Drug checking
People intending to take drugs provide a small sample to the testing service (often less than a single dose).
[3] The services also provide public health information about drug use, new psychoactive substances and trends at a national level.
In November 2021 New Zealand became the first country to make drug checking fully legal after previously allowing this under temporary legislation.
An example is the testing at BOOM festival in Portugal where drug testers are legally allowed to handle samples.
Examples of this model include WEDINOS[20] (the Welsh Emerging Drugs & Identification of Novel Substances Project) and DIMS in the Netherlands.
Reagent testing uses chemical indicators that show a colour change in the presence of particular drugs.
This can provide a false sense of security when illicit drugs are deliberately adulterated to fool reagent tests.
Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy is a rapid test using robust hardware that can be carried out in the field.
It provides sample identification and mixture analysis, allowing the detection of impurities and adulterants.
However, the high price and delicate equipment generally limit the use of this technique to fixed sites.
[28][29] The services also provide monitoring and detection of new psychoactive substances to inform public health interventions.
The Loop have stated that 20% of samples are handed in for disposal and 40% of service users reduce intake.
[32] Academic research from the UK has found that one in five substances were not what they were expected to be and two-thirds of misrepresented samples were disposed of.
Such on-site testing accesses otherwise hard-to-reach user groups to reduce the harms associated with drug use.
[28] In a peer-reviewed study published in Journal of Psychopharmacology, researchers at Johns Hopkins found that people were about half as likely (relative risk = 0.56) to report intent to use a product if testing did not identify the substance as MDMA, and this was a statistically significant reduction.
