POLICE drug dogs outside Canberra's Foreshore Festival detected the odour of illegal substances on 128 people yesterday, with 58 admitting to officers they had taken recreational drugs in the past 24 hours.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
or signup to continue reading
Drugs were seized from 10 people during a four-hour blitz at the music festival's main gates, with five people to appear in court and another five referred to drug diversion programs for treatment.
Around 20,000 festival goers attended the sold-out event on the lawns of Old Parliament House yesterday as bands including Salt-N-Pepa, Pnau and Gotye wowed the crowd as rain threatened to once again drench the event.
Staff said they were disappointed some concert-goers had decided to ignore prominent warnings on Foreshore's website that event organisers Kicks Entertainment had invited ACT Policing to ensure drugs did not enter the festival.
''We are serious about stopping illicit substances getting into our festival,'' a spokeswoman for Kicks said.
''Alongside our team of first aid staff, security, sniffer dogs and police are at the event to make sure [people] have a safe day.''
Further warnings appeared in yesterday's The Canberra Times, as well as other local media, as organisers announced a record number of people would attend the event which was a sell out for a fifth straight year.
But as two Victorian Police drug detection labradors trained to work in large crowds started their jobs an hour before the gates opened, some party-goers arriving at the venue were reluctant to join the entry queue, instead forming large groups of worried onlookers standing on the other side of Parkes Place, Barton.
One man, who did not want to reveal his name, told the Sunday Canberra Times he was worried about false positives from the police dogs.
''It's a fit-up, having them here like this,'' he said.
''We just want to go inside without being hassled by cops.''
But ACT Policing told the Sunday Canberra Times officers failed to find an explantation for 60 of the sniffer dog positive results, releasing the people involved immediately after they were searched.
The Australian Federal Police National K9 training teams and a significant number of officers from ACT Policing's criminal investigations team were also involved in the crackdown on illicit substances.
Meanwhile, a stall selling e-cigarettes, which are illegal in Australia, was doing a brisk trade with the blessing of event organisers.
The operator of the ''Health e-Cigarette'' stall hoped the ACT Government would reconsider the device as an alternative to traditional smoking.
''It's heaps safer than smoking,'' he said.
''I don't know why they won't allow them.''