ID: HR19-850

Presenting author: Daan van der Gouwe

Presenting author biography:

Drugs researcher, sociologist working at Trimbos Institute, involved in many international harm reduction projects,with expertise in drug checking, drug policy, and online drug markets. Spokesperson for Trimbos Institute in the media. Recent publications on purity and price of drugs bought online (Addiction Journal, 2017)

DIMS: 26 years of drug checking in the Netherlands - lessons learned and way forward

Daan van der Gouwe

Issue
The Drugs Monitoring and Information System (DIMS) is the oldest drug checking service in the world. DIMS primarily aims at monitoring the market in especially club drugs such as ecstasy, cocaine. A secondary but equally important aim is reducing harm for those who use these drugs. Drug checking enables drug users to know the content and purity of the purchased substance. It also allows for rapid warning campaigns among target groups in case of adulterated substances on the market.

Setting
The need for this intervention was first identified late eighties, early nineties when in the Netherlands the use of club drugs increased. At that time available drug services targeted basically heroin and/or basecoke users. For this new type of users no services were available, and thus chill rooms, free water and also drug checking were initiated.

Project
DIMS, hosted by the Trimbos Institute, receives full financial and moral support from the Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sports since 1999 and since then it, co-ordinates drug checking in the Netherlands, currently conducted in over 30 office locations throughout the country, and serving tens of thousands of potential users of recreational drugs and their broader communities each and every year.

Outcome
In the course of time DIMS coordinated over 10 full-blown successful warning campaigns, involving mass media and social media, reaching massive amounts of potential users. A red Alert app has been developed, sending out push-up messages in case of presence of extra dangerous drugs on the market.
Some of this best practice will be shared during the presentation, it will also highlight several ongoing issues such as on-site pill testing versus office-based testing, whether online publication of test results is a good thing or not and the usefulness of drug checking in reducing opioid overdose in Canada and the US.