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  • AADD Moderators: swilow | Vagabond696

dodgy pilltesters?

F

farout

Bluelighter
Joined
Sep 22, 2002
Messages
29
did anyone hear the triple j news this morning? there was something about pilltesters being very accurate.. they quoted paul dillon too, but i was half asleeo.
is this news new?
 
Did you mean to say "inaccurate"?
Either way, the thing about pill testers is that nobody ever said they're the be all and end all. All they do is make the chances of being dudded less.
Pill testers should never be used to confirm the presences of any substance. It should be used to confirm the absence of a substance. By that I mean if your pill tests purple then it might have MDMA in it. But if it tests clear then there's NO MDMA present and you can avoid the pill.
Eating a pill that tested purple is still a gamble, but you're tipping to odds closer in your favour. So in that sense I'd agree that pill testers aren't that accurate, and they can also be fooled. But it's better than nothing, and if it stops you from taking just one pill that tests clear then it's worth doing. :)
 
woo. On reading the New Scientist article I found out that their test sample was two people (or am I reading this wrong?)
Because zero out of two morons, when using the kits for the first time, did it properly we are supposed to believe that the kits don't work ever?
This is idiocy of the lowest form, and media manipulation of the worst kind. People will read this:
Ecstasy testing kits, used by clubbers to screen out dud pills are unreliable, according to a "blind" test of pills with known ingredients.
but not read as far down as:
However, testing kits have had a noticeable effect on pill purity, says Matthew Atha, director of the Independent Drug Monitoring Unit, based in Wigan, UK. "The number of duds has dropped," he says
How could they have had such a marked effect if they did't work? I guess the thousands of people using the kits must had a lttle more nouse than the two mouth-breathers they pucked for this "study".
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im really suprised this came from new scientist though, they should know to use larger sample groups. it also seems like a pretty lame study, you only have your first time once, after a few tests they could spot the colors and know how to read it correctly - however i doubt most people would even need a few times to read it correctly, most could do it first time i think. seems like a current affair angle.
 
Johnboy, i agree that this 'experiment' wasn't exactly in the scientific Random-Controlled-Trial category, but just because the two people involved in this test had unexpected results, I don't see how that makes them 'morons' or 'mouth-breathers'
One of the testers was a toxicologist. I'm sure he would know how to put a few drops onto a sample.
Are you sure you're not letting your hatred of the media cloud your judgement? :)
Farout, I think as the use of pill testers have become more widespread, I think people have begun to finally acknowledge that they do have serious limitations. Although I still believe everyone should have one for the reasons Pleo's already outlined here.
 
Perhaps something could be organised where EXPERIENCED people perform the same tests, even locally. I not that surprised a toxicologist or even an analytical chemist couldn't use the kits first time. Any new analytical device, no matter how simple, takes some getting to know. It’s also perhaps not so surprising an opioid was mistaken for MDMA.
The comment about light was possibly relevant, but as has been proven by Enlighten, in the hands of experienced testers, such a result would likely be further scrutinized after being seen as unusual.
If Enlighten/DanceSafe members were to have performed those tests, I’m sure reported indications would have been different, especially if all available reagents were used. It wouldn't necessarily indicate the kits were easy to use, but I bet it would conclude that the kits are more effective than was indicated in the article.
I've said it before but New Scientist lost it – reliability - long ago as far as I'm concerned. I've some old NS magazines with terrible and obvious mistakes. With a publication that's become the “Women’s Weekly” of science literature, if they sponsored or organised the poorly structured procedure, then conclusions like these should perhaps be expected. But like Women’s Weekly, many readers take any and all articles as gospel.
We know kits are not perfect, but to quote JB “they’re all we’ve got”
JB, do you think it would be worth approaching one of your influential contacts to see if a similar exercise could be conducted locally?
 
