From workout supplements in cocaine to children's cough medicine in MDMA — Australia's first fixed-site pill testing clinic has found some unusual ingredients in drugs.
A total of 500 samples have been tested at CanTEST in Canberra's CBD since it opened in July as a drug-harm minimisation bid from the ACT government.
The clinic recently saw an increase in visitors and extended opening hours when the music festival Spilt Milk came to town a few weeks ago.
More than 135 drug samples were tested in November at CanTEST and the clinic continues to uncover new properties of the drugs sampled.
Stephanie Stephens, acting CEO of Directions Health Services, one of the bodies overseeing CanTEST, said the more data that is being collected by CanTEST, the more the public learns of properties of drugs that can harm or even cause death to the user.
"It's helpful to identify that these things are there because particularly if they are taken in larger quantities or mixed with other things there can be a cause for concern and cause an adverse health effect and can land someone in [the] hospital," Ms Stephens said.
She added that while the data was being collated from drugs sourced within the ACT, it was safe to say the samples could be coming from anywhere across the country.
"There are national learnings from this [data] — what is circulating here might be quite niche to Canberra but you would expect that if it is circulating that there's quite a high likelihood that it would be found elsewhere."
Ms Stephens said that there was a high number of people discarding these drugs, saying that they'll use the drug less, differently or not at all.
She added that the clinic being an Australian first meant that other residents nationally could be learning from the information gathered by CanTEST to make their own informed drug decisions.
"We know people from other jurisdictions are watching this data, we know that people change their behaviour and drug consumption in response to having this kind of information so we anticipate the ripple effects will be Australia-wide."
What's in the drugs?
The overall purity of cocaine samples increased by almost 30 per cent compared to last month, however, some samples were found to have some not-so-cocaine-like ingredients:
Creatine and glutamine are both properties used in sports supplements, the first is a more natural substance that traditionally helps weightlifters and the latter is a class of herbal supplements that claim to boost testosterone levels.
Lignocaine is a local anaesthesia and lubricant used for the urethra prior to catheterisation and other urethra-related procedures.
Another property that appeared in the cocaine sample was boric acid, more commonly used as a pesticide that can cause skin damage.
Out of 43 samples of what was expected to be MDMA, only 34 contained the drug with CanTEST reporting a range of purities from 5 to 84 per cent:
Dextromethorphan a component of kids' cough medicine was found in one pill sampled as MDMA.
Synthetic psychedelic MDA was also found in one sample, along with dipentylone, a drug that has been missold as MDMA in the United States — both have a stimulant effect similar to that of MDMA but hold at times deadly risks.
And the less deadly caffeine was also found in two pills of MDMA that were presented to the site.
Out of 23 samples expected to show ketamine, only 14 detected the drug with a purity ranging from 31 to 70 per cent.
Nine unknown samples were also presented to the site, four were identified as MDMA — two as cocaine and one as lactose.
The results from the reported uptick in people through the doors of CanTEST for Spilt Milk festival will be included in next month's wrap, which Ms Stephens said should again provide insight into the unknown properties of the substances being sold to drug consumers.
Ms Stephens said CanTEST would not extend its opening hours over the holiday period but would instead keep the usual trading hours on Thursdays and Fridays.
As the site was headed into its sixth and possibly final month of its trial Ms Stephens said she was "hopeful and confident" in the value that CanTEST was bringing to the ACT community.
"We hope to be here for a long time to come but we will await to see the outcome of the six-month pilot."
