Sources

DanceSafe.org (USA & CA)
Website
About the Organization

Dancesafe is a nonprofit, harm reduction organization promoting health and safety within the rave and nightclub community. They currently have local chapters in twenty-four cities throughout the US and Canada. Their local chapters consist of young people from within the dance culture itself who have a sincere interest in bettering their communities and educating themselves and their peers. They train their volunteers to be health educators and drug abuse prevention counselors within their own communities, utilizing the principles and methods of harm reduction and popular education. Dancesafe volunteer-staffs harm reduction booths at raves, nightclubs and other dance events where they provide information on drugs, safer sex, and other health and safety issues concerning the electronic dance community (like driving home safely and protecting one’s hearing).


DrugsData (USA)
Website
About the Organization

A project of Erowid Center to document and publish drug sample contents through laboratory analysis. DrugsData (formerly ‘EcstasyData’) manages its own laboratory drug sample analysis and re-publishes data from other testing programs. DrugsData.org is owned and operated by Erowid; all testing results are edited by Erowid’s editorial staff.

Testing Program

DrugsData.org sponsors laboratory analysis of street drug samples in the United States through Drug Detection Labs (DDL). DrugsData.org’s testing program started in July 2001 under its former name, EcstasyData.org.


CheckIt! (Vienna, Austria)
Website

CheckIt!, a drug information service based in Vienna (Wien), provides on-site drug testing at events, parties, and festivals using high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) and HPLC-MS. Because it is common for the same imprint to be used in pressing different batches of tablets with differing contents, CheckIt! only publishes photos for samples that require a public warning. Results for other samples, without photos, are published six months after analysis.

Checkit! is a joint project of Addiction Support Wien and the Clinical Institute for Medical and Chemical Laboratory Diagnostics Wien. It is funded by Addiction and Drug Coordination Wien and the Austrian Federal Ministry of Health.

Testing Program

CheckIt! conducts its own on-site HPLC analysis; it does not have a mail-in analysis program.


MDA Basecamp (Innsbruck, Austria)
Website

MDA Basecamp is the mobile unit of Drogenarbeit Z6, a drug counseling and health service working with youth and young adults in party/nightclub settings in Innsbruck, Austria. MDA Basecamp provides information, advice, support and harm reduction responses to young people using recreational drugs. Their Drug Checking service is offered at their drop-in center in cooperation with the local forensics institute (GMI) and checkit! in Vienna.

MDA Basecamp is a project of the organization Z6. It is funded by the state of Tyrol, the city of Innsbruck, and the Austrian Federal Ministry of Health.

Testing Program

Gerichtsmedizin Innsbruck (GMI), the Forensics Institute of Innsbruck, Austria works collaboratively with checkit! in Vienna to test samples for MDA Basecamp’s drug checking service. The test type GMI and checkit! use is HPLC.


The Loop (United Kingdom)
Website

The Loop is a not for profit Community Interest Company established in 2013 that provides drug safety testing, welfare and harm reduction services at nightclubs, festivals and other leisure events.

The Loop also provides staff training on drugs awareness, in-house welfare service delivery, the prevention of drug related harm at events, and the delivery of ethical ‘front of house’ drug safety testing services.

Testing Program

Fourier-transform infrared (ATR-FTIR) spectroscopy is The Loop’s primary analysis method because it is fast, has a low cost-per-test and has excellent detection ability. The Loop use a Bruker Alpha FTIR spectrometer.


SaferParty / Streetwork (Switzerland)
Website
About the Organization

Streetwork Youth Counseling (“Jugendberatung Streetwork”) offers high performance liquid chromotography (HPLC) testing of street drugs submitted by users in the Zurich area, through on-site drug testing at events or via a drop-off service offered on specific days at the Drug Information Center (“Drogeninformationszentrum”, or “DIZ”). Warnings about specific test results are published on their website at Drug-Checking > Warnungen.

Testing Program

On-site HPLC analysis is conducted in collaboration with the Pharmaceutical Control Lab of the Bern Region. In some cases, HPLC and GC/MS analysis of samples dropped off at the DIZ is outsourced.


Energy Control (Spain)
Website
About the Organization

Energy Control (EC) is a drug prevention project that consists of peer-to-peer interventions, school workshops, and the use of new technologies and other activities in the area of risk reduction associated with drug use. It is oriented toward young people who use drugs (legal or illegal) in their leisure time as well as people who are not users but have friends who are. The project trains and coordinates a group of young volunteers who go to party contexts and set up information booths about drugs, drug testing and risk reduction practices. It also provides classroom-based workshops on attitudes towards drugs to youth under 18 . EC is part of a non-profit organization, the Well Being and Development Association (Asociación Bienestar y Desarrollo – ABD). Its scope of action is Spain, with offices in Catalonia, Madrid, the Balearic Islands and Andalucía.

