Spain’s Medusa Sunbeach Festival has introduced an on-site location where attendees can test if their drink has been spiked.
The six-day house, techno, and hard dance event, which returned to Valencia’s Playa Cullera from August 7-12, featured a dedicated tent with test kits that can detect GHB, a colorless and odorless psychoactive substance that has gained notoriety as a “date-rape” drug in the country in recent years, Reuters reports.
The so-called “violet point” marks the first harm reduction service of its kind at a Spanish festival. Samples are taken from attendees’ drinks with droppers and placed in a test tube with a chemical reagent. Samples containing GHB turn bright red, and festival protocol mandates that emergency services and law enforcement be contacted in the case of a positive test.
The tent was also staffed with social workers to respond to possible cases of gender-based violence or sexual abuse, including the Valencia women’s network’s Rosana Galvez, who told Reuters the tests were a way to prevent sexual assaults.
Other violet points are popping up at concerts, fairs, and other public gatherings in Spain as part of an initiative from the Spanish Equality Ministry to aid victims and witnesses of sexual harassment and gender-based violence. They derive their name from the color purple’s association with the international feminist and gender-based equality movement.
Elsewhere around the world, a new law requiring bars and nightclubs to offer patrons “test strips, stickers, straws and other devices designed to detect the presence of controlled substances in a drink” took effect in California last month.
Drink spiking was also made a specific criminal offense in the UK last month. Though drink spiking was already a crime in the country, the new legislation aims to “strengthen the law to improve the police response to spiking,” according to an official briefing from the King’s Speech.
The 10th edition of Medusa Sunbeach Festival featured headliners such as Carl Cox, Richie Hawtin, Amelie Lens, and more, who performed for a crowd of 56,000 people.
Featured image from Medusa Sunbeach Festival.
