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(Victoria) New drug checking service coming to Victoria! what do you think?

Tronica

Tronica

Executive Director
Staff member
Joined
Mar 12, 2002
Messages
5,236
Location
Castlemaine, Australia
Hi everyone

You may have seen the news but just thought I'd start us a thread about it. 5 festivals this summer will have a state funded drug checking service, with the first festival named as Beyond the Valley. 5 more festivals will have this service in 2025-26 summer as well. But the bigger thing I reckon is the fixed site, which will open in July next year and be located centrally in Melbourne. The fixed site will have a Paper Spray Mass Spectrometer machine - this is the business, it quickly can determine what is in the substance as well as its concentration / purity / dose. If there's something unusual being sold around Melbourne, once the fixed site is open, I'm hoping that we will be able to determine what's going on and get that info out really quickly, and really have an impact on harms like overdose that occur because of our unregulated drug markets.

For those of you in Victoria, will you use the service?
Do you have questions about how it will work?
Do you have concerns about it?

And finally, would you like the brainstorm some catchy names for it?
(for context, Canberra's service is called CanTEST, Queensland's service is called CheQpoint, and NZ's service is called Know Your Stuff)

* Worth noting that I have a role in the new service as I volunteer for The Loop Australia who will be providing it in collaboration with some other excellent organisations: Harm Reduction Victoria and YSAS (Youth Support and Advocacy Service).
 
Hi Tronica,

Great news! Especially about the fixed site next year. With stuff like nitazenes turning up in unexpected places, this could literally be a lifesaver. A couple of questions:

  1. How much substance is required to get a reading from the PSMS machine?
  2. How up to date is the database for things like novel substances/analogues (i.e. research chemicals)?
  3. How much does it cost to get a reading?

Thanks for the update and for your ongoing commitment to all this.
 
It’s so good to finally see some positive movement in this area! With this and the NSW announcement this week hopefully lives are saved this summer and permanent changes are made.
 
Halif2 said:
Hi Tronica,

Great news! Especially about the fixed site next year. With stuff like nitazenes turning up in unexpected places, this could literally be a lifesaver. A couple of questions:

  1. How much substance is required to get a reading from the PSMS machine?
  2. How up to date is the database for things like novel substances/analogues (i.e. research chemicals)?
  3. How much does it cost to get a reading?

Thanks for the update and for your ongoing commitment to all this.
Click to expand...
Great questions!

1. Not much!
We ask for 10mg of powder for FTIR.
I think it’s similar for the portable GCMS that we will have on site next week.
The PS-MS will be at the fixed site by July.
I believe that only needs eg 1mg powder.
The other thing is that the legislation in Vic allows the drug checking workers to give back drugs to the client. So that might help when it comes to some methods like FTIR that don’t actually use up the sample during analysis.

2. Yes we are committed to keep all libraries up to date. Luckily there’s a worldwide network of drug checking chemists that share spectra of new substances. There’s obviously still a chance we won’t have it, especially if it’s very new - Eg not yet discovered by other services globally. In these cases the chemists tell me they can see there is something unknown even if it’s not identifiable. So that sample will go back for further analysis.

3. It’s free to you!
The government has funded it for public health purposes to be at no cost to the service user.
 
Nortika said:
It’s so good to finally see some positive movement in this area! With this and the NSW announcement this week hopefully lives are saved this summer and permanent changes are made.
Click to expand...
Yes, big news about NSW. Still unclear what their model of service delivery will look like, and sounds like they wish to get started ASAP.

Unusual times we are in!
 
DRUG CHECKING at Beyond the Valley Festival THIS 27/12/24 - 01/01/25 In VICTORIA!!! HURRAY!
Open 1pm-7pm DAILY

FREE!!!
Free, Legal, Completely anonymous.
How Drug Checking Works at Beyond The Valley?
1. Find us near the Medical & DanceWize Tent
2. Fill out a quick (anonymous) survey
3. Drop off a tiny sample
4. Get a code to pick up the results later
5. Discuss the results with a harm reduction worker
#HRVic #TheLoop #YSAS #drugcheckingvic




 
We have delivered the service at Beyond The Valley (Dec 2024), Hardmission (Feb 2025) and last weekend at Pitch Music and Arts (Mar 2025). Last week's drug checking resulted in 2 state-wide drug alerts which you can find here:

High-dose ecstasy tablets in hot conditions

Tablets with unexpectedly high dosage of MDMA – including a yellow ‘SpongeBob’ pill – may be circulating in Victoria.
www.health.vic.gov.au www.health.vic.gov.au

