Home pill testing surges but safety not guaranteed
The latest drug trends report shows ecstasy users are increasingly turning to DIY home pill tests to check their drugs in the wake of festival drug deaths. But are these kits giving users a false sense of security?
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Almost half of people who regularly take ecstasy have tested their own drugs using personal testing kits in the wake of a spate of festival drug deaths.
But the kits, available online, have serious limitations with most unable to detect purity, dosage or potentially fatal adulterants, giving users a false sense of security.
The latest drug trends report on ecstasy and related drug users by the National Drug and Alcohol Research, released today, found 45 per cent of users had used home testing kits to check their drugs.
Thirty six per cent said they had done so in the past year and of those, about one third said they didn’t use the drug as a result
Online drug testing kit sales have surged in the past 12 months following the deaths of six young festival goers, who died after consuming MDMA at music events between December 2017 and January this year.
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Popular tests such as Marquis Reagent tests can determine the presence of MDMA but most tests can not determine purity or quantity.
Other tests can identify potentiality fatal adulterants such as PMA but not the hundreds of new dangerous chemicals found in pills in the past few years.
A positive or negative reaction for a substance also does not indicate that a drug is safe.
Experts say users need to use a multitude of home testing kits to get the best information, triangulating the results, which even then cannot guarantee safety.
The Australian Medical Association has previously warned the kits could lull drug users into a “false sense of security”.
“I don’t think I would be advising the online purchasing of equipment that hasn’t been properly certified,” AMA NSW vice president Dr Danielle McMullen told The Daily Telegraph.
Project Lead Dr Amy peacock of NDARC said the findings reinforced previous research that people who use illicit drugs want information about the content of their substances.
“However, qualitative information obtained from personal test kits, like the presence or
absence of a drug, is limited.
“Information about the range of substances contained and the dose is necessary to inform harm reduction behaviours to reduce risks from high-dose MDMA or adulterants.”
NDARC’s ecstasy and related drugs reporting system draws its findings from in-depth interviews with 797 Australians who had used ecstasy or other illicit stimulants from capital cities in April-July 2019.
Most were young, well-educated males and ecstasy and cannabis were the most commonly reported drug of choice
Among those who regularly used ecstasy, 68 per cent had attended a music festival in the
last year and nearly all (93 per cent) had regularly used ecstasy in the past six months and taken illicit drugs at the last festival they attended.
Five per cent of those who had used illicit drugs believed they needed medical help following illicit use drug use at their last festival but only two per cent sought medical help.
Thirty-two per cent reported engaging in drug dealing.
The majority had purchased drugs face-to-face (82%) or via social networking applications like Facebook and WhatsApp (73%) in the past 12 months.
Only 10% had purchased drugs on darknet marketplaces.
The findings revealed an increase in cocaine and ketamine use among ecstasy users,
“It is important to note that these findings are from a sample of people who regularly use
ecstasy, and do not represent all music festival attendees”, said Dr Peacock.
“Most of the people we sampled who had attended a festival were aware of on-site medical
services, and also of policing and security initiatives like bag checking and patrolling police.