and weren't catching dealers. The Labor government at the time ignored the inquiry's recommendations.

At least 12 young people have died at music festivals since that review. Countless others have been taken to hospital at risk of overdose. Last summer alone we lost five young lives after they took MDMA.

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Expert research and inquiries have repeatedly made similar recommendations to the Ombudsman; That drug detection dogs lead to harmful drug use and overdoses at festivals.

Rather than listen to these calls from experts, successive governments and the NSW Police have taken things in the opposite direction - the drug dog program has continued to grow while officers conduct more strip searches in the state than ever before. Despite the evidence, governments have maintained these strategies to try and deter people from taking drugs and prevent deaths.

But the force's own statistics show these tactics are still just as inaccurate as they were in the era of the Ombudsman's review. Routinely, they're even unlawful, with girls as young as 12 being strip searched.

On Friday, findings of yet another inquiry, this time by the NSW Deputy Coroner Harriet Grahame, added to the mountain of evidence calling for drug dogs to be scrapped. It's also called for strip searches to be limited to very serious circumstances and for police to avoid punishing people who are found with drugs for personal use. Ms Grahame said high-visibility and punitive policing operations at festivals had "inherent dangers and few if any benefits".

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Whatsapp Drug detection dogs are seen at the entry to Splendour in the Grass 2017 on July 21, 2017 in Byron Bay, Australia.

But the NSW Liberal Government's attitude to date remains unchanged, reminiscent of successive government reactions to previous inquiries. When asked last month if these changes to policing would be implemented, premier Gladys Berejiklian avoided answering.

The state's Police Minister David Elliott took a more staunch approach this week, defending the practice of strip searching children. Without prompting, he offered that he'd want officers to strip search his own children if they were suspected of breaking the law.

The pill testing pickle

Policing strategies aside, there are two words which have been at the forefront of the debate over how to prevent future deaths over the last few years: pill testing. Its opponents - which include the NSW Government - argue it will encourage young people to take drugs.

"What pill testing does is pick up on irregularities, however pill testing doesn't protect people from the actual substance itself and that's what concerns us as a Government," premier Gladys Berejiklian said.

How does pill testing work overseas? Tom Tilley went to the UK and Holland to find out.

But the Deputy Coroner Grahame found pill testing would reduce deaths if coupled with all the other recommendations. She's called for it to be rolled out only at music festivals, but also at facilities set up across the state that can be accessed at any time.

Lawyers in a concurrent inquiry into the drug ice made similar recommendations last month. They found pill testing trials and decriminalising illicit drugs would reduce the harm we continue to see among people who use them.

The Deputy Coroner didn't make these recommendations based on emotion. They're the result of years of evidence-based research which have all come to the same conclusions on how to prevent more young deaths. Harriet Grahame heard four weeks' worth of evidence from more than 80 witnesses before going to two music festivals, including Splendour in the Grass.

These strategies are a hard sell to the public. Researchers have found many voters have concerns about how harm minimisation strategies would work and whether they'd actually encourage drug use. "And that's where the politicians go, "well I don't want to be putting in place a measure where some kid thinks they're going to be safe and then dies." And that's where it falls over," Professor Peter Miller from Deakin University's Health faculty said.

Everyone is united on one thing - they don't want another young person to die at a music festival. The government and police's solution, which has been in place for years, is simple - if you don't take drugs, nothing bad will happen. But critics say it's clear that approach isn't working.

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Whatsapp Josh Tam and his family

We're about to head into another summer of music festivals where thousands of young people will enjoy these events in the sun. The parents of those who died - like Julie Tam who lost her son Josh over New Year's Eve - are begging for a new approach.

"There's been a lot of time and money put into looking into new approaches so if we come out with lightweight suggestions, we're only going to get lightweight results," Julie said.

We need to look at it with fresh eyes, to take a new approach to ensure that we don't lose the other Josh-es of this world.

The Deputy Coroner agrees. She wants a new approach where the NSW Government doesn't just tell young people to stop taking drugs, and instead finds a way to stop their preventable deaths.