Haven't we worked ourselves into a lather about music festivals and the dangers of party drugs? The government's tough new restrictions on at-risk events and its steadfast refusal to countenance pill-testing have set loose a groundswell of anger.
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Even Wollongong's Lord Mayor Gordon Bradbery got in on the act, passionately addressing a large rally in Sydney last Thursday evening. He decried the government's new rules around security and medical personnel at festivals as ill-conceived.
And, yes, the government's snap ruling on licensing regulations does bear the hallmarks of a reaction that may come with unintended consequences.
It's natural to grieve over the deaths of the five young people who took drugs at music festivals in recent months.
But we seem to forget the much higher toll from the legal drugs such as alcohol and tobacco.
If you extrapolate the Australian Bureau of Statistics figures on the almost 6000 deaths related to alcohol each year, for instance, we lose one person every 90 minutes simply because they ingested too much booze over their lifetimes.
The difference is it's not a sexy headline, there's unlikely to be any votes in it and, let's face it, being legal, alcohol has a bevy of taxes related to it that helps fill government coffers.
Tobacco is even worse, with an estimated one death every 28 minutes across the country - and this in spite of steeply declining smoking rates.
We see plenty of public awareness campaigns targeting smoking and we're inexorably making it harder for smokers to indulge their habits, which is a good thing.
Perhaps a similar education approach ought to be taken with the illicit drugs favoured at music festivals. The Just Say No approach of the 1980s clearly isn't working, so spelling out the dangers of not knowing what you're taking is worth a shot.
So, too, is pill-testing. Why not give young people the opportunity to know what it is they have been sold and, even if it is ecstasy in its pure form, what the risks are?
Just because you're providing medical advice about risks does not, as the government insists, give a green light to drug taking. Rather, it provides an amber warning light which might just save lives.
Taking a bat to music festivals won't stop drug deaths. If anything, it will just shift them out of public view.
