London’s famous Nightclub fabric re-opened on Friday night after a renewal of its contract by Islington council. The night club initially closed on 6th September in 2016 after its licensing contract was refused renewal, as a result of two drug related deaths on the premise earlier that year. The closure sparked huge public backlash and a petition was signed by over 160,000 people with the slogan ‘save Fabric’. It’s not hard to see why there was such an uproar over its forced closure – the nightclub was voted World Number 1 Club in DJ Magazine's "Top 100 Clubs Poll" in 2007 and 2008 and ranked World Number 2 in 2009, 2010 and 2011. The owners of Fabric negotiated a new licencing deal with Sadiq Khan and the council. This allows only over 19s into the nightclub and enforces higher crackdowns on surveillance and ID scanning, after which Sadiq Khan posted on his Facebook page that "We needed to find a common-sense solution that protects both the future of Fabric and the safety of all clubbers – and we have”. Yet, has a solution really been found? It’s impossible to say that any nightclub can be completely drug-free and therefore the policy of upping the age of entry and cracking down on ID does not address the real issues. This is just another example of an arrogant government position that fails to work with the drug problem and instead continues to use old-fashioned tactics for the sake of appearing not to sympathise with drug-culture. The drug culture will never be irradicated and drug deaths do not only occur amongst teenagers, so why can’t the government become more involved in how people are using drugs instead of aimlessly criminalising it. Perhaps Fabric’s new licensing agreement would have been more effective if it had enforced the new, extremely successful method of onsite drugs testing.

Onsite drug testing is a new system carried out by independent groups such as Loop, who understand that drug taking in nightclubs and festivals can never be suppressed. These groups therefore decided to help prevent deaths by making sure that the drugs used are as safe as possible. Secret Garden Party festival made news last year when it introduced its onsite drug testing policy run by Loop, in cooperation with Cambridgeshire Police and Council. This allowed festival goers to have their drugs tested to find out what they contained, their strength and to be advised on how they should be using them. They could choose to hand them over to be disposed of or keep them. The police said they would not target these drug users. An astounding quarter of people who went to have their drugs tested decided to dispose of them as a result of finding that they were unsafe. This is clear evidence of a new approach to a drug’s policy that works, yet right now the government would never support such a progressive approach. Any debate in Parliament about how the UK’s drug problem should be tackled is always shut down by the Prime Minister who claims that the current system is working, although, this is obviously not true. Since 2004, the number of drug related deaths has risen by 44% which is the highest level since comparable recordings began in 1991.

The closure of Fabric is representative of the recent attack on London’s nightlife and entertainment scene which shut nearly half of all London’s nightclubs since 2010, under Boris Johnson’s term as Mayor of London. Let’s hope that Sadiq Khan continues to try and tackle London’s growing nightlife drug culture and will eventually move to introducing onsite drug testing in nightclubs. This is the change needed by London and the whole of the U.K, to stop young people dying preventable deaths.

Megan Clarke-Stock