Drugs

A number of UK festivals, including giant double-event Reading and Leeds, have announced plans to introduce safe drug testing spaces for punters this summer.

Head of Live Nation subsidiary Festival Republic, Melvin Benn, who also organises Latitude, V Festival, Wireless, told the Press Association he is being "very proactive" and expects “between six and 10 festivals" to take part this year if he gets the go-ahead from West Yorkshire Police and the National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC).

A new study undertaken at McGill University in Canada has found that music stimulates the same part of the brain as sex, drugs and food.

Test subjects were given a drug called naxedrone, blocking the brain's opioid system, which usually gives pleasure and helps prevent pain. Opiates such as morphine and heroin, along with peptides found in food, to give the same effect by interacting with the brain's opioid receptors.

Tell us a bit about growing up in Canada…
I’m from a really small town in the countryside on the west side of Canada, about a 10-hour drive into the mountains away from Vancouver. It has an exceptional music scene…probably because it’s full of open minded, marijuana-smoking hippies! 

There’s a festival that takes place in the area called Shambhala that was hugely influential for me growing up.