Rather than tackle the many points that have been previously raised, as I can see that they are being dealt with and re-hashed daily, I thought I'd just add a couple of extra ideas. (My personal opinions)
1. Personally, as a client of a pill testing stand, I would not sign anything at a rave because anonymity would be paramount in my mind when dealing with illegal drugs and any 'official' part of the raves organisation. Therefore any kind of disclaimer agreement would have to be 'caveat emptor', and it would have to be made clear that the pill testing stand took NO responsibility for the subsequent consumtion of any chemical tested at the rave. There are conditions under which a disclaimer like this is not lawful, but I'm not sure what those conditions are. I think there are some legal situations under which you are not allowed to give such a disclaimer and must accept part or whole responsibility regardless of the circumstances, due to a duty of care. (That's why doctors have huge medical insurance policies rather than being able to say "The symptoms indicate ... and our clinic is not liable for damage caused etc.")
2. Obviously the legal implications of harm minimisation ventures have been thrashed out before by other organisations under different governments. I think that it's important to be crystal clear on issues such as accountability for the stand presence (eg. if some anti-drug person, or undercover police person gets a bee in their bonnet and gets pissed off, who is in a legal position to tell them to fuck off unless they have reasonable cause to believe/evidence to show that we are breaking the law etc.), the results given, the hygiene involved (ie we're dealing with strong acids and environmentally unfriendly chemicals), etc.
3. I think that information should be collected on the pills tested, even in the most basic form of a proforma sheet for each test, with space to fill in the details or checkboxes to tick that we need to keep track of, a la: shape, size, colour, details, name the pill was sold under, suspected contents, test result etc. The sheet could then be ticked off and filed. By the end of the rave, the pill testing stand would be left with a bunch of empty testers, and a stack of filled in test sheets, so that it could be made clear to the rave organisers that the stand was effective.
4. Testing surface? Would the stand be looking to provide a number (hundreds?) of disposable clean white plastic discs/ plates/ pieces to test on, or would it be possible to wash/reuse porcelain dishes? How can this be accomplished in a clean manner, so that nobody is at risk of acid burns or contamination from chemicals (legal or illegal).
5. Mailing list? Perhaps make available a list where people can offer their email address to find out more information, in the form of a rave post-mortem newsletter which could be written by the organisers of the testing stand. Perhaps this newsletter could contain information about the drugs, the testing process, possible results, links to bluelight, and a breakdown of the overall results of the testing at each particular rave attended? (eg. something like "At Gatecrasher 30/8/00 the Bluelight Testing Stand conducted 208 detailed pill tests. The results showed that 35% of samples tested contained MDxx (XTC-like) substances, 60% of samples tested contained amphetamine (speed-like) substances, and 5% of samples tested contained unknown or unspecified chemicals"...etc.). This way the data collected is put to use, people can be informed, and the inclusion of extra information such as the standard harm minimisation arguments, and the ideas discussed above regarding the 'info pamphlet' could perhaps help to educate people.
Um, I think that's all I've got at the moment, I'll keep tossing around ideas and see what floats to the top. I guess mostly I'm thinking of the testing stand in terms of a science experiment. Going out and collecting emprical data is cool, but it might be worthwhile thinking about what to do with the data. Giving it away as a service is perfect, but records should be kept as a database of pill tests, if only to augment the pillreports site.
BigTrancer
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I don't want to sound paranoid, but just consider how much of what you're writing could help send you to Jail.
