The Premier's office had not seen the draft recommendations, which were leaked weeks ahead of Ms Grahame handing down her findings into an inquest examining deaths at NSW events. But Ms Berejiklian stressed that her "position on illicit drugs is very well known". "I went to the election with this position and I won’t be changing it. There is no such thing as a safe illegal drug," she said. The draft recommendations follow a three-week coronial inquest into the circumstances surrounding the deaths of Alex Ross-King, 19, Joshua Tam, 22, Nathan Tran, 18, Callum Brosnan, 19, Joseph Pham, 23, and Diana Nguyen, 21, who all died after consuming MDMA at music events between December 2017 and January this year. Jennie Ross-King, the mother of Central Coast teenager Alex, said Ms Grahame's recommendations reflected the evidence of the experts and acknowledged the points of view of the families who contributed their experiences to the judicial inquiry.

Jennie Ross-King, whose 19-year-old daughter Alex died after taking MDMA, welcomed the recommendations. Credit:AAP "They're very comprehensive and common sense. From everything we heard, it's based on the facts, the evidence, the information that was brought to the coroner," Ms Ross-King said. Despite Ms Berejiklian's position, a major Christian organisation says it would be willing to conduct pill testing on church grounds. Reverend Simon Hansford, the moderator of the Uniting Church in NSW and the ACT, said the organisation had congregations across Sydney offering to make church sites available if the government moved to provide community-based pill testing. “Pill testing can be the first opportunity someone has to talk to a health professional about drug use and its inherent risks," Mr Hansford said.

“This advocacy is not just theoretical; we would be willing to work with the authorities to provide a place where drugs can be checked, as part of a wider effort to curb unnecessary deaths at music festivals and elsewhere.” Nathan Tran, Diana Nguyen and Callum Brosnan died after attending music festivals in NSW. Credit:AAP Uniting, the service and advocacy arm of the church, has run the Medically Supervised Injecting Centre in Kings Cross for almost two decades. According to the National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre’s Australian Drug Trends Report to be released today, 45 per cent of ecstasy users reported testing their drugs, with 36 per cent saying they had done so in the previous year. Loading

The findings were drawn from NDARC's ecstasy and related drugs reporting system, which collated in-depth interviews with 797 Australians who had used ecstasy or other stimulants at least six times in the previous six months. Their median age was 22 years old. Dr Amy Peacock, who led the survey, warned that DIY test kits on which most participants relied would at best tell them whether their sample contained the drug they were testing for, not whether it contained a dangerous dose or impurities. “These findings reinforce previous research that people who use illicit drugs want information about the content of their substances,” Dr Peacock said. The upper house voted last month to overturn the government's licensing regime for music festivals, in a move Ms Berejiklian called “grossly irresponsible” after a series of drug-related deaths last year. Ms Berejiklian said legislation to reinstate a festival safety system "overturned by an alliance of Labor, Greens and Shooters’ MPs" will be introduced to Parliament on Wednesday.

She said the legislation would restore the requirement for music festivals deemed high-risk to prepare a safety management plan. “Labor, the Greens and the Shooters took away these regulations and left nothing in their place. This legislation will rectify that,” Ms Berejiklian said. “The situation is clear – music festivals identified as high-risk under the former licensing system will continue to be high-risk under this law. These laws provide absolute certainty for the festival industry. "They impose the same requirements on high-risk music festivals that were in place under the regulations that were disallowed by Labor, the Greens and the Shooters." Loading

Ms Berejiklian said the legislation would reinstate the requirement to develop safety management plans in consultation with NSW Health, police and the Independent Liquor & Gaming Authority. This requirement would apply to 11 of more than 90 festivals in NSW, she said. “I now call on Labor, the Greens and the Shooters to do the right thing – put aside politics and work with the government to safeguard the health of young people," Ms Berejiklian said. "The festival season is upon us, so urgent action is required." Greens MP and drug law reform and harm reduction spokeswoman Cate Faehrmann said the Coroner’s report must be urgently adopted by the Premier if she was serious about saving lives