Police seized over 3,300 pingers at Boomtown this year

Police seized over 3,300 MDMA pills at Boomtown this year, figures obtained by The Tab reveal.

With a record 67,000 revellers at the Hampshire festival this year, that's one pill confiscated for every 20 people at the festival.

It was three times more than the number of pills seized at 2018's festival, as police made 43 drug related arrests, up on 35 in 2018.

Alongside the pingers, police confiscated almost 2,000 tabs of acid and nearly 500g of ket.

The Freedom of Information request by The Tab reveals that police confiscated:

• 1,912 LSD tabs

• 3 Xanax bars

• 6g of mushrooms

• 18 NOS canisters

• Just over 420g of weed

• 215g of MDMA crystals

• 203.75g of cocaine

• 37.5 diazepam pills

• 480.5g of ketamine

The figures don't include people who had a small amount of drugs and were simply kicked out.

17 people were prosecuted as a result of 2018's seizures, but statistics for 2019 were unavailable.

Before this year's festival, drugs charity The Loop announced they'd been forced to withdraw their on-site drug testing facilities for festival-goers.

The service, which allowed people to test whether their drugs were dodgy, had been on offer since 2017, was cancelled last minute due to "legal complexities."

However, drugs were still tested behind the scenes and alerts for high-strength pills were distributed.

In August, police said the festival went well, and that crime was low for the amount of people attending. "This year’s Boomtown Fair went very well and highlighted the effective partnership working between event management, security companies, stewards, medical staff and the police," Hampshire Constabulary Chief Inspector Mark Lewis said.

Police refused to reveal how much Boomtown paid them to police the event after being asked by The Tab.

These figures pale in comparison to Creamfields 2018, where 5,016 MDMA pills were confiscated, along with 1,000 grams of ket.

"The biggest single seizure was 27.2g of MDMA crystal, 190 MDMA pills, 11.20g of cocaine and 24.06g of ketamine from one individual," police told The Tab in response to a Freedom of Information request.

Meanwhile, at Wales' Green Man, a measly amount of drugs were seized across the last two years. Four "very small amounts" of Cannabis, and "19 very small bags" of unidentified white powder (pictured) were the extent of confiscations:

The Tab contacted Boomtown Fair for comment.

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