Drug checkers get a funding boost Jun 19, 2024The CanTEST Health and Drug Checking Service will continue to be funded until June 2027, as the ACT government extends its funding by $1.8 million.
Pill-testing plan to stop ‘horror’ of teenagers overdosing: Premier Jun 16, 2024Dr David Caldicott, an emergency department consultant and clinical lead with Pill Testing Australia, said festival-goers often changed their behaviour once they had their drugs tested. Caldicott said the Victorian drug-checking proposal was timely because nitazenes – a new group of dangerous synthetic opioids more potent than fentanyl – had been found in pills tested in the ACT this year. “There’s always another drug coming through, that’s part of the problem,” he said.
Pill testing is said to slash the number of overdoses Jun 14, 2024Queensland, Australia, just committed to government-funded testing of illegal drugs. The harm reduction strategy is popular in Western Europe, where lab technicians have set up a tent at music festivals or clubs and run basic tests on party drugs. As The World’s Sarah Birnbaum reports, the idea is to give partiers a chance to reject drugs with questionable contents.
Illegal ketamine use is at a record high, and dangerous chemical cousins are entering the market Jun 7, 2024The illegal use of ketamine soared in 2023 in Australia. But as ketamine rises in popularity, organised crime groups are importing dangerous chemical copies of the drug. The number of these copies on the market is “an unknown, unknown”.
Canberra pill testing service CanTEST issues red alert after finding synthetic opioid May 20, 2024It’s the first time CanTEST has issued such a notice this year, and only the fourth time since operations began in Civic in mid-2022. “A red alert is something that we issue very rarely,” explained Dr Caldicott. “It is a reflection of how serious we think the impact of drugs like this can be on the wider community.” Dr Caldicott said early concerns prompted CanTEST analysts to pull an “all-nighter” into Saturday to ensure the message got out to the public quickly. “What often takes up to two weeks to turn around, they did in under three hours,” he said.
