In a groundbreaking move, the ACT Government is in talks about legally providing drug testing at a major Canberra music festival, according to the Ted Noffs Foundation.

Around 20,000 are expected to attend Spilt Milk in November and if approved it will be the first time a recent government has allowed a legal pill testing service inside festival grounds.

The Ted Noffs Foundation works with disadvantaged youth struggling with addiction and has been lobbying state and territory governments to allow spectrometer technology at festivals since 2014.

"It's fantastic news. We've now heard that the ACT Government and the Chief Minister himself are looking at pill testing for the end of this year at Spilt Milk," the Foundation's chief executive Matt Noffs said.

The technology is widely used across Europe and tests whether illicit drugs are safe to consume, yet it is illegal in Australia.

"People have access to a doctor in a tent with other clinicians, chemists, counsellors and peer educators and line up to have their drugs tested to determine what is inside and how dangerous they could be," Mr Noffs said.

Sorry, this video has expired The rise of synthetic drugs

Illicit drugs at music festivals

Australians are among the highest users of the drug ecstasy in the world.

Widely varying in purity and frequently laced with harmful chemicals, many users are unaware of what they are taking.

Users discarded 25 per cent of tested substances at the UK's Secret Garden Party in 2016. ( Flickr: boodoo )

Those risks can prove fatal — 2015 and 2016 have been among the deadliest festival seasons to date.

Dr Lynn Magor-Blatch, the executive officer at the Australasian Therapeutic Communities Association and professor at the University of Wollongong, has been working in drug prevention for 38 years.

She said Australia is lagging behind other countries in minimising drug-related harm.

"Certainly what we've seen from the evidence overseas is that if pills are tested and found to be unsafe people don't take them," she said.

"People want to stay alive. If drugs are bad they will chuck them out and don't go on and then find something else."

Australia's National Drug Strategy of Harm Minimisation supports pill testing and says 25 per cent of tested substances were discarded by users at the United Kingdom's Secret Garden Party in 2016.

Drug experts argue providing testing will not encourage or increase drug use, but prevent it.

"It doesn't mean that we are condoning drug use at all. It's about achieving a balance between the risks and benefits," Dr Magor-Blatch said.

"In research overseas, testing has changed the black market as well."

It can also be the first step in someone's path to recovery.

"It actually has a positive effect — there's an opportunity for an early intervention, somebody to be actually talking to them, providing them with information and to get help," she said.

Festivalgoers being checked by sniffer dogs as they arrive at a venue. ( ABC News: Grant Wynne )

Call for other governments to act

There are calls for other state and territory governments to adopt the practice.

"I absolutely commend the ACT Government for moving along this pathway and being the first to put up their hands to look at doing this and I hope other governments will do likewise," Dr Magor-Blatch said.

Organisers of the annual Yours and Owls Festival in Wollongong said they would be open to the introduce measure at their September event if it was allowed in NSW.

"We are definitely interested in exploring the idea. It's very important that people are as safe as they can be," Yours and Owls organiser Ben Tillman said.

"It's obviously a conversation that needs to include the police and the NSW Government so there's no confusion and people know that it's okay to use the tests without incriminating themselves and ending up in jail."

Mr Tillman said overdoses, hospitalisations or deaths are the worst case scenario for everyone involved.

"The fact that drugs are illegal is not discouraging anybody. People are going to do what they want to do," he said.

He says drug testing would better prepare event organisers to make festivals safer.

"We have to do what we can in the meantime so that if drugs contain toxic chemicals, or not what a person thought they were taking, people can bin them," he said.

In a statement, a spokesman for ACT Minister for Health and Wellbeing Meegan Fitzharris said: "The ACT Government has established a working group to consider all of the health, legal and other implications of pill testing in the ACT."

The minister said it is illegal to take, possess or supply illicit drugs and the community expects the Government to take a considered approach to this complex issue.