But the very reason I’m opposed to the downgrading of these laws is the same reason, I’d like to see a trial of pill testing in NSW: It’s designed to save lives.

NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian has so far been less than enthusiastic about a pill-testing trial.

“Pill testing doesn't deal with the issues of overdoses ... it doesn't deal with the horrible combination of drugs and alcohol," she has said

Ms Berejiklian told a press conference that young people are dying when there's too much ecstasy in their system combined with overheating and dehydration and that the government is working to improve education, provide better access to medical treatment and more advice at festivals.

I do think there is some validity in the argument that pill testing could be seen as offering some support to illicit drug-taking. 

But that’s just not a good enough reason not to give it a try. Heroin remains illegal, despite the introduction of safe injecting rooms, but these facilities are seen as a success.

If the proponents are right, offering pill testing at music festivals might save some lives. Five people have now died in four months after taking drugs at NSW festivals.

That's five people who just went out to have some fun and didn’t make it home.

The thing about music festivals is that they’re primarily the stomping ground of the young, and the problem with some young people is that they think they’re bulletproof. Or they just don’t think at all.

The young – and yes, I’m generalising – can still prone to impulsiveness. Life and maturity hasn’t always taught them to think critically or to see the long-term consequences.

We can tell them until we’re blue in the face that something in dangerous – and even potentially deadly – but sometimes that message just doesn’t sink in.

It’s said that it takes a village to raise a child, and sometimes that village has to step up and keep protecting that child even when they’re technically an adult.

Who knows, maybe as word spreads about what kinds of nasty garbage finds its way into a batch of pills produced in some grimy backyard shed, taking the stuff will become increasingly unappealing?

I’m not favour of breaking the law, but I’m horrified by the thought of a young life being cut drastically short when the means to do something to prevent this death exists.

Look at pill testing not as a way to break the law, but as a last-ditch attempt to save a life.

Ms Berejiklian says she is concerned that “something like pill testing could actually have the opposite effect”.

"In the absence of evidence, we need to keep setting out the strongest message that taking these illicit drugs kills. We ask young people not to do it,” she has said.

The Premier may be right, but the reality is that we won’t know whether pill testing works until it has been trialled.

How can we make assumptions about whether something works or not if we have never tried it?

Alex Ross-King was just 19 when she collapsed and later died at the FOMO music festival in Sydney at the weekend. Post-mortem tests are still being carried out, but it is believed she had taken MDMA.

In the wake of her death, Ms Berejiklian has argued that pill-testing would give young people a false sense of security.

She may well be right, but I think pill-testing could also be considered a last line of defence.

We don’t have to back off on the war against drugs, but while we are confronting a new generation of cheap-than-alcohol pills and new attitudes to taking them, we can’t turn our backs on something that could save lives.

Why don’t we give pill-testing a go? Truly, what have we got to lose? 

If the whole thing is a dismal failure, at least NSW was open-minded enough to give it a go, and to establish clearly whether there is any value in offering pill testing.

A trial will provide firm evidence on whether or not there is any value in pill-testing, and help our politicians to craft legislation that is based on more than gut instinct and personal biases.

I suspect we will find that lives are actually saved by pill testing.