Fans Urge for Drug Testing and Harm Reduction at Electric Forest and Other Major Festivals

A Bunk Police Reddit thread called for all major festivals including Electric Forest to dedicate efforts to on-site drug testing.

Electric Forest is widely regarded as one of the most celebrated festivals in the States. It always touts an impressive lineup, replete with EDM heavy hitter after heavy hitter. It’s an immersive space of art and nature, and its exhibits are often both politically and spiritually charged (i.e. little pop-ups regarding tree spirits, humanitarianism, or even reincarnation). It’s a “forest family” as the attendees call it, or kindred spirits vibrating in the whimsy of the woods.

Yet despite the praise and fandom, fomentations concerning the lack of drug testing and harm reduction efforts at this year’s EF have flooded Twitter, per some of the ruffled feathers in the Tweets below. According to fans, a slew of overdoses due to fentanyl-laced mushrooms spurred a collective rethinking of policy and procedure. Nonprofit organizations such as Bunk Police and DanceSafe were allegedly dismissed by EMT staff in the wake of what Bunk Police deemed, at the time, to be a “mass overdose.” Per the Reddit article, six individuals were resuscitated by CPR and/or Narcan and all claimed to have consumed drugs sold onsite.

“The Bunk Police have been attending Electric Forest and providing testing-based harm reduction in a ‘guerilla’ format since 2011,” wrote the Bunk Police via the thread. The narrator continued: ”This is all we can get away with, as the event promoters prevent us (or anyone else for that matter) from doing more… to the point of even removing us and DanceSafe from the grounds a few years back [in 2017].”

The Bunk Police furthered their claims with: “We distribute thousands of test kits every year. Most of these kits contain 100 uses, meaning that, in total, we’ve placed the ability to perform over a million tests in the hands of EF attendees over the past decade… Because of our efforts, either through a visit to our tent or through a campsite visit by one of our staff, a very high percentage of EF attendees have a discussion about testing-based harm reduction every time Electric Forest has occurred.”

Although Electric Forest has yet to comment on the Bunk Police’s accusations, we can all do better in our pursuit of higher consciousness, greater compassion, and heightened thoughtfulness. The safety of the forest family should, and always will come first and foremost.

To read the full Reddit article, see below.