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(OLD THREAD) Pill Testers To Be Banned In Australia?!?!

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krillsta

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Joined
Dec 18, 2001
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143
Pill Testers To Be Banned In Australia?!?!

I was browsing through a website and dug up this article which said as of today (Monday 18th Feb)
Testers were banned in Queensland.
http://www.tranzfusion.net/ShowNews.asp?Newsid=879
Does anyone have anymore info on this?
Confirm/Deny this?
Hopefully its NOT true and a trend that doesn't follow to other states.
[ 18 February 2002: Message edited by: krillsta ]
 
well that's odd. i was talking to Ravesafe QLD on the phone only this afternoon and they didn't mention anything. (hey m if you have heard something about this please call me again)
Does anyone in Brisbane have a copy of the Courier Mail? It's not on their website. I might call the QLD Dept of Health tomorrow.
Ingrediant45 is the company which distributes Chemical Solutions Australia's products in Europe.
 
here's the full article. we're chasing up the actual policy/legal bits.
Tester kit for deadly rave drug withdrawn
Courier Mail, Edition 1 - First with the news
MON 04 FEB 2002, Page 006
By: Joel Dullroy
AN ecstasy tester kit that identifies deadly batches of the party drug has been banned from use.

E-Z Test kits, which cost $55 at several Brisbane stores, are regularly used at rave parties to test the quality of ecstasy tablets.

A drug-user support group wants the State Government to allow the use of E-Z Tests to stop the flow of dangerous drug batches.

But Queensland Health has rejected the proposal, saying the kits give a false impression of safety.

To use the kit, a small portion of the tablet is broken off and placed in a chemical liquid that changes colour, showing which ingredients have been mixed in the manufacture of the pill.
Each kit can test up to 150 tablets and can identify ecstasy's base drug MDMA from dangerous cocktails of strychnine, speed, heroin, amphetamines, cocaine and other filler ingredients.

Although the kits are legal to buy, they are illegal to use with a banned substance.
Brisbane ecstasy users said the kits were the only method of protection besides abstinence.

``It's the only way we have to test whether they're dangerous, other than testing it on ourselves,'' an anonymous user said.

The Queensland Intravenous Aids Association, or QuIVAA, said the State Government should legalise the use of tester kits in the interest of saving lives.

``They shouldn't be taking the drug, but if they choose to do it they need information about it,'' QuIVAA manager Bob Heaton said.

``With ecstasy, you don't know what you're taking. Sometimes there's nothing in it, sometimes there's wicked stuff in it.''

But Queensland Health has knocked the idea, saying the tester kits do not provide a full chemical breakdown of each pill.

``We would be concerned about the use of these testing kits because they cannot give you a full composition about the tablet you are going to consume,'' Queensland Health spokesman Kevin Lambkin said.

``They give the belief that it is a safe tablet.''
Click to expand...
 
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Another one of these threads where i seem to be posting every hour or so ;)
We're waiting for a response from Mr Kevin Lambkin, but Brett from ChemSol did speak to someone in the Media Liason section. Apparently the story is wrong, and test kits are not banned. Our guess is that the story was sensationalised a bit, and the Health Department is only saying they "disapprove" of the kits (as happened in WA) but this is just speculation at the moment.
more news as it comes in.
[ 19 February 2002: Message edited by: johnboy ]
 
let's try and keep this in one thread please?
Originally posted by chuppachopped
I emailed the chemical solutions guy about it and this is what he sent back:
Just to follow up on this issue, here are some interesting points.
There was article in the Courier Mail on Mon 4th Feb 2002 by Joel Dullroy regarding the testing kits saying that testing kits have been banned.
We clarified this with QLD Health, and in fact, they have not been banned for sale.
The Courier Mail is going to be doing a follow up article on the matter to address the issue correclty, and will be contacting several sources (including us) on testing kits.
Regarding availability of our testing kits Marquis and Mandelin, they can be found at Off Ya Tree , 154 Adelaide St Brisbane.
I hope this has been of help to you and your friends.

chemical solutions
Click to expand...
 
Good work on sorting this out so quickly everyone! It is a widely held opinion that this newspaper has been doing similar accurate journalism for years. Nice to know if accountability is the new world order, that it can work both ways. :)
Look forward to the follow up article.
Is anyone aware of any other state or country that has legislatively banned use of Test Kits?
 
I just got an email from skrufff.com (yep...three 'f's) which is a dance news website put together by jonty adderly in the UK. Any of the articles that appear in the email are used by publications all over the world. And this appeared this week...
E Testing Kits Outlawed in Australia
Health officials in Queensland have banned ecstasy-testing
kits, suggesting, “They give a false impression of safety”
(The Courier Mail).
E-Z Test kits allow users to determine whether pills contain
potentially more dangerous substances like PMA or heroin and
according to Australian AIDS helper Bob Heaton (from
QuiVVA), could save ecstasy users’ lives.
“They shouldn’t be taking the drug, but if they choose to do
it, they need information about it,” he said.
The Australian authorities’ decision to outlaw the kits came
several weeks after a UK based company Ingredient 45 began
offering similar kits for sale over the net.
Ingredient 45 boss Matt McNeil recently appeared on a
Channel 4 TV show alongside the mother of 19 year old
British girl Lorna Spinks, who died last year after taking
pills.
“For some long while ecstasy has been tested in clubs in
Switzerland, I would like to see that happen in the UK too,”
Mrs Spinks said on the programme. Mr McNeil agreed, refuting
suggestions that E testing increases experimentation.
“What we’re saying is that for someone who has already
accepted the risk that they’re taking illegal substances,
then we want to provide them with as much information as we
possibly can. The kits help with this,” he said (DJ magazine.)
The Ingredient 45 thing was also a news item in 3D, and on inthemix a little while ago (without any mention of the other kits that are for sale over the net)
I bet the correct information won't get into skrufff's weekly newsletter.
Click to expand...
 
jonty adderly is the guy wrote the original story at the top of the page. i guess tranzfusion got it from his list. i'll probably email him but chances are brett is already ahead of me.
 
yes i agree that pill testers may not give you an accurate description of the ingredients a pill may contain, but is there an alternative? is there another way of doing it that the health authorities are willing to implement? i think not.
therefore, taking away the only safe method of gaining a remote idea of what could be inside a pill is just going to cause more harm.
 
i thought the more expensive testing kits could test for more than one chemical in pills.
 
yes but the health department doesn't even know about the first generation kits. they're actually asking for details about them from ChemSol. No reagent kit will give you a full test mind you, but it is no where near as falible as they make it out in these stories.
 
isn't it all part of harm minimisation?? i mean, sure they don't test for everything, but they can test for dangerous substances like PMA can't they?
 
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