ID: 588

Type of submission: Oral

Conference track: Practice

Topics: Safer Nightlife; Party Drug Harm Reduction

Presenting author: Mireia Ventura

Presenting author biography:

Mireia Ventura is pharmacist PhD, working as a coordinator of Energy Control’s Drug Checking service since 2007 and coordinating TEDI network since its foundation, in 2011. Since 2007, she has been a collaborator of IMIM (Instituto Municipal de Investigaciones Médicas), directly involved with the scientific diffusion of Novel Psychoactive Substances.

Results of an international drug checking service for cryptomarket users

Mireia Ventura, Fernando Caudevilla

Issue
Drug checking services are useful tools for reducing the number of drug-related incidents, monitoring new substances or patterns of use, and providing information and assessment to drug users.

Setting
The drug checking service of Energy Control since its foundation in 2000 has analysed more than 25.000 substances, mainly from Spain. After the consolidation of our national service, we dared to take a step forward and to work on an international basis.

Project
Drug users who purchase drugs in dark web markets were the target population. From April 2014 until September 2016, more than 1600 samples from abroad were analysed.

Outcomes
Cocaine was the substance most frequently submitted for analysis. Purity levels were high, although more than 80% of cocaine samples were adulterated. Levamisole contamination seems to be a widespread problem, as reported in the rest of the global drug market. Results for MDMA pills, showing very high doses of MDMA that can lead to significant adverse or toxic effects, are similar to those reported by other harm reduction groups offering drug testing programmes. A quarter of all received samples were sold as Novel Psychoactive Substances (NPS). However, related to NPS, it was detected a disturbing phenomenon, the inclusion of these substances as adulterants in the most commonly consumed illicit drugs including ecstasy, amphetamine, LSD, heroin and ketamine. Although this is not common in this particular type of markets, some dangerous adulterations have been detected such as the adulteration of heroin with Ocfentanil.

Data about purities of drugs purchased in cryptomarkets suggest that adulteration is not a severe problem and this agrees with users’ perceptions. However, we also detected that adulteration is a real threat not only at street level, but also for users that buy substances in cryptomarkets, and suggests the need for harm reduction initiatives in this setting.