Rayda: as Jello Biafra says, and I am fond of quoting "Don't hate the media, be the media!" and that's what I'm doing.
I don't hate the media. It is not any bias I have against them that fuelled my sarcastic, but firmly tongue-in-cheek outburst, just a response to situatation we are in. The guy might have been a toxicologist but doesn't mean he had done any research into how the kits are supposed to be used. And that is what we keep stressing here at Bluelight: do your research, know what you are doing, regardless of who you are.
It is not just now that we are talking about the limitations of testing kits; we have been doing so for over 4 years! From the moment we found out we could use kits we investigated what they could, and more importantly what they couldn't do. This is the message we've been trying to spread since day one.
It is over a year since I answered this very same question on the 7.30 report. Maybe I'm getting a bit fucking sick of repeating myself. How would the manufacturers of seatbelts feel if everytime someone reached for one there was some pedantic prick saying to them "Well you know that seatbelt isn't going ot protect you in a real accident, not even 31% of the time".
What we've known for a very long time is that using testing kits is infinitly safer than not using testing kits. This is a no-brainer. What does require a brain, tho, is interpreting the results. And that's where we are trying to help.
We've now had some vindication in the release of results, albeit to a limited audience, of pill analysis for Victorian seizures. 84% of pills that contain MDMA do not contain any other substance. A further 7% contain amphetamine. This means that the reliability rates for reagent testers are approaching the levels of security afforded you by a condom! Not a hundred percent, that's for sure, but a lot better than the 0% chance that total ignorance gives you.
This rant is not directed solely at you. I am using this opportunity to refine my arguements so that I will be ready when I need to take to a wider audience. Not that I really need the practice, mind you, as I said before I've been thru this many times already...
phase_dancer: Mebbe. I'm starting to sniff around that idea, at the very least trying to provoke a counter story challenging these so called "conclusions". The big picture, tho, is using reagent testing as leverage to force the government into taking action on the wider pilltesting issue. as i keep saying "Sure reagent testing has it's problems; But it is all we've got! Give us an alternative!" (ie real testing, and a proper reporting system).
We're at the stage now where the authorities realise that "something has to be done". If that something is setting upa system like DIMMS then hooray! I'd gladly throw away my only 90% effective testing kit for acces to GCMS/HPLC, wouldn't you? :)
[ 26 February 2003: Message edited by: johnboy ]
 
^^^ w00t!
Just spoke to Bernadette from JJJ, and she was more than a little grumpy to find out the truth behind this story. It seems the wire services only ran with the conclusions of the "study" and didn't specify the sample size. She was quite shocked when she read the original New Scientist article, and suprised that they would even bother running such a story.
UPDATE: I'll be doing a telephone interview with JJJ this arvo. Don't know when it will be aired. Basically I'll be slamming this "study". Staye tuned!
[ 27 February 2003: Message edited by: johnboy ]
 
bah! am not. besides there's no way i'd wear a tie ;)
Listen to Triple J for the 5pm and 6pm News, also tomorrow morning, for more of me ranting about testing kits.
 
Johnboy and Phasedancer,
Why are you making something simple into something complicated? You don't have to be an Enlighten member or a rocket scientist to use the basic marquis test. What is so hard about it?
A quote from EZ-Test's web site:
"All it takes to do these tests is to take a little bit off the pill, put some liquid on the scraping and compare the result to the colour chart. It's that simple!"
And Cate Quinn's statistics are another issue Johnboy. I don't claim to know as much as you do about them, I haven't seen them for myself. But you seem to be taking what she's said and just running with it.
She states 84% of pills that contain MDMA do NOT contain anything else. Well what about the quality of the millions of pills that they haven't seized, not only in Victoria, but in the rest of Australia? What about locally produced pills?
And you're saying that we can infer from this that 84% of the time the purple/black result will NOT be masking anything else. This is simply untrue. IMO the purple/black result means next to nothing!
A pill can contain as little as 2% MDMA and still show a purple/black reaction to Marquis. GCMS testing has shown that a pill can contain caffeine and Ketamine for example, as the dominating substances, but will still test purple/black if it has a very small percentage of MDMA. Have you never had a pill of your own that tested positive for MDXX and the taste test proved it had very little E-like substance in it?
If you think people are too stupid to do a marquis test, then maybe they'll also end up believing that 84% of pills contain MDMA-period.
 
rayda: johnboy is using her own statistics here, nothing made up, these are statistics she used herself at the NDARC conference. do you really disagree with everything everyone says or do you just like to create heated debate?
 
I know they're her statistics. Just because she's said them doesn't mean they can't be questioned.
And yes, i do like debate, it's healthy. Whether or not you get heated is up to you :)
 
