WOMEN should not trust the test devices designed to detect date rape drugs in their drinks. Police tests have found that the devices are plagued with problems that could render them useless.
Companies around the world are working on paper coasters or drinks stirrers that change colour when dabbed with a drink doctored with a date rape drug. These colourless and odourless tranquillisers can lull victims into a semi-comatose state, leaving them unable to remember what happened to them.
Florida company Drink Safe Technologies has sold 50 million paper coasters that can detect at least two such drugs 鈥� ketamine and gamma hydroxybutryic acid (GHB). But when police chemists tested the coaster in the US earlier this month they discovered the drink mats couldn鈥檛 pick out GHB in acidic drinks such as cola or orange juice. And they found that any colour changes were impossible to spot in drinks such as red wine.
Advertisement
Dennis Lippert, a chemist with the Michigan police crime lab who tested the mats on behalf of an investigative TV news show, told New 杏吧原创 that GHB changes into GBL (gamma butyrolactone) when exposed to acid. GBL cannot be picked up by the indicators on the coaster, admits Drink Safe spokesman Francisco Guerra, but will revert back to GHB inside the body. Lippert says tiny changes in acidity might cause the mats to miss a drug contaminant. 鈥淓ven if you breathe on it you鈥檒l alter the chemical balance,鈥� he says.
Other test developers face similar problems. For instance, British company SureScreen Diagnostics in Derby is trying to develop a disposable strip for benzodiazepines 鈥� prescription tranquillisers also favoured by date rapists.
The company hopes enzymes embedded in another version of its test strips will eventually detect GBL as well as GHB. It hasn鈥檛 yet released a product. 鈥淲e鈥檙e worried about having a test that鈥檚 not 100 per cent effective,鈥� says chief scientific officer Jim Campbell. He鈥檚 concerned that a fallible test could lull people into a false sense of security.
And the Drug Rape Trust, a British organisation that has been working with government chemists to develop a plastic stir stick to detect these drugs, has abandoned the project after two years. It proved too expensive at about 拢7 per stirrer and too easy to subvert to be practical.
While Guerra says that a second-generation coaster that can detect GBL will be released by Christmas, Campbell believes rapists may simply change tack and use different drugs. 鈥淲e鈥檙e really struggling to keep up with the current trends,鈥� he says. He adds that it is always best for bars to watch clients for suspicious behaviour.