Drug Checking

What is it? Why do it?
Reagent Kits
Fentanyl Test Strips
Spectrometry
Test Dosing
Peer Reporting

Potential Learning Outcomes

Learn what Drug Checking is and how to test your own supply

Discussion topics
What is drug checking?

To take a sample of your drug supply and find out what ingredients are in the sample with the possibility of using a variety of methods.

Why drug checking?

All other products that we put in our bodies has to go through testing pre-consumption why would we not test our drugs pre-consumption?
Knowledge is power and if you know what is in your drug that you have an intention of taking you can make choices that can keep you healthy and safe.
As long as drugs are illegal manufacturers will be forced to look for cheap, legal alternate ingredients to bulk up the supply.
Drugs pass through many hands before they get to you. Each hand it goes through could be adding a possibly harmful additive to the supply.

The unregulated drug supply is becoming more and more complex and contaminated in recent years. Opioid samples are often found to contain fentanyl-analogues (including carfentanyl, fluoro-fentanyl), benzodiazepines, tranquilizers (xylazine), and synthetic opioids (nitazines). Drug checking provides important information that can support better harm reduction practices among people who use drugs.

Different drug checking methods

Most accessible methods are test strips and reagents. They are cheap and easy to use. Reagents and test strips are able to confirm the presence of a substance, but do not give information on concentration and are not extremely accurate.
FTIR, which is infrared spectrometry, gives more accurate and thorough results.
- Access at ANKORS in Nelson, ASK Wellness in Kamloops, INSITE in Vancouver, SOLID in Victoria, as well as other sites throughout the province: drugcheckingbc.ca/drug-checking-sites/, or by mail to: https://substance.uvic.ca/ or https://getyourdrugstested.com/\

Fentanyl test strips

Like a pregnancy test, these strips can be used for testing urine post-consumption or testing the substance pre-consumption. For pre-consumption, you need to take a tiny grain of your stash and put it in water 30ml of tap water in a clean cup. Dip the strip into it getting a result of negative or positive (2 stripes or 1 stripe on the strip, respectively) for containing fentanyl. There are many other strips for testing other substances out there. These are very sensitive, being able to pick up trace amounts of Fentanyl in a substance. The limitations are that they can only pick up Fentanyl and some of the fentanyl analogues on the streets. It may be missing an analogue of Fentanyl and giving a negative result. Also because you are testing a tiny sample of your stash the Fentanyl may be in another part of your stash and not in the sample. It’s helpful to crush up your dope and shake up your baggy before testing to avoid hot spots and make sure to spread it around if it is in there.

See Fentanyl test strip how-to video on ANKORS youtube channel:
https://youtu.be/o0n6-MCrex8?si=PaO-oWuTAeZSfudE

See also Fentanyl Procedure sheet for steps to testing with test strips

How to use reagents

Made from chemicals like sulphuric acid and formaldehyde there are over 9 different types. They can give a yes or no answer for the presence of the drug you think you have. By putting a drop of the liquid reagent on a small sample you can compare the sample to a colour chart or reaction video to get a result. By using several different reagents you can cross-reference your results and may be able to tell some secondary ingredients. These are cheap and easy to use. They can only tell the presence or not of a substance believed. They are not very accurate in telling multiple ingredients.
See videos on the ankorsvolunteer.com how to use the reagents.
See also Colormetric Procedure Sheet on how to use Colormetric Reagent Tests.

Regional Drug Alert Text Messaging Service:
Toward the Heart and BCCDC have partnered with health authority and community partners to send anonymous toxic drug and health alerts by text in B.C. This a free, anonymous, real-time text messaging service for anyone to receive toxic drug alerts or share information about toxic drugs in the Interior, Fraser, Northern, Vancouver Island, and Vancouver Coastal Health regions. To sign up, text the word JOIN to 253787 (ALERTS). Message and data rates may apply.
https://towardtheheart.com/alerts

Resources:

https://drugcheckingbc.ca/dashboard/

benzo-dope:
towardtheheart.com/assets/uploads/1609802595WXFJCmRP6tu1qI04J8t6BzVqs7D6e2JA3DiRkVR.pdf

xylaine: https://drugpolicy.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/2023.05.23_xylazine_factsheet.pdf