Top doctors at St Vincent’s Hospital are calling on the Premier to scrap strip-searches and adopt pill-testing as the government battles for an answer to drug-related deaths at festivals.

In a letter to Gladys Berejiklian, senior staff at the frontline hospital for drug and alcohol emergency admissions urged her to consider the coroner’s suggestions and ban strip-searches.

St Vincent’s Hospital’s Dr Jennifer Stevens tells Steve Price the overall impact on children is unacceptable.

“What we’ve seen at St Vincent’s is people who have been strip-searched sometimes with no drugs on them at all and the price that those people pay is really quite extraordinary.

“Its a very undignified, a very invasive thing to happen.

“Some of the people who are strip-searched are actually carrying drugs but can we as a society allow people in authority, who are not necessarily feared by these law-abiding kids, to be asking these kids to strip naked and squat on the floor and cough?”

Click PLAY below to hear the full interview

Image: Getty/Matt Jelonek