Warning issued over high-strength pills and fake MDMA in circulation after Secret Garden Party

UK harm reduction group The Loop is warning festivalgoers over pills in circulation in the UK after being detected at Secret Garden Party this past weekend.

Through its on-site drug checking facility at the Cambridgeshire festival, The Loop found a series of high/inconsistent strength, fake and missold pills. Teddy bear-shaped pills were found to vary in strength by as much as 80mg of MDMA, with an average of 180mg, 1.5x the common adult dose. Red “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle” tablets were found to contain 2.5 times the usual dose of MDMA with approximately 280mg. As always, The Loop advises to “go slow, stay low”, and “take quarter, sip water”. You can see details of The Loop’s caution surrounding these pills below. 

The Loop also raised a caution about fake orange SoundCloud pills found to contain moulding material “plaster of Paris”. The Loop also found N-ethylpentylone, which looks much like MDMA, in circulation. Its short-term effects are similar to MDMA, but this could be followed by 12-48 hours of insomnia and, in same cases, psychosis. 

The Loop is confident these tablets will be in circulation throughout the UK festivals this season.

After this year’s edition of Manchester festival Parklife, The Loop issued warnings about large differences in MDMA dosage among pills tested on site. At that event however, they found fewer instances of other substances being sold as MDMA, an improvement from 2021’s harmful trend towards fake MDMA. 

Stay up-to-date with The Loop’s latest drug warnings via their social media. Revisit Ed Gillett’s in-depth 2021 feature on the urgent necessity of the UK government adopting harm-reduction policies.