NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian won't budge on pill testing despite an emotional plea from the family of a teenager who died of a suspected overdose at a music festival and a savage attack from the Greens.
Alex Ross-King, 19, died after she was rushed from the FOMO festival at Parramatta Park to Westmead Hospital on Saturday night.
It was the fifth such death in NSW since mid-September.
Noffs Foundation chief executive Matt Noffs says he's presented evidence to the premier and she should listen.
"A significant majority of Australians and people from NSW want this to happen, listen to them, don't make this an election issue, because you will lose," he said in Sydney on Monday.
But Ms Berejiklian doesn't think pill testing can save lives.
"Pill testing doesn't deal with the issues of overdoses ... it doesn't deal with the horrible combination of drugs and alcohol," she told reporters.
Ms Berejiklian argues young people are dying when there's too much ecstasy in their system combined with overheating and dehydration.
The premier says the government is working to improve education, provide better access to medical treatment and more advice at festivals.
Alex's grandmother on the weekend pleaded with the Liberal leader.
"Please can we have this pill testing done," Denise Doig told Network Ten.
Australian Greens leader Richard Di Natale on Monday said the latest death was "entirely preventable" and he suggested the NSW government had blood on its hands.
"At the start of the festival season ... I said that there would be tragic loss of life occurring if governments don't put in place pill testing and that politicians would have blood on their hands if they failed to introduce pill testing," Senator Di Natale told reporters in Melbourne.
"Had they (festival goers) been given the opportunity to test those pills there's every chance they'd be alive right now."
NSW Opposition leader Michael Daley criticised the premier for "cementing her feet to the floor" and not even considering pill testing.
Mr Daley again promised if Labor won government in March it would hold a drug summit where "nothing will be off the table".
Doctors groups and medical academics are increasingly demanding trials in Australia while pointing to harm reduction in countries where testing is available such as the Netherlands, Switzerland, Austria, Belgium, Germany, Spain and France.
Pill testing allows people to anonymously submit samples for on-the-spot analysis to determine their composition.
Australian Associated Press
