CanTEST is located inside the City Community Health Centre. Photo: James Day.
Australia’s first fixed-site pill testing and harm reduction service will now continue to operate until at least December 2024 after securing another 18 months of government funding.
The landmark health and drug testing facility CanTEST first began as a six-month pilot in July 2022 and in June it was confirmed it would remain open. Since its opening, the service has tested more than 1000 samples.
CanTEST is operated by Directions Health Services in partnership with Pill Testing Australia and the Canberra Alliance for Harm Minimisation and Advocacy (CAHMA), and funded by ACT Health.
“We’re coming off the back of a failed war on drugs, where society has been taught a lie that drug use is safer in secret. It’s why the work is so rewarding for our staff,” Directions Health COO Stephanie Stephens said.
“They get to have the most honest and interesting conversations with people from every walk of life, who genuinely want to be informed so they can protect themselves or their friends.”
Directions Health Services CEO Bronwyn Hendry says the airline seats she bought from Dirty Jane’s were put in to help CanTest have a purposely less clinical design. Photo: James Day.
Ms Stephens said one of the most consistent pieces of feedback she receives is that people want the service to be open more frequently for people to use. Currently, it’s open from 3 pm to 6 pm on Thursdays and 6 pm to 9 pm on Fridays.
She said the response from visitors to the facility has been generally positive, with staff praised for their friendliness. The facility has built up a team of familiar faces, some of whom have their own lived experience of drug dependence, which has informed their approach and understanding.
While CanTEST’s foot traffic often waxes and wanes with young festivalgoers trying to plan out a safer weekend – the service extended its opening times during events such as Groovin the Moo and Spilt Milk – the facility has also begun to see more individuals with drug dependence issues.
“Our staff has a flexible response for every person who comes in, which is based on their familiarity with the service, what drug they’re using, and how they’re doing it,” Ms Stephens said.
“We’ll often have people come in to suss us out with their shoulders up, but we do everything we can to show that it’s a ‘we’, not ‘us and them’ kind of environment.”
The facility’s influence has been recognised all around Australia, with states such as Queensland and NSW discussing the development of their own fixed-site services. Ms Stephens recently shared her wisdom from running the service with Ministers in the South Australian parliament.
“So many parents of young people really want to have services like this in their own region. I hear this especially from those who are the parents of, or know children that have been seriously injured or died from an overdose,” she said.
While many young people are coming to CanTEST for support and advice, CAHMA CEO Chris Gough said there was still some reluctance among older people, though he hoped trust would improve once the Drugs Dependence (Personal Use) Bill comes into action later this year.
Although the service is completely anonymous, he said older people with drug dependencies have been particularly distrustful of the institution, which he believes is because they are influenced by the longstanding criminalised approach to substance use.
As an individual with lived experience of heroin abuse, Mr Gough said opioid users find it especially difficult to come in due to this, as well as the will it takes to give up the small amount they have of the substance required for testing.
“You wake up physically sick every day and begin a marathon trying to scrape together a couple hundred bucks just to relieve that pain with the next high,” he said.
“With all that going on it makes it hard to go seek help from a service like CanTEST, and potentially have to wait for a long time with this uneasy feeling that you’ll run into the authorities.”
CanTEST is located in the same building as the Needle and Syringe Program (NSP), which provides free safe equipment for using and testing a substance. It is also a place to obtain naloxone, which is used in case of an overdose.
CanTEST is located on the ground floor of the City Community Health Centre, 1 Moore Street. It’s open from Thursday 3 pm to 6 pm and Friday from 6 pm to 9 pm.
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