‘There were kids high on drugs climbing up fire towers’

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The call came at 1am from a number Paul did not recognise. His son, Cameron, who was at Reading Festival, was on the line with a garbled story. He was calling from a steward’s phone having lost his own and become separated from his friends.
Paul tried to calm him down. He could ring one of his friends’ parents to help to reunite him with his friends, he suggested. But Cameron was agitated. “Could you come and get me?” he asked. Paul agreed. “Perhaps if I hadn’t been so ambivalent about him going in the first place, I would have told him to stick it out until the morning,” he says.
Cameron, it became clear on the drive back, had not had a bad drugs experience, but his friends had bought drugs and some of them were out of control. When they started playing a game they called the “Ketamine Olympics”, he left them to it. “It’s a shame,” Paul says, “but there is a slightly feral aspect to Reading and my misgivings about him going were not misplaced.”
• Slashed tents and drugs: what really happened at Reading and Leeds
So if he had such misgivings, why did he let him go? Every summer a new cohort, fresh from receiving their exam results, head off, rucksacks clanking with vodka bottles, to celebrate — or drown their sorrows — and break their music festival duck. And it is a rite of passage too for another group: the anxious parents left behind. If your son or daughter is picking up their exam results this week on the way to pitching their tent in a festival field at Reading or Leeds, and you are not able to be a chilled-out parent about it, perhaps it is a tiny crumb of comfort to know you are not alone.
Just how wrong things can go at a festival was made clear this month at Boardmasters in Newquay, Cornwall, the festival by the beach that is favoured by students who have recently taken their A-levels. Police said a small number of people were injured in a “crowd collapse”, but an eyewitness described in The Sunday Times how frightening the experience was as fans of the DJ Sammy Virji were crushed when pressure grew in the crowd in front of the stage before the concert started. Freddie Rudd, 18, saw a boy with a broken leg and two girls trying to pull an unconscious friend to safety. Another young woman described passing out when she was trapped under a friend, and a girl at the front of the crush was seen coughing up blood.
In another sobering story at the weekend, it was reported that just four out of more than a hundred reported sexual offences at Reading and Leeds festivals since 2018 have resulted in prosecutions. Figures shared with The Observer included 16 reported rapes of women at Leeds, none of which have so far led to a prosecution. Festival Republic, which runs Leeds and Reading and is owned by Live Nation, told the paper that decisions regarding prosecution are a matter for the police.
“I do wonder what happened to going away with a few friends to Devon and drinking too much cider. That’s what I did after my GCSEs,” says a friend whose daughter first went to Reading two years ago. “Now it’s turned into five days in a field with thousands of other people and lots of untested substances. As a parent you feel you can’t really say ‘no’ because all their friends are going. But you really wish they weren’t. Then I feel pathetic because if I didn’t want her to go I could just not pay for an expensive ticket.”
Another friend did say “no”, but only to their third child after the eldest two had been to Reading. “We paid him not to go after we said ‘never again’ because of the horrors the other two saw. He’s still cross about it.” One of his daughters pitches in with her memories of the highlights: “Kids high on drugs climbing up the fire towers at the main stage; the medical tent where every single bed seemed to be taken up by someone getting a stomach pumped; flying litre-bottles of wee going between campsites.” It is, as her father puts it drily, “what memories are made of”.
Inevitably parents worry about the small number of high-profile tragedies involving drugs and young people at festivals. In 2022 David Celino, 16, died after taking Ecstasy at Leeds, the sister festival of Reading. Last year his father warned parents that it was “almost certain your child will be offered, tempted to try or have decided they wish to take drugs when at the festival”.
Professor Fiona Measham, chair in criminology at the University of Liverpool, co-authored a study last year that identified 32 potential drug-related deaths at festivals between 2017 and 2023, 18 of them confirmed. Three of those who died were under 18 (two deaths were at Leeds, one at Reading). MDMA, or Ecstasy, was implicated in 15 of the 18 confirmed festival-related drug-related deaths, according to the paper in the journal Drug Science, Policy and Law.
Measham wants a standardised system of data collection so a proper picture can be built of how many drugs casualties there are at festivals and their context. Such data would enable festivals to better monitor customer safety and understand what interventions work. “It isn’t about stigmatising individual festivals but identifying best practice,” she tells me. “It must be so nerve-racking for parents.”
Increasingly hot summers, combined with drug-taking, vigorous exertion, intermittent food and sleep, and limited access to water and shade make music festivals “a particularly high-risk setting in which to take drugs such as MDMA”, she writes in the study. Such risks are further heightened for those under the age of 18, who have less experience of illicit drugs and a resulting lower tolerance, she concluded, adding that because under-18s cannot buy alcohol at festivals it can be easier to obtain drugs than booze.
At the 2021 inquest into the drugs death of Anya Buckley, 17, at Leeds, Melvin Benn, managing director of Festival Republic, said that “drugs are no more of an issue at festivals than in everyday life”.
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Research does not bear out this claim. While 36 per cent of the general population of young adults have tried illegal drugs, Measham says that a survey of festivalgoers in England found that up to 87 per cent of attendees have done so. Her research has found that almost two thirds of festival attendees take drugs when they are there. Measham says the figure is lower for those at family-oriented festivals and considerably higher at some dance festivals. Half of those taking drugs do so in larger quantities than they would elsewhere. “Some of the big electronic dance music festivals employ somebody on a Monday morning whose job it is to walk round the tents that are left and check there aren’t any dead bodies in them,” Measham says. “That has happened at various different festivals.”
