NSW will have three top experts put their heads together to find solutions to drug deaths at festivals after two lives were cut short - but pill testing will remain off the table.
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The three-person panel will consist of the NSW police commissioner, the state's chief medical officer and the chair of the Independent Liquor and Gaming Authority.
It comes days after two people in their early 20s died, three more revellers were taken to hospital in a critical condition and hundreds of others fell ill at the weekend's Defqon.1 music festival in Penrith.
NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian said the panel would consider harsher penalties for drug dealers and safety precautions for festival organisers but she resisted calls from political, social and medical circles to consider pill testing.
Greens senator Mehreen Faruqi said the government's stubbornness made her "blood boil" because lives could be saved.
"Death after tragic death, the NSW government sits there with your fingers in your ears, terrified of being accused of being 'soft on drugs'," she said in a statement on Monday.
"The war on drugs has comprehensively failed."
"Get out of the way."
Australian Associated Press
