Drug Checking Workshop

Canada is currently facing one of the largest drug adulteration epidemics in the country’s history, mainly via street level trafficking of drugs. Drug dealers and suppliers are cutting their drugs with myriads of random chemicals and powders that look similar to the drug they are selling in order to turn more of a profit while giving out less of the actual drug. Due to this, for the sake of harm reduction and safety, it has become more important than ever for drug users to take it upon themselves to attempt to find out exactly what it is they purchased rather than believing whatever the source says it is. A simple way to do this is to purchase a simple drug testing kit.

Drug Testing Kits

Drug testing kits come in many shapes and sizes, but the most simple, portable, and easily accessible ones comes in the form of an empty plastic cylinder, an eyedropper with a chemical reagent, and the corresponding color wheel to the reagent.

Depending on the substance, different reagents will be needed in order to identify what MAY be in the sample being tested. IMPORTANT: These drug testing kits are not infallible and only inform the user of what could be within a given tested sample (i.e. the test only tells you what it finds in the sample you chose to use, there could be other adulterants within the bag that simply was used for the test). That being said, it is important to do multiple tests with the same primary reagent, along with other reagents that also work for the substance in need of testing. One can never test enough!

A Short How-To Walkthrough

These test kits work for powders, crystals, as well as blotter (common LSD paper).

1. Take a small sample of the drug in question and place it into the plastic tube (can also use a pure white surface)
2. Use the eyedropper to drop enough reagent onto the drug to cover it
3. Shake the plastic cylinder for 30 seconds to one minute (or allow the reagent to mix with the drug on the white surface for the same amount of time)
4. Compare resulting colour to the color wheel associated with the reagent used.

Ordering test kits

The easiest source to get reliable, standardized testing kits from are the Bunk Police. They offer a wide variety of testing kits for all common drugs along with a video catalog of what reactions should look like using each reagent with each substance.

Please see a more in-depth guide to drug checking here.