On one of the hottest bank holiday weekends on record, in August 2019, Buckley died at Leeds Festival after taking a cocktail of drugs. Following the inquest the senior coroner for Leeds, Kevin McLoughlin, sent a prevention of future deaths report to the city council, which licenses the festival, in which he said: “It is for them to consider whether admitting 16 to 17-year-old teenagers into the festival — when they are not permitted in other licensed premises — amounts to an abdication of responsibility in relation to impressionable and potentially vulnerable teenagers.”
Benn told the inquest that if people under the age of 18 cannot attend legal events, they will find a way to attend illegal events, where there would be greater risk. In a response to the coroner’s prevention of future deaths report, a lawyer on behalf of Festival Republic said that banning under-18s from festivals would be “a disproportionate reaction to the death”.
It has been estimated that one in five of Leeds’ 95,000 attendees (Reading has 105,000) are under 18, but attendees do not have to give their age.
A number of festivals require under-18s to be “supervised” by someone older. “If a festival is going to have under-18s, then I think it’s quite reasonable for them to be properly supervised,” Measham says. “You think about any school trip, what a nightmare it is to supervise 20 under-18-year-olds, never mind 20,000. It’s pretty extraordinary. I worry that at Leeds and Reading they’re left to their own devices.”
She says that there have to be places for young people to go to and have fun. “I think one of the concerns [is that] when people have died at festivals, when you hear the reports of their friends, they panic; they don’t go to get help, they’re worried that they’re going to get into trouble. And then by the time they get medical help it’s too late.”
McLoughlin was also the coroner at the inquest into Celino’s death. He found that West Yorkshire police acknowledged that the festival was “targeted by gangs of criminals who seek to profit by supplying drugs to those attending” and that young people under the age of 18 “are likely to be naive to the risks relating to illicit drugs and hence vulnerable to exploitation”.
He said David and his friends were in this “potentially vulnerable group” and David bought tablets from a dealer and had an adverse reaction to the drugs. Pale, sweating profusely and agitated, he passed through at least one checkpoint manned by event staff. “Lamentably, no staff or volunteers spotted the need to intervene to ask about his wellbeing or offer assistance.” His friends sought advice only from a drug dealer, who said his reaction was “normal”.
• Family pays tribute to ‘beautiful’ boy, 16, who died at Leeds Festival
McLoughlin, speaking shortly before last year’s Leeds Festival, said that “as a tribute to David I would hope that all young people attending the festival … heed the lessons drawn from this painful tragedy”. He warned that unless there was a “hydra-headed campaign to deter illicit drugs being brought on to the festival site, I fear further deaths will occur in circumstances comparable to David Celino’s tragic death”. The coroner added that “national oversight” would enable comparisons to be made between different festivals and their respective demographics, as well as providing useful information as to the breadth and depth of the drug problem at different events.
Despite sniffer dogs, large quantities of drugs make it past the searches at the entrances to festivals, Measham says. She is chair of the trustees of the Loop, a charity that uses a mobile lab to test drugs that have been seized at festivals or surrendered at amnesty bins. This “back of house” testing provides intelligence on drugs that are circulating and enables organisers to issue warnings about drugs that are adulterated, contaminated or stronger than usual. Such testing will take place at Reading and Leeds. “Front of house” testing, where festivalgoers have their drugs tested to see if they are safe, was tried for a couple of years before the last government stopped licensing the tests.
Festival Republic’s policy is that it does not condone illegal drug taking and tells those who attend that the only way to avoid risks is not to take drugs.
Measham thinks festivals could also follow the example of the ones in Australia that supply ample chilled water and cover dance areas with awnings to help to protect against dehydration, a common effect of taking MDMA.
Reading and Leeds have both had problems with antisocial behaviour and disorder, with festivalgoers complaining that they didn’t feel safe and had to leave early. In 2022, the year Celino died, tents were set on fire and missiles were thrown at both events. Hurling bottles filled with urine through the air during “camp wars” is one of Reading’s most unsavoury traditions. Another is defecating in other people’s tents.
In recent years Sunday night, the last at Reading, has been known as “purge night”, in reference to the dystopian 2013 film in which there is an annual night of anarchy in America. In 2022 50 people were ejected from the site by security for disorder.
After the widely reported chaos, camp fires were banned at both festivals and new Air (assistance, information, response) hubs were installed so festivalgoers are never more than 200 metres from contact with staff with radios. Welfare tents were expanded and there are hospitals on the sites.
Last year there appeared to be less disorder, but one TikTok video showed young people in a campsite at Reading cowering with folding chairs on their heads as projectiles flew through the air around them.
The Times asked to interview Benn and also submitted a list of questions about drug taking at Reading and Leeds, antisocial behaviour and whether under-18s should be supervised. Festival Republic responded with the following statement: “Festival Republic works with all stakeholders throughout extensive planning stages, and works closely with the authorities, police, health services, fire services, medical and security teams to mitigate any antisocial behaviour. Additionally, we provide extensive on-site medical and support services to help ensure a safe and enjoyable environment for attendees, in compliance with the event licensing conditions.”
Most people, of course, go to festivals and have a great time. “She had one of the best times of her life,” a friend says of her daughter’s time at Reading. “She loved the music, the silent disco, being there with her friends. She had an amazing time.”
Her daughter also got a blunt talk from her before she went. “I said that a handful of people will die at festivals this year: ‘Make sure it isn’t you.’ I got a lot of eye-rolling, but maybe it informed her decision-making. But I think a greater impression was made by seeing how many casualties there were. That was better than any talk.”