In response to record drug overdose deaths, many of them caused by the super-potent synthetic opioid fentanyl, some drug users and dealers have begun self-testing their narcotics for purity. Storefront testing services like Vancouver’s Get Your Drugs Tested offer infrared spectrometry to identify what chemicals are present in a drug sample. Others are relying on simple paper test strips that can identify the presence of fentanyl. With high-profile overdose deaths increasingly linked to fentanyl, such as the recent passing of Michael K. Williams, it’s likely that drug testing will become more common and more readily available.
There used to be only one way to know if the drugs you bought were strong enough to get you high but safe enough not to kill you you had to try them out yourself what no one told me was that when we bought the skag some lucky punter would have to try it out so i rolled up my sleeve i spiked my vein and i did what had to be done it’s good oh it’s really good
Depending on what drug you’re taking that method can be extremely dangerous but with the rise of the super potent synthetic opioid fentanyl trying a new batch of drugs can be an instant death sentence even uppers like cocaine and ecstasy are now being cut with fentanyl leading to the deaths of people who didn’t even know they were taking an opioid in response to
The growing overdose crisis drug users and health authorities are working to increase access to drug testing that can detect a bad batch of drugs before anyone tries them out and in some places there are even professional testing centers i’m manisha krishnan and this is free drugs drug testing services can tell you the purity of your drugs and if they are what
They appear to be or if they contain something else including the synthetic opioid fentanyl which is behind so many overdose deaths these services which test drugs like mdma heroin cocaine crystal meth lsd are popping up at music festivals at safe drug consumption sites and even with take-home testing strips i’m in vancouver ground zero for canada’s opioid crisis
Where there’s a drug checking facility that’s open seven days a week members of the public can drop off their drugs and get a test result for free i’m also going to talk to a street dealer who tests her drugs to find out more about how she’s keeping her customers safe we’ve done over 14 000 tests now over the last two years we’re getting busier every week and i
Think we’re really helping people make informed decisions and i’m very confident that we’ve prevented a lot of overdoses and just a lot of bad drug experiences from people buying something that may not be fatal but it’s not what they were looking for and it’s not going to provide the experience they were hoping to get get your drugs tested uses a 50 dollar machine
Called an ftir spectrometer to detect what’s in people’s drugs using a laser each test takes 10 to 15 minutes to complete basically it shines a little invisible infrared laser onto the sample you shine the laser on it and then it analyzes the light spectrum that comes out and matches that against our database which has thousands and thousands of potential substances
In it right now i’m testing ketamine and this looks like all that i can detect in this is ketamine so it doesn’t look like there’s any cuts or adulterants in it that i can detect get your drugs tested puts all its samples online and sends out alerts when they find something concerning the most common cutting agent they find is caffeine but they also find anything
From fentanyl to baking soda and even salt some samples turn out not to be drugs at all i’ve noticed some worrying trends for instance in our mdma samples our first 500 tests that we did there was zero results with any fentanyl in our most recent 500 results we’ve had five positive or fentanyl so that’s one percent which maybe doesn’t sound like a lot but imagine if
One percent of the alcohol or cannabis supply had fentanyl in it anything that makes up less than five percent of the drugs may not be detectable by the machine so technicians use fentanyl and benzodiazepine test strips to be extra cautious even tiny amounts of fentanyl can cause an overdose the fentanyl test strips are super sensitive and then we put some sample
In a cup and then dilute it in water and then put the test strip in and if it’s two red lines then it’s negative and if it’s one red line then it’s positive so this one’s negative the other side says well we’re just encouraging everyone to take drugs and if we put drug testing there we’re normalizing drug use and encouraging people and of course drug use is normal
Drug use should be normalized and these kind of services i think do help normalize drug use and and i think that’s an important part of that to normalize knowing what you’re getting i would love nothing more than to shut our service down because people their drugs are getting tested before they buy them in the factory where they’re made and when they buy them they
Have a reliable label on them that says what’s in them right we don’t have an alcohol testing service you don’t need that because we know what’s in the bottle when you buy it i think it’s kind of wild when you think about the fact that so many people use illicit drugs and most of the time they have no idea what they’re actually buying among the many clients of get
Your drugs tested is a drug user and seller named simona marsh she’s also a board member at van du the vancouver area network of drug users do you consider yourself a drug dealer no what how would you describe i’m an ethical substance use navigator that term means that people phone me and i get them what they need but i make sure that it’s tested thoroughly so
There’s no whatever’s in it they know i’m saving people’s lives basically because we’re going to use the drugs no matter what we might as well have clean drugs to use you know like they want to decriminalize the drugs and say oh you can carry this much dope it doesn’t matter if you say one gram or a thousand grams if it’s dirty dope or dead i smoke crack i do
Crystal meth i don’t do powder and i don’t do fentanyl hair anymore and i mean do you feel stigmatized for that or oh always you know but then i i never hide that i do drugs i remember growing up my mom you say somebody do you really have to tell everybody you use drugs and i’m like mom do i not have to tell them in the last few years many of simona’s friends
Have died of overdoses in some cases because they didn’t know the substance they took contained fentanyl she says dealers who test their drugs to protect their customers shouldn’t be penalized i think that if they sell drug or if they’re an ethical substance use navigator or whatever they call themselves they should have it should be a mandate that they have
To get the dope tested so that at least you can say okay yes there’s benzos in here then people with benzoyls be like yeehaw right you know the ones that don’t want it they don’t have to have it one of vanduu’s mantras is nothing about us without us it’s a call for politicians to treat drug users as experts in forming drug policies that will save lives it seems
Like i’m talking for the people that can’t talk anymore i don’t want them to just be another number you know if they just listen we know what we’re doing you know we’ve kept thousands of people alive you know i don’t know why they think that they know what’s best for us you
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These People Are Testing Drugs So You Don't Have to | Free Drugs By VICE News
