What can Boomtown 2025 teach us about responding to drug use?
- Fiona Measham and Wendy Teasdill
- 3 hours ago
- 5 min read
By Fiona Measham and Wendy Teasdill
In 2013 Wendy Teasdill’s daughter, Ellie Rowe, died at Boomtown festival as a result of taking a combination of ketamine and alcohol. Neither were taken in excess but the combination was fatal. She did not know what she was doing.
Wendy has always contended that, had the drug checking services of The Loop been available at Boomtown in 2013, as they were in 2017 and 2018, she would be alive today. The Loop is a drug checking charity founded by Professor Fiona Measham in 2012 as a pragmatic response to the fact that, regardless of whether or not drugs are illegal, (some) young people have an urge to take them, including at festivals, and some don’t come home again as a consequence. Measham’s annual English Festival Survey estimates that about half of UK festival-goers take illicit drugs and about a third take ketamine, with higher rates of both at electronic music festivals (Turner and Measham, 2025).
Tragically, Ellie is not the only young person to have died at Boomtown. Since then, there have been four more deaths, the most recent being that of Ben Buckfield, aged 22, in 2024. He took four ecstasy tablets (with each, according to The Loop’s test data, likely to have contained an average of two adult doses of MDMA, if reflective of the current UK market) and he died later in hospital. At the inquest for Ben’s death the coroner, Nicholas Walker, came down heavily on the festival. In his Prevention of Future Deaths report, he wrote: `I am concerned that an unchecked, open and free trade in unlawful drugs (at Boomtown) will create a risk of future deaths.’
This reaction is completely understandable. Nicholas Walker is working within the framework of the law and, theoretically, a crackdown makes sense. Boomtown duly upped their security measures, increased their welfare services and harm reduction advice: alongside The Loop, organisations such as the Samaritans, TLC Welfare, Safer Spaces, Cocaine Anonymous, and a new organisation called Stop Ketamine UK were prominently signposted and Oxfam stewards were giving out water at the main stages. Behind the scenes, Tictac Communications – a drug identification service – was testing substances confiscated at the gates – with the capacity to issue alerts if dodgy drugs were identified (none were issued).
An online piece in the Times just hours after the festival had finished painted a very different picture. An undercover reporter went to Boomtown and reported witnessing multiple drug deals, described dealers patrolling the site openly advertising their wares and even taking contactless payments. While not denying that this was what the reporter witnessed, it seemed a strangely unbalanced piece of journalism. Neither Measham, Teasdill nor any of our group attending Boomtown to deliver their annual panel (on festivals, drugs and safety) saw any open dealing throughout six days and nights onsite, but the authors did see increased (and potentially counter-productive) security.
Each year the panel audience grows as people eagerly share stories of their own losses, their concerns about friends falling into harmful patterns of drug use, and how to support and mobilise together to respond to the UK’s record drug-related deaths. For the last two years the panel has welcomed Ben on stage as well, whose best friend Aliya died from an MDMA overdose in the summer of 2023, at the age of 17. His powerful speech, all the more remarkable for experiencing a bereavement at such a young age, is shared below in full.
The Boomtown harm reduction services are excellent. They would be further fortified, however, by the reintroduction of the successful festival drug checking service previously delivered there by The Loop (Measham and Simmons, 2022). Drug checking allows young people to bring any substances of concern for forensic analysis and to receive test results as part of an anonymous, individually tailored consultation with a health professional. Festival goers did so, when they had the opportunity, with enthusiasm and responsibility. If they were told a substance was mixed with adulterants or contaminants they could bin it, and over half did. Conversely, if the substance was high strength they would be warned about this and given actionable advice about dosage, moderation and particularly risky polydrug combinations. Over half reported taking smaller doses in future. Unfortunately, the previous Conservative Government put festival drug checking on hold and the festival awaits a reversal to this decision by the new Government.
Some people might view festival drug checking as condoning drug taking. However, Boomtown hosts a concentration of young people predominantly ranging in age from 18 to 35 – the age-group most likely to experiment with illicit drugs – so The Loop is dealing with that reality. We know from Measham and Simmon’s (2022) research that performative policing at the gates pushes festival attendees into the arms of onsite dealers who are more likely than offsite dealers to mis-sell cheaper and adulterated products, and the people who profit most from it are organised crime groups.
Per capita, drug-related deaths per year continue to escalate, way beyond the boundaries of a festival. Deaths from cocaine, ketamine, MDMA and other party drugs go up and up whilst prevalence remains fairly stable, as people seek to find ways to survive in this crazy world. So far this year there have been 2,890 drug-related deaths and the number is expected to exceed 6,000. Cooney and Measham’s (2023) research estimates that there are about five festival-related drug-related deaths per year. Ketamine use has increased in the twelve years since Ellie’s death at an alarming yet silent rate as the price has fallen alongside availability and dependency increasing. The medical services are mostly ill-equipped and under-funded to deal with this crisis, and the deaths of dependent users are dismissed with almost universal disdain by the police. There are heartbreaking stories from families who have lost beloved sons and daughters to this crisis and yet the police, public health, schools and universities do not have the resources to address it.
Rather than vilifying Boomtown, we feel a lot could be learnt from them. Harm reduction services, drugs education and progressive pathways into treatment all could be expanded and universal access to drug checking could be rolled out across the UK. Healthcare services are already overstretched and these measures would help to relieve that pressure. Rather than waiting for an overdose or poisoning from unregulated drugs to occur and then calling in emergency services, drug checking can both identify and moreover, communicate that increased risk directly to drug using communities and a festival is a perfect place to do this.
As we come to the end of this year’s festival season, we hope to see all our children come home safely.
Wendy Teasdill is a yoga teacher/ trainer/ writer. She has run the yoga tent in the healing field of Glastonbury Festival for the last 25 years.
Professor Fiona Measham is Chair in Criminology at the University of Liverpool, founder and Chair of The Loop, and co-founder and Director of The Loop Australia.
The Loop Drug Checking Service can be found at: www.wearetheloop.org
References
Cooney, T. and Measham, F. (2023), Counting and Accounting for Drug-related Deaths at UK Music Festivals 2017-2023: A Commentary, Drug Science, Policy and Law, https://doi.org/10.1177/20503245231211444
Measham, F. and Simmons, H. (2022), Who uses drug checking services? Assessing uptake and outcomes at English festivals in 2018, Drugs, Habits and Social Policy, special issue on drug checking, 23 (3), 188-199. https://doi.org/10.1108/DHS-02-2022-0008
Turner, T. and Measham, F. (2025, forthcoming), Into The Woods: Contextualising atypical intoxication by young adults in music festivals and nightlife tourist resorts, in Conroy, D. and Measham, F. (ed.s), Young Adult Drinking Styles: Current Perspectives on Research, Policy and Practice, 2nd Edition, London: Palgrave Macmillan.