4-CMC in white or off-white crystal form being sold as MDMA

Recent testing of 3 separate samples in Victoria all believed to be MDMA, were found to contain 4-CMC.
www.health.vic.gov.au www.health.vic.gov.au
 
Tronica said:
We have delivered the service at Beyond The Valley (Dec 2024), Hardmission (Feb 2025) and last weekend at Pitch Music and Arts (Mar 2025). Last week's drug checking resulted in 2 state-wide drug alerts which you can find here:

High-dose ecstasy tablets in hot conditions

Tablets with unexpectedly high dosage of MDMA – including a yellow ‘SpongeBob’ pill – may be circulating in Victoria.
www.health.vic.gov.au www.health.vic.gov.au

4-CMC in white or off-white crystal form being sold as MDMA

Recent testing of 3 separate samples in Victoria all believed to be MDMA, were found to contain 4-CMC.
www.health.vic.gov.au www.health.vic.gov.au
Click to expand...
Very cool to see these services expanded to Victoria!
Will there be more stats and data available to the public beyond alerts?
 
arrall said:
Very cool to see these services expanded to Victoria!
Will there be more stats and data available to the public beyond alerts?
Click to expand...
We have big plans but at the moment there is one report from our first festival delivery you can download from this page: https://ysas.org.au/victorias-drug-checking-service/
There's the second and third report coming from the 2 festivals we've done since.
However we want to have a live dashboard and more fulsome and rapid access to the data.
With my other hat on, my colleague and I wrote a report from a project we conducted throughout last year where we scope out the ways in which drug checking services communicate with the public, in order to inform how we can do this well in Victoria.
The report is global in scope though and you can read it here: https://research-repository.rmit.ed...hecking_public_communications_report/28355702
 
I'm certain that a lot of people have shared info here on the various BL forums that has helped others avoid harm (and/or feel less isolated), but it is cool to see this kind of tangible "real world" progress being made with the testing services. Really nice work, Tronica. I hope you're granted ongoing support and funding to grow this thing.
 
Tronica said:
We have delivered the service at Beyond The Valley (Dec 2024), Hardmission (Feb 2025) and last weekend at Pitch Music and Arts (Mar 2025). Last week's drug checking resulted in 2 state-wide drug alerts which you can find here:

High-dose ecstasy tablets in hot conditions

Tablets with unexpectedly high dosage of MDMA – including a yellow ‘SpongeBob’ pill – may be circulating in Victoria.
www.health.vic.gov.au www.health.vic.gov.au

4-CMC in white or off-white crystal form being sold as MDMA

Recent testing of 3 separate samples in Victoria all believed to be MDMA, were found to contain 4-CMC.
www.health.vic.gov.au www.health.vic.gov.au
Click to expand...
This is the sort of immediate reaction harm reduction that is so important.

Keep up the fantastic work that you and your colleagues at The Loop Australia, as well as the other organizations involved including @Harm Reduction Victoria have been doing during this ongoing process so far! This is a great time for harm reduction in Australia, while there's always more to be done, what has been achieved in the past couple of years I never would have imagined possible any time soon back in 2018.

Please keep us all 'in the loop' *excuse the lame pun* with any future updates you have.

Thanks @Tronica !
 
Last edited:
Halif2 said:
I'm certain that a lot of people have shared info here on the various BL forums that has helped others avoid harm (and/or feel less isolated), but it is cool to see this kind of tangible "real world" progress being made with the testing services. Really nice work, Tronica. I hope you're granted ongoing support and funding to grow this thing.
Click to expand...
Absolutely, I couldn't agree more man.
 
Tronica said:
We have delivered the service at Beyond The Valley (Dec 2024), Hardmission (Feb 2025) and last weekend at Pitch Music and Arts (Mar 2025). Last week's drug checking resulted in 2 state-wide drug alerts which you can find here:

High-dose ecstasy tablets in hot conditions

Tablets with unexpectedly high dosage of MDMA – including a yellow ‘SpongeBob’ pill – may be circulating in Victoria.
www.health.vic.gov.au www.health.vic.gov.au

4-CMC in white or off-white crystal form being sold as MDMA

Recent testing of 3 separate samples in Victoria all believed to be MDMA, were found to contain 4-CMC.
www.health.vic.gov.au www.health.vic.gov.au
Click to expand...
Hey,
It says: high dose ecstasy tablets. But j couldn't find any dosage. Any ideas how much they were? 200mg? Or 250mg+ kind of thing?

Also it's fantastic to see this in action. Not many respondents so far but I'm sure it will catch on.
 
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