NEWS: Herald Sun 10/03/06 "Drug test kits on sale online"

Drug test kits on sale online
Jane Metlikovec
10mar06

YOUNG Victorians are hitting the internet and buying ecstasy pill testing kits that could put their safety at risk.

Melbourne group Enlighten Harm Reduction says there is an online sales boom in litmus test-style kits which chemically test the contents of ecstasy tablets.

"We have sold thousands of test kits since we began offering them in the last year," Enlighten founder Johnboy Davidson said.

"They are becoming more and more popular, especially during holiday periods."

Another retailer, EZ-test.com.au, said its online sales were steady.

Retailing for as little as $25 each, the kits can determine the key ingredients in a pill but cannot reveal the purity or quantity of the substances.

Ecstasy pills usually contain MDMA and amphetamines such as speed, but can also be laced with other dangerous chemicals, including the veterinary anaesthetic ketamine.

Mr Davidson said the limitations of personal test kits could be eliminated if the Federal Government agreed to approve a medically supervised trial of pill testing in venues.

He told Insight his group had been carrying out its own testing over the past few years.

It tests pills at four Victorian events every year, using specialised hi-tech testing kits not available to the public. [JB: not what I said. We have not yet publically used "high tech methods"]

Mr Davidson said the group did up to 200 pills in a session, with queues of people 10 deep. He said the tests only took 15 seconds and gave a complete reading of contents. [Did not say "complete reading". May have confused this with what I said about Ion Scanners, which we have not used publically yet]

Findings from the National Drug and Alcohol Centre's 2005 Party Drug Initiative show less than one quarter of ecstasy users would take the tablet if the result returned unknown ingredients.

Less than half those surveyed would take a pill containing ketamine.

After years of opposition, the nation's peak medical body, the Australian Medical Association, has recently supported calls for a legalised trial of event-based testing, citing a lack of Australian data on the usefulness of pill testing as a harm-minimisation strategy.

But both the State and Federal governments remain vehemently opposed to it.

State Health Minister Bronwyn Pike said the State Government would continue opposing pill testing.

A spokesman for Ms Pike said: "We are against pill testing because it gives legitimacy to illegal drug taking and because it sends out the wrong message that some pills are safe and some are not.

"We say all pills are unsafe and we have no plans to change our position any time soon."

http://www.heraldsun.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5478,18406663%5E2862,00.html

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She got this almost right. 98%. Pretty good for the Hun. I'd bet that the first line came straight from the sub-editor, tho.

Jane Metlikovec said:

YOUNG Victorians are hitting the internet and buying ecstasy pill testing kits that could put their safety at risk.

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What the hell, how are pill testing kits putting people's safety at risk?
That first sentence just made absolutely no sense whatsoever.

A positive step even if the writing is tinged with some negative language, and it is a fair sight better than previous drug features in the Herald Sun which have complete ignored all facets of harm minimisation. i.e. the last drug feature after the death of Belinda Davey last year.

Well done

Not to bad. Shame though that EZ-test.com.au's website got a free plug and you guys didn't.

Meh. google "Enlighten" and you'll find us.

Diacetylus said:

What the hell, how are pill testing kits putting people's safety at risk?
That first sentence just made absolutely no sense whatsoever.

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yea, i thought the same thing..

are they trying to discourage use of testing kits?

Preme213 said:

yea, i thought the same thing..

are they trying to discourage use of testing kits?

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Yes. This is what I meant by the sub-editor placing the editorial position of the paper in the opening line.

A journalist writes a balanced story, which is essentially everything below that line. Both sides are given voice. The editorial normally doesn't intrude so openly into a news story but this is the Herald Sun, and this is a story abut drugs. They feel it is more important to give their readers what they want (a feeling of outrage) than it is to be impartial. They also know they can get away with it because who they are talking about is indefensible. I am the bad person, I am the focus of the outrage, and no sensible person would care about the actual facts. The "truthiness" wins out.

But who cares? More free publicity.

Just previous to reading this article I had been catching up with a monthly mail out that covers technological advances in spectroscopy & mass spectrometry. Ion mobility/ time of flight scanners (mass spec) are certainly becoming less expensive all the time.

As these scanners have other applications in fields of science, health and safety, imo it would be extremely difficult to regulate them. afaik, the law does not extend to traces of substances so it might be worthwhile re-addressing the idea of utilizing these machines in the short term, in preference to waiting for a state sanctioned program that - with present governmental thinking - will probably never come about. It's definitely not the most desirable way to go, but if the law stands on Enlighten's side, it may be worth getting in before attempts are made to alter the legal position of trace sample testing.

I would think it would be difficult to effectively pass such a law, as traces of drugs are everywhere, but I could be wrong here. There may be sections of Australian law that can be amended to cover the divulgence of any information that could be construed or interpreted as encouraging drug use. However, having statistically relevant and accurate information regarding the profile of various drugs would definitely be a bonus in regards to media coverage. Biased and manipulating as the media is, there would be no substance to the reasons currently given for not supporting testing if it can be shown that all the points of objection have been addressed. Present arguments would thus be made invalid. I believe there's hardly an intelligent politician that doesn't know this already (admitting it is another thing altogether..). The fear is no doubt centered around what other unfounded assumptions could also be exposed by such findings. It would essentially be a can of worms for policy makers, but at least it would be tangible evidence, rather than just conclusions drawn from the more subjective drug use surveys.

So perhaps it's time for Enlighten to revisit the notion of obtaining a (less expensive) device and doing onsite testing using trace sample analysis. This would mean that no discernable quantity of any drug would ever need to be handled by anyone from the Enlighten Team.

