Canberra pill-testing service finds methamphetamine in counterfeit diet pill Mar 13, 2024CanTEST Coordinator Steph Tzanetis told ABC Radio Canberra this particular drug had been purchased from “the clear net, not the dark web”. She said taking the potent drug, methamphetamine, could have resulted in the person experiencing a stimulant overdose. “So the signs and symptoms relating to a stimulant overdose can include things like overheating, a person could experience confusion, agitation,” Ms Tzanetis said.
Renewed calls for pill testing at festivals and clubs Mar 12, 2024Stephanie Tzanetis is coordinator for Directions Health at CanTEST, the A-C-T’s fixed site pill testing service. She’s also the Executive Officer at Pill Testing Australia, which provided Australia’s first on-site music festival pill testing at Groovin the Moo in 2018. She says results from the first six months of the ACT trials, which were independently evaluated by the Australian National University, show drug testing significantly reduces, but doesn’t remove all drug harms.
Fresh calls for pill-testing after suspected drug overdose death at Victorian music festival Mar 11, 2024The Victorian government is being urged to reassess its stance on pill-testing after the death of a man from a suspected drug overdose at a weekend music festival. The 23-year-old was airlifted in a critical condition to the Alfred hospital in Melbourne from Mafeking near Ararat, in the state’s south-west, in the early hours of Sunday but later died.
NSW Health warns of opioid risk after people took heroin thinking it was cocaine or methamphetamine Feb 23, 2024The NSW health department has issued a drugs warning after 11 people who believed they were using cocaine or methamphetamine recently experienced an opioid overdose.
Emergency departments report spike in hospital admissions linked to illicit drug GHB or fantasy Feb 21, 2024Dr Green said that, without drug testing being made available to the public, it was too challenging to find out what was in a drug after a patient had suffered an overdose.
New drugs mean more risk of overdose. Experts say we need more pill testing now Feb 20, 2024Chemistry lead of CanTEST, Australia’s only fixed-site drug checking service, Malcolm McLeod told ABC RN’s Life Matters that “around 10 per cent to 15 per cent of samples [are] maybe not as expected”.
No way for Sydneysiders to test the secret threats in drugs that could send them to the hospital Feb 4, 2024Gino Vumbaca, president of drug safety organisation Harm Reduction Australia, said his website receives “at least two to three emails a day” from people who want to safely test the pills that they or their children have.
How much a pill-testing trial would cost Victoria Feb 4, 2024A two-year pill-testing trial would cost Victoria about $3.7 million, the Parliamentary Budget Office has found, as left-wing crossbenchers pressure the state government over drug reform after overdoses at this summer’s festivals.
Public health warning: tablets sold as MDMA (Ecstasy) found to contain a potent opioid Jan 30, 2024NSW Health is warning of the dangers of tablets which are being sold as MDMA (ecstasy) and found to contain a potent opioid (nitazene). Three people presented to Sydney hospitals over the past weekend, after taking as little as half a tablet. One patient was admitted to the ICU and has since been discharged home.
The state government must take this golden opportunity on pill testing Jan 19, 2024A 2023 report on the first six months of Canberra’s fixed drug-testing site showed that when a substance tested was not what the user expected, they were four times more likely to discard the drug. These tests can serve as a last-ditch attempt to save a life.
