Pill-testing has been banned from schoolies. Here’s what teens really think about it

1 day ago 4

By Stephanie Felasina

November 21, 2025 — 5.02pm

Owen graduates from high school on Friday, and says his parents are nervous sending him off to schoolies on the Gold Coast.

“They won’t be around me, so they don’t really know what’s happening, and they want me to have a good time without having to worry about alcohol and drugs,” he said.

Unlike last year’s school-leavers, the graduating cohort of 2025 will not have access to pill testing services set up at the schoolies hub at Surfers Paradise.

In 2024, the temporary site run by CheQpoint went ahead as schoolies attendees descended on the beachside strip, despite opposition from the then just-elected Queensland LNP government, and tested 27 samples.

In the year since, CheQpoint’s services were defunded, and then banned. The state government’s stance was clear: There is no safe way to take drugs.

As recently as last week, Health Minister Tim Nicholls repeated those eight words when asked about drug-testing at schoolies.

CheQpoint lost its government funding earlier this year, with laws later introduced to ban their work entirely.

But for Owen, the situation wasn’t as clear-cut.

“It feels weird to take away something like that [pill testing],” he said. “It feels like kind of a safe thing for students and people to have around, so they can make better choices.”

For some young adults, such as 17-year-old Lara, the government’s tough stance has resonated.

“I think the message the government is trying to send is that they don’t want people to do it … that’s why they’re taking it away,” she said.

“There’s no point in testing it if you’re going to take it anyway.”

An evaluation of CheQpoint’s drug-checking services found 44 per cent of people surveyed did not use the substance they had tested.

High school graduate Harris said he believed removing the facilities would not prevent people from taking drugs, but would take away potentially life-saving knowledge.

“Sometimes having enough information can be the difference between taking a pill that’s three-out-of-10 bad, or a pill that is 10-out-of-10 bad,” he said.

For him, the choice felt like a step in the wrong direction. “It’s annoying. Like, why did we not get it, but they did?”

He understood it might not be the case for everyone, but for some young people, the results from pill testing could save lives.

“For an avid drug user, not being able to test [pills] might not be a big deal,” he said.

“But for me or any other 17-year-old kid, if there was something crazy in it like fent [fentanol], I just wouldn’t touch it.”

As Brisbane’s year 12s make the trip down the M1 this weekend, the political debate rages on, but the government has indicated little appetite for budging.

In a statement to this masthead’s questions about his approach, Deputy Premier Jarrod Bleijie accused Labor of “rolling out the welcome mat to drug dealers”.

“As a father of two young adults and a teenager, I want to do everything we can to protect the health and safety of our young people,” he said.