FDS Insight Newsletter Jul-Sep 2020

40 United Kingdom A QUARTER OF STREET DRUGS ARE FAKE AND DANGEROUS TO USERS Scientists analysed more than 170 substances of concern. Photograph: Lorna Roach/The Guardian lmost a quarter of street drugs are not what users think they are, some being far more powerful and dangerous than expected, according to findings from the UK’s first community-based drug-checking service. The testing, carried out in Bristol and Durham, involved more than 170 substances of concern being submitted and analysed by a team of chemists in a pop-up lab, with follow-up healthcare consultations delivered to more than 200 users. Nearly one in four of the drugs sold (24%) were not what they purported to be, according to the results, published this week in the British Journal of Clinical Pharmacology. Drugs sold as MDMA or ecstasy turned out to be n- ethylpentylone, which has been linked to overdose deaths, while a substance purporting to be ketamine was found to be a new psychoactive substance with the chemical name 2-FDCK, a synthetic drug that is about one-and-a- half times more powerful and whose effects lasts for up to three times as long as ketamine. A small number of submitted samples were associated with ‘problem drug- use’, including heroin containing paracetemol and caffeine, and a synthetic version of cannabis. ‘The core problem is supply and demand,’ said Prof Fiona Measham, chair in criminology at the University of Liverpool, and director of harm reduction charity The Loop, which conducted the tests. ‘As demand for drugs is as buoyant as ever, we see increasingly innovative attempts to meet that demand, with drug users vulnerable to the sophisticated operations of organised crime. Testing bypasses the central problem here, which is that users cannot be sure what they’ve bought in terms of content or strength.’ As a result of the testing, which took place in several venues, including a church, The Loop was able to warn users about problem drugs in circulation via social media. ‘Identifying a ketamine analogue for the first time in a small city like Durham, with several of the dealers having missold it as ketamine, illustrates both the extent to which new psychoactive substances are being missold as established drugs on the streets of Britain and also how street dealers themselves can be vulnerable to misselling by suppliers higher up the chain,’ Measham said. A