Such actions would certainly strip the first argument of any relevance (reagent shortcomings) as the technology will provide a fairly comprehensive analysis of a sample, and if deterrent based info is given with each and every test result, and if rejected pills were photographed but not touched by testers, it may very well defeat the last, silly notion that testing drugs sends out the wrong message. The real message sent would be: Illicit drugs are so dangerous, that all illegally sourced or non-prescribed drugs need to be tested to insure the substance is as it is supposed to be..

As is presently done with reagent testing, even with an MDMA only result, the person submitting the identified illicit drug would also be issued with deterrent based information relevant to that drug.

There needs to be some form of effective deterrent based approach to all testing. IMHO, the politicians and opponents are correct in saying that drug use in Australia needs to be reduced. But, and it's a big butt, methods need to be employed that deal with these issues in a prudent but practical manner. Pouring most of the allocated funding into the tough face of prohibition, on it's own, simply won't work. However, if the truth in all it's "guts and glory" is the message, and that message is disseminated by peers, then we can expect that the real story behind the dangers of illicit drugs to be by and large received, and therefore far more likely to have a positive impact on reducing drug use.

why did the Journo do a story on elighten in the first place? Was it a job given to them by their sub-editor or did they know/hear/use pills and know about reagent testers already?

Or did they want to know if elighten were using Ion Scanners already....

on another note, have you guys even seen a punter throw away their pills after they've been tested (whatever the method) to be bunked?

chugs said:

why did the Journo do a story on elighten in the first place? Was it a job given to them by their sub-editor or did they know/hear/use pills and know about reagent testers already?

Or did they want to know if elighten were using Ion Scanners already....

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Probably the latter. Their ideal story, I imagine, was that we were doing testing and breaking the law right now. As we aren't right now, and are doing more on the lobbying side, this is the story the got and it was essentially written a month ago. Must be a slow week, drugs-wise. Either that or the journo is a true believer.

on another note, have you guys even seen a punter throw away their pills after they've been tested (whatever the method) to be bunked?

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Yes. Quite a few times now we have had people refuse to take back pills that have tested up bunk or as containing ketamine.

I agree with you phase_dancer. It really is getting to that point where the technology is available and if we are certain the legalities are ok, we could do it. Go Enlighten! It will be a revolution

Bah, shame on that article for the most part.

I've seen enlighten at one event i was at - and they do a good job. Do they forget to mention that the pill testers are sold in SHITLOADS of shops all over the show?

heh... misinformed as i see it.

Go Enlighten.

Barrel: scraped.

Bring on the "Pill testers in nude sex scandal*" cover report, I say. That's where we're heading, quality-wise; why not jump the gun.

*all rights reserved, Aunty EstablishCorp, 2006. Fuckin' Rupert.

aunty establishment said:

Pill testers in nude sex scandal

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As we've seen from a few recent articles, the only thing that gets the media more excited than stories about kids using drugs, are stories where they can frighten parents even further with the juicy anecdotes of drugs causing kids to have threesomes and foursomes.

If you want publicity, I'm sure you can find a journalist to write a story about a group of people who take a pill that's been tested at a big party by Enlighten and then have a threesome. I'm sure they'd manage to present it so that it seems as if pill testing is a bad idea because it can lead to uninhibited sexual activity. 8)

Seriously though, to the question of why this piece was published. It appeared in today's Herald Sun as part of a series of articles in the paper over the last two days focussing on drug use by young people. The remainder of the articles looked at things like the use of private security sniffer dogs in schools, social effects of the surge in meth usage, deaths resulting from GHB and individuals overcoming heroin addiction, among other things.

I'd hazard a guess that this series has been prompted by the statements made at the COAG meeting in February regarding a plan to reduce the impact on mental health from substance abuse.

We'll hear more from this in June as COAG leaders have until then to come up with an action plan in terms of how they'll move forward in this area. With none of the State Governments in this country particularly enthusiastic about harm reduction and the Prime Minister himself putting the blame squarely on "lax attitudes to recreational drugs", it's unlikely we'll hear any good news coming out of all of this.

To put this in perspective. Harm reduction is meant to make up one-third of this country's approach to dealing with illicit drugs. Of the twelve articles published in the Herald Sun about drugs in the last two days, only one of them has approached the problem from this angle... and that's quite out of the ordinary for this paper.

hoptis said:

...Seriously though...

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Whoa, whoa. We're taking the Scum seriously now? Did I miss a meeting? Don't overestimate the literacy or evolutionary status of the audience these journalists are targeting (doesn't mean they're right, BTW - all I have are demographics and of course, if it's statistically valid, it must be the truth. Sorry, sorry. Topic. Right).

I'm going to sound like a stupid little media undergrad baby here, but fuck it, so does anyone on the leftwing 90% of the time (Al Franken gets a hall-pass ), so dammit -

Don't hate on the media. Become the media. Hence Bluelight. Hence harm reduction, period - right? Nothing wrong with taking things seriously from time to time - but you gotta laugh (even quietly, to yourself) at how the media distorts your words, ideas and misses the fugging point occasionally, or blow a fuse. Whatever works, I guess

Not taking the paper seriously, in that sense.

My concern is more based on the fact that readership for the paper is simply more widespread than for the Fairfax papers and therefore, as a result, will reach and presumably influence more people.

It's almost like one good opinion piece on harm reduction in a Murdoch paper is worth three equivalent one's in a Fairfax paper. It's just a shame they so rarely happen.

We might not take tabloids very seriously in terms of the content but unfortunately there are many out there who do.