2008 Behrman Article: Luck of the Draw: Common Adulterants Found in Illicit Drugs

We have operated the only independent street ecstasy testing program in the United States for the last 8 years. In the course of researching adulterants in street cocaine, I read for the first time this week a paper in the February 2008 issue of the Journal of Emergency Nursing a manuscript by Behrman1 that mentions the adulterant testing of ecstasy tablets. I would like to point out several errors that were made by the author and apparently missed by the reviewers.

The author writes, “ketamine, an anesthetic, used originally as an adulterant in ecstasy tablets, became well known eventually and began to be used by itself.” This is not consistent with the literature on ketamine; the non-medical use of this drug certainly predates its use as an adulterant in ecstasy tablets. For example, as early as 1971, the New England Journal of Medicine mentions, “the consumption of [ketamine] for psychedelic effect”2 and a 1978 National Institue on Drug Abuse (NIDA) monograph describes its recreational use among two sample populations.3

“Dancesafe.org is a Web site dedicated to adulterant testing of ecstasy tablets. Post-testing, the tablets are returned to the owners with a report of detected adulterants. The fee for this service is currently $120.”1 This is misleading and includes an error that should have been caught by a reviewer. It is possible that the author misunderstood the difference between lab testing and field testing. The former is expensive, requires sophisticated equipment and technical expertise, and identifies a wide range of specific adulterants. The latter is part of the harm-reduction educational practice that DanceSafe has conducted free-of-charge at parties, where a minute amount of material is scratched from a tablet and tested on site using a reagent kit for the possible presence of MDMA. However, DanceSafe has not operated a lab testing service since mid-2001, when EcstasyData.org was formed. EcstasyData is operated by Erowid Center, with DanceSafe helping to sponsor the lab testing. The Dancesafe link to ‘search lab results’ redirects to EcstasyData.org. This has been true since mid-2007, though inexperienced Web users may not notice that their browser redirects and the URL changes if they are visiting an outdated link.

Drug Detection Laboratories, the firm commissioned by EcstasyData to perform anonymous tablet testing, is required by the terms of its DEA license to destroy samples once they have been analyzed. The cost of specialized disposal contributes to the hefty fee of $120 per sample analyzed. Qualitative lab results are then posted on EcstasyData.org. If it was not simply due to a conflation of free field testing conducted by DanceSafe and costly anonymous laboratory testing sponsored by EcstasyData, we would love to learn how the author came to the conclusion that tablets and results are returned to the tablets’ owners; that needs to be corrected wherever it appears.