Current attitudes toward drug checking services and a comparison of expected with actual drugs present in street drug samples collected from opioid users

Original research
by
Swartz, James A. et al

Release Date

2023

Geography

USA

Language of Resource

English

Full Text Available

Yes

Open Access / OK to Reproduce

Yes

Peer Reviewed

Yes

Objective

We assessed how valued drug checking services (DCS) would be for opioid street drug users given the ubiquity of fentanyl and related analogs in the drug supply, the information they would most value from drug checking, and compared expected versus actual constituent drugs in collected samples.

Findings/Key points

Attitudes toward DCS indicated a general but not uniform receptiveness with a majority indicating interest in DCS though sizeable minorities believed DCS was “too much trouble” (25.2%) or there was “no point” in testing (35.4%). Participants were especially inaccurate identifying common cutting agents and potentiating drugs such as diphenhydramine in their samples (sensitivity = .17).

Design/methods

Convenience sample of opioid street drug users (N = 118)

doi.org

Keywords

Drug checking
About PWUD
Illegal drugs