Drug-testing kits can help prevent deaths: advocates

Drug-testing kits currently available in Canada havelimitations, but they can be part of the solution to help preventunnecessary deaths at live concerts such as Toronto's Veld music festival, where two people died earlier this month after taking what's believed to be party drugs, says a harm-reduction group.

Toronto's Trip Project says the testing kits, when combined withother strategies like drug education, could make drug use safer forpeople who will not abstain from risky behaviour.

• Veld Music Festival deaths: Toronto police focus on 'party drugs'
• Police saydeaths at Veld linked to 'party drugs'

"People die at music festivals. That's not a thing that weshould just accept," said Lori Kufner, a co-ordinator with the
city-funded organization.

Kufner said that testing kits for synthetic so-called "party"drugs may be a way of reducing risks, but they aren't widely usedand some people who take drugs don't even know they're available.

"There's a lot of other drugs that are being created and soldand passed off as other substances. Buying street drugs, you neverreally know what it is," she said.

"If you test it for something and it ends up being somethingthat you didn't think it was going to be, you can still make aninformed decision of whether to toss it or do it anyway."

Health Canada says all synthetic club drugs are consideredequally harmful and are unsafe even in so-called "pure" forms.

2 died at festival in Toronto

Police are still trying to determine what drugs may have beenconsumed by a 20-year-old woman and a 22-year-old man who died, and13 others who were sickened at the Veld Music Festival in Toronto'sDownsview Park. Police said all 15people ingested what they believewas a party drug purchased at the festival.

Adrienne Smith, a staff lawyer with the Pivot Legal Society inVancouver, said that simply condemning the use of illegal drugs isnot a solution.

"Currently illicit drug use is happening at parties. What we doabout that is the important question," she said.

"What the harm-reduction community has decided to do is toacknowledge that it's happening and to address some of the harms sothat people don't die," she said.

But drug-test kits remain "under the radar," said Karim Rifaat,the owner of Test Kit Plus, a Montreal company that sells the kitsonline.

"A lot of people who like to use drugs recreationally don't evenknow that it's possible to test them," he said.

He stressed that the kits are not 100 per cent accurate.

"It's not as good as sending it to a lab," he said, but theyallow people to get an overall idea of the constituents of acapsule, tablet, or powder drug sample.

"If you have no idea what's in your tablet and you just take it,that's probably one of the worst things you can do," he said.

Testing a substance, Kufner said, requires mixing a single dropof chemical reagent with a sample of the party drug (usually ascraping of powder the size of the tip of a pen) on a glass orceramic plate, and comparing the colour of thereaction to a chart.

Andrew Jolie, an electronic music enthusiast, said he has seenpeople use test kits in Miami, but not in Canada.

"Generally, they turn different colours for differentsubstances. The ones I've seen, for (popular club drug) MDMA it
would turn a dark blue and for speed or cocaine or some other kindof amphetamine, it would turn green or yellow," he said.

"You see the colour right away. If it's bright, dark blue, thenyou might not need to test it again. If it has some discolouration or something else in it, then you might want to give it another test."

The kits are available for sale online and cost about $25. Rifaat said Test Kit Plus has been selling them for about a year, andawareness and business is "growing."

Test limitations

Test kits may reduce harm, said Kufner, but there are stilllimitations to their efficacy and barriers to use.

Kufner said the Trip Project can't test drugs on site, as itcould be considered trafficking and get the group in trouble with
the law. And the kits aren't necessarily convenient. The reagentsare "somewhat corrosive," said Kufner, and people must care forthem properly to avoid spoilage.

Rifaat says it's better to use various reagents, which would alsomake the process more intensive.

All told, Jolie said, testing drugs is "really tough to do whenyou're actually out at these festivals."

"Even if you had a test kit on you, that would mean you wouldhave to sit down somewhere, you would have to find a flat surface,you know, break out all these vials. And that's sketchy enough onits own, right? Especially in a clubenvironment, you'd get kickedout instantly for that."

The RCMP said that while testing kits are not illegal, they couldindicate to an officer that someone is carrying a controlledsubstance.

Det. Jeffrey Ross of the Toronto Drug Squad said he understandshow testing kits might be perceived as useful, but expressed concernat the number of substances in their blind spots. He said testingkits could give drug users a falseimpression of safety.

In this consumer market in particular, he said, it's "buyerbeware."