Thousands of young Canadians en route to Antigonish, Nova Scotia for the Evolve Music and Awareness Festival had quite the scare when it was announced that the event might be cancelled because its insurer backed out at the last minute, reports
CBC News.
This is because the 4-day festival, which set to begin Thursday night, offers free illicit drug testing for attendees. Under this policy, any ticketholder can request a primary and secondary litmus test to determine the chemical makeup of such substances as LSD, MDMA and speed.
While the festival forbids illegal drug use, it acknowledges its pervasiveness and hopes to prevent the intake of tainted ingredients, which can lead to psychotic behavior, violence and death.
But not all parties agree with the practice, with some arguing that it contradicts a zero drug policy. One such entity,
Wynward Insurance Group, withdrew its coverage of the event, causing Evolve’s festival producer Jonas Colter to tell the
CBC, "At this point, with the underwriter pulling the liability insurance, we can't have a festival."
Quickly after this news was announced, Colter received a “flurry of calls” from supporters, and even had another insurer step up to the plate.
"It turned out that one of our musicians, their family has an insurance company and they actually specialize in insuring volatile events that sometimes other insurance providers won't touch," Colter told
CBC Radio. He didn’t provide any further details, except that the policy entailed $2 million in liability insurance through Lloyd’s.
To his dismay, however, Colter still had to cancel the drug testing services.
“It’s like an elephant in the room,” Colter told the
Toronto Star. “Nobody wants to talk about it, but we decided to.”
While Colter is disappointed at this outcome, many Canadians applaud the insurers for standing by their anti-drug stance and not engaging in what could be seen as tacit approval of illicit activity.
