20.11.2019

Drug testing

One of the main risks from illegal drug taking is that it is impossible to know exactly what substance you are taking. Unlike legal medicines or alcohol, the contents of any particular pill or powder are likely to vary enormously. A tablet may or may not contain the chemical substance it is sold as containing and the dosage – and therefore how much it affects the body – is unknown.

Recent research¹ Couchman L et al. (2019) Variability in content and dissolution profiles of MDMA tablets collected in the UK between 2001 and 2018 – a potential risk to users? Drug Test Anal. DOI:10.1002/dta.2605 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31009168 analysed over 650 seized ecstasy tablets and established that tablets from the same batch can contain very different concentrations of MDMA.

In response to this situation, a number of festivals started hosting drug testing facilities on site. There are two main approaches to drug testing: publicly accessible drug safety testing (also known as “drug checking” or front of house testing) where festivalgoers can submit substances of concern for analysis to find out their contents and strength; and non-public testing (also known as “back of house” testing), where substances which are seized or found by the police or the organisation running the festival are tested.