Josh Tam might still be alive today if he had access to pill checking, his family believe.

The Queenslander died in 2018, at just 22, after taking MDMA at a music festival in New South Wales.

According to the Pennington Institute, more Australians die of drug overdoses than in car accidents.

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A NSW coronial inquest into Tam’s death, and five other overdose fatalities at NSW music festivals, recommended that the state government fund a drug checking service – a decades-old internationally common practice allowing drug users to voluntarily test their substances at mobile or fixed clinics, after counselling by a health professional – in order to save lives. Participating doctors told the inquest that it served as a warning of new drug threats on the market

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