Testing Program

Energy Control offers thin layer chromotography (TLC) testing of street drugs submitted by users in Spain, through on-site drug checking at events or via a drop-in center offered on specific days at the Energy Control office in Barcelona. TLC analysis is conducted by the Energy Control staff and volunteers trained in the process. In some cases, to confirm or clarify TLC results, GC/MS or LC/MS analysis of unusual or difficult-to-identify samples is outsourced to a drug analysis laboratory in Barcelona. To determine purity and dosage of samples, Energy Control uses Ultraviolet Spectrophotometry. This technique is only useful when the sample is not adulterated. With this method, Energy Control can quantify MDMA, MDA, amphetamine, methamphetamine, cocaine, ketamine, 2C-B, 2C-I and DMT samples.

Energy Control has offered drug checking since 1999. Its testing program focuses on issues faced by Spanish drug users. In 2014 it expanded testing services to international samples.


Drug Information Center (Zurich, Switzerland)
Website
About the Organization

The Drug Information Center (DIZ), a program of the city of Zurich, conducts free, confidential counseling and HPLC testing of street drug samples in Zurich. In some cases, HPLC and GC/MS analysis of samples dropped off at the DIZ is outsourced.


Drug Detection Laboratories, Inc. (USA)
Website
About the Organization

DDL provides a range of forensic drug testing services. They are a DEA-licensed laboratory legally able to handle scheduled substances.


rave it safe (Bern, Switzerland)
Website
About the Organization

A project of Swiss harm reduction organization CONTACT Mobil, rave it safe produces warnings and testing results from two drug checking sources, Drogeninformationen Bern (DIB+) and a Bern-based mobile drug checking unit. SaferParty (Zurich) includes rave it safe results in its drug checking warning announcements.

Testing Program

On-site HPLC analysis is conducted in collaboration with the Pharmaceutical Control Lab of the Bern Region. In some cases, HPLC and GC/MS analysis of samples is outsourced.


BAONPS (Europe)
Website

The Be Aware on Night Pleasure Safety (BAONPS) project’s main aim is to identify new psychoactive substances by using different kinds of drug checking, both in party settings and outside them. This project seeks to improve awareness and knowledge of the risks and effects of common psychoactive drugs and NPS among partygoers. Furthermore, it aims to understand meanings and consumption patterns concerning NPS and related cross-cultural differences and inform local and national drug service providers about NPS and cultural factors influencing drug consumption patterns. Groups in Italy, Germany, Portugal and Slovenia are involved in the project.

Testing Program

Drug checking facilitated by BAONPS affiliates in Italy is carried out by Centro Regionale Antidoping (CAD) ‘Alessandro Bertinaria’, a forensic toxicology lab in Turin. On-site analysis at events is performed by a chemist using portable RAMAN Spectroscopy (Trunarc), a qualitative analysis. Partner drug checking groups conduct colorimetric reagent testing on some of the samples. The counselling associated with tests is offered by a social worker. When the result of field testing is inconclusive, the unknown sample/drug is sent to CAD to be analyzed with GC-MS or UHPLC-MS/MS. BAONPS Italy also coordinates drug checking for a small number of Italian samples outside of nightlife settings.


Centro Regionale Antidoping ‘Alessandro Bertinaria’ (Italy)
Website

Centro Regionale Antidoping (CAD) ‘Alessandro Bertinaria’ is a forensic toxicology lab in Turin, Italy that performs on-site RAMAN spectroscopy and laboratory GC-MS and UHPLC-MS/MS drug checking as part of the Italian BAONPS project in northern Italy.


DEA (USA)
Website
About the Organization

The mission of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) is to enforce the controlled substances laws and regulations of the United States and bring to the criminal and civil justice system of the United States, or any other competent jurisdiction, those organizations and principal members of organizations, involved in the growing, manufacture, or distribution of controlled substances appearing in or destined for illicit traffic in the United States; and to recommend and support non-enforcement programs aimed at reducing the availability of illicit controlled substances on the domestic and international markets.

Testing Program

The DEA’s Microgram Bulletin publishes testing results from regional labs around the United States.


Scottish DEA (now Police Scotland)
Website
About the Organization

Renamed the Scottish Crime and Drug Enforcement Agency in 2006, this governmental police organization was dissolved in 2013, when its activities were subsumed under Police Scotland. SDEA/SCDEA had an analytical lab and tested a wide variety of illegal and pharmaceutical drugs that the Scottish police encounter in their work.

Testing Program

NA.