OK. This kind of statement is something I hear fairly often, and I believe it arises from a serious misconception about pill testers and the available information:
And you're saying that we can infer from this that 84% of the time the purple/black result will NOT be masking anything else. This is simply untrue. IMO the purple/black result means next to nothing!
A pill can contain as little as 2% MDMA and still show a purple/black reaction to Marquis. GCMS testing has shown that a pill can contain caffeine and Ketamine for example, as the dominating substances, but will still test purple/black if it has a very small percentage of MDMA. Have you never had a pill of your own that tested positive for MDXX and the taste test proved it had very little E-like substance in it?
QUANTITATITVE TESTING: Tells you how much of each substance is in your test sample. We can't currently access this kind of information. GC/MS testing.
QUALITATIVE TESTING: Tells you a "yes or no" answer. We can access this information with reagent testing.
If your pill DOESN'T test purple/black then it DOESN'T CONTAIN MDMA. Simple equation there, allows you to avoid pills which don't contain MDMA.
If your pill DOES test purple/black then it is likely to contain one or more MDxx-like chemicals.
These are the only two conclusion we are allowed to draw from reagent testing of a single pill. There is no further information that can be inferred from a single pill test. However, by taking a large number of pill tests and summarising the data, a limited number of conclusions may be drawn.
It has been seen in reagent-testing schemes that samples testing positive for MDxx-like chemicals, in the majority, contain only MDxx-like chemicals.
1. Looking worldwide at results for pills that have been confirmed to test purple/black using Marquis reagent, the ratio of MDxx-only pills to MDxx-in-combination pills, is (thankfully) extremely lopsided in favour of MDxx-only. THIS DOES NOT MEAN THAT ALL MDXX-ONLY PILLS ARE GOOD. A pill could contain 1mg of MDMA, test purple/black, and still give a positive result as a MDxx-only pill.
2. Looking at the results for pills that DO NOT test purple/black, none contain MDxx-like chemicals. THIS MEANS THAT IF IT DOESN'T TEST PURPLE/BLACK IT CONTAINS NO MDMA. Globally, there are myriad combinations of random adulterants that have been identified in non-purple/black testing pills. These seem to be the typical "mixture" of stimulants usually, attempting to trick people into thinking they have MDMA.
Quite simply, you cannot ask the tester for more information, as it can't give you more. It can only give you a yes or no confirmation on the presence of ANY MDxx-like chemical, not a ratio, not a proportion, and not a dose range.
However, this is EXTREMELY useful, as even though it will not tell you which pill is the best, it WILL tell you which ones to avoid. A pill tester is specfically designed to help you avoid taking dangerous pills, not to assist you to find good ones. The statistics merely show that the likelihood of eating a dangerous pill can be significantly reduced when using a tester. This means the testers are a success for their intended purpose, when used appropriately.
BigTrancer :)
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Rayda wrote:
Johnboy and Phasedancer,
Why are you making something simple into something complicated? You don't have to be an Enlighten member or a rocket scientist to use the basic marquis test. What is so hard about it?
Sure the kits are easy to use, but correct interpretation of unusual results can be difficult.
Is it the binder or some additive affecting time /colour of the reaction?
While it would make good sense to discard any and all such pills, reality is that people will often take them if there’s even the slightest indication MDMA is present.
I definitely feel experience is an advantage. The morphine pill is a good example. A first time tester may have done the test in poor light, or seen the red as a purple and falsely assumed this was MDMA. You can never be sure of course, but, after regularly seeing the classic colour responses, I believe a person is in a much better position to readily identify an odd reaction.
But that doesn’t mean the “art” can’t be learned quickly and easily with practice.
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SeveredPsyche: Yeah but it is usually me that stresses it in an interview. Any controversy is good publicity. I aint complaining :)
Rayda: OK I'm not sure I'm getting you. Where in the above did you get the impression that I, or phase_dancer, were implying that using test kits was only something that should be done by "rocket scientists" or enlighten members?
My first post in this thread was attacking this so called study which was trying to prove that the tests were too hard for "average people" to use. I strongly disagree with that, and that's what I've been going on about here.
Phase_dancer goes on to discuss how users of the tests will become better at interpreting the results after they become "experienced", i.e. have done it a few times and know just what the "purple/black" colour you are looking for is. This isn't rocket science, just practice. I doubt there are many things in the world that someone can do correctly the first time, and this is especially the case with something that requires good light, a clear understanding of what you are looking for, as well as the person not being colour blind ( a very important point which not many people consider).
As for the statistics I quoted I am not relying on them, It is just that there is very little hard scientific data available for us to use. Before now the total sum of data we've had on the make-up of Australian pills has been anecdotal, i.e. what we've learned here at BL. Of course we have heard reports from the media, supplied to them by law enforcement with an agenda, saying that less than 10% of pills contain MDxx, but this is just propaganda. And now we can show that it is indeed just lies, with the release of this hard, but still scant, data.
She states 84% of pills that contain MDMA do NOT contain anything else. Well what about the quality of the millions of pills that they haven't seized, not only in Victoria, but in the rest of Australia? What about locally produced pills?
Umm a great many of the pills analysed were locally manufactured pills. As for the rest, did you actually listen to my talk to the seminar? The point you make about these results being only from seized pills and not from the millions that slip thru and get to the street, well errr, that's my central argument. This data is flawed because there is no way for the police to have any feedback from the street as to what is there, and this is why some system like DIMMS (best case) or ecstasydata.org (worst case) needs to be set up here.
So yes, I agree, and have been stating all along, right in their faces in fact, that although the little data they are releasing is flawed it is all we have to work with and if they can use it to prop up their arguments, so can I.
[ 28 February 2003: Message edited by: johnboy ]
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