But New York City wasn’t too far away, and so by the second semester of my freshman year, I was driving down every weekend and hitting as many clubs as I could. My first year of college also happened to be my last year of college. 

Pretty soon I started selling the nightlife drugs I was using, in order to afford going out that much. By that fall, when classes started up again for what would have been my sophomore year, I was full-on wheeling and dealing. Liquid acid, paper acid, acid gel tabs, ketamine, mescaline microdots. And ecstasy pills.

Ecstasy, or MDMA, all came from the Netherlands in those days. The pure “molly” that you’d hear whispers of—the kind that smells like sassafras, that’s been synthesized properly and will blow any pressed pill you’ve ever taken out of the water—was already over by 1998. But for a short time the pressed MDMA pills were still quality.

There were blue dolphins. Green RNs. Speckled crowns. There were so many kinds of the Mitsubishi-stamp pills it was getting out of hand. Mitsubishi GTs. Mitsubishi GT turbos. Double-stacked Mitsubishi GT turbos. Triple-stacked Mitsubishi GT turbos. They did stop after quadruple-stacked, since most people don’t actually want a pill that’s approaching the dimensions of a Big Mac. 

Everything was advertised as MDMA, but often you’d end up with MDA, or MDEA, or some other amphetamine derivative. There were two kinds in particular—Yellow Sunshines, and the Skull and Crossbones—that were outrageously speedy; one pill could keep you up for three days, reminiscent of a different well-known amphetamine.

Often I distinguished MDMA from the speedier, more hallucinogenic MDA by just taking a pill and figuring the rest of that batch was the same. But for sales purposes I needed something a bit more reliable, because once I started picking up 1,000-packs there were way too many different stamps and color and shapes. I didn’t want to sell something if I couldn’t even tell the buyer what it was.

We’ve just released what is effectively an all-new reagent instruction pamphlet, as well as a fully redesigned heatstroke pamphlet! More info on our website, in the most recent article posted. pic.twitter.com/uKpJ2VLbTv

— DanceSafe (@DanceSafe) May 1, 2024

Nightlife harm reduction nonprofit DanceSafe had just been founded in 1998, and when they started selling drug-testing reagent kits I was all in. When the chemical reagents interact with different drug samples they change to different colors, which you then cross-reference with a corresponding color chart. This gave me a sense of whether a pill was MDMA-based or MDA-based, and allowed me to share the info with people who were buying.

Reagent testing wasn’t something most people were doing, but I wasn’t the only one; people who were really serious about MDMA, whether for personal use or for business purposes, were ordering the kits too. The results didn’t indicate anything about potency, but were still helpful in determining how much to take because we knew MDA was more potent than MDMA.

According to my test results at least, MDMA was fading away while more pills seemed to comprise MDA and things that reagent testing couldn’t identify. And then around 2001, the market shifted toward ecstasy pills people began producing domestically.

The new supply was a lot cheaper than what we’d been getting from Amsterdam—around $1 to $3 per pill when you bought 1,000 at a time, whereas before it had been $7 or $9 per pill. But the quality went way down, to the point that I stopped using them. And because of that, I didn’t feel comfortable selling them anymore.

Image (cropped) via National Science Foundation

The post Props for Public Drug-Checking, From Someone Who Sold MDMA in the ’90s appeared first on Filter.

In November 2020, Ohio State University Students launched the Safety Outreach Autonomy Respect (SOAR) Initiative, creating a “bad batch” alert app and connecting people to Columbus-area harm reduction resources. These days, SOAR members are meeting with nightlife business owners to talk about training their staff to use naloxone and providing FTS they can offer to their customers.

“Definitely stigma is a big challenge to doing any harm reduction outreach in any space—even in places where drugs are being consumed,” SOAR Director of Community Relations Dennis Pales told Filter. “In the case of nightclubs and bars, many may deny that other drug use [besides alcohol] is happening.”

Pales also observed that some business owners are worried about potential liability involved in employees using naloxone. Ohio has a “Good Samaritan” law for people seeking immunity at the scene of an overdose, but it has a lot more fine print than those in many other states.

Another barrier is making customers understand that they’re at risk of overdose if they use any unregulated drug, not just an opioid. That can be a challenge in places more associated with drugs like cocaine or MDMA.

“People who use [opioids] may have their own communities,” Pales said, “and to keep each other safe they talk about their drug supply. So they are more knowledgeable and aware of what’s going on than people who [more often] use legal substances like alcohol.”

Fentanyl test strips are still considered drug paraphernalia under Ohio law.

Meanwhile in Cincinnati, some harm reductionists doing similar work are finding that the nightlife industry has been open to education about overdose risk. The members of Harm Reduction Ohio (HRO) have their eye on summer festivals and county fairs as potential training sites. By fall, HRO will have expanded its training into Columbus, with a goal of reaching Cleveland or Toledo by winter. After that, the focus will be on expanding to more rural areas.

“A lot of people are harm reduction-minded,” AmandaLynn Reese, HRO director of outreach and engagement, told Filter. “A lot of people in the industry use drugs, or there’s liability that people who are doing a key bump in the bathroom might have some adulterated [cocaine].” About 80 percent of cocaine- and meth-involved overdose deaths in Ohio last year also involved fentanyl.

In March, the community was shaken when a well-known figure in the Columbus nightlife scene died of overdose. Reese said they were not known to use opioids, and likely took another drug cut with fentanyl.

“Having the fentanyl test strips and naloxone in these places and making them community access points not only protects the staff but it protects their patrons, and it’s the reasonable thing to do,” Reese said.  

FTS are still considered drug paraphernalia under Ohio law. A bill introduced in February, SB 296, would both provide immunity from criminal prosecution for people using FTS as well as make naloxone more widely available. The bill is currently awaiting its vote in the House.

“The risk of being prosecuted for a fentanyl test strip is fairly low,” Pales said. “[But] I have heard stories of fentanyl test strips being confiscated or being used as reason to do another search. So definitely taking some of the legal burdens off of them is a very good thing.”

To date, HRO and its partners have held several small trainings at local bars, focused on naloxone and FTS. On April 25, the group will partner with the Coalition for Community Safety to host a much larger training at a local bar, welcoming around 150 people from the nightlife industry. Reese said that to make it easier and more inviting for people to participate in these trainings, sometimes the employer will pay their staff as if they were on the clock—or offer an open tab.

Photograph by Peter Clark via Flickr/Creative Commons 2.0

The post In Ohio, Harm Reductionists Break Into the Nightlife Scene appeared first on Filter.

Across the United States, as COVID restrictions ease and concert venues and clubs reopen, millions of people are making a surreal transition from quarantine to nightlife. For those who use drugs, partying now may come with increased risks.

The emotional and physical transition could push some people past their pre-pandemic comfort zones, said Dr. Sheila Vakharia, deputy director of Drug Policy Alliance’s Department of Research and Academic Engagement. Many may use drugs they’re not familiar with, or quantities they’d normally avoid or be better prepared to tolerate.

“We think about drugs as ‘set and setting,’” Vakharia said. “We’re still in a pandemic! People are still dying of COVID … you may not be in as great of a headspace to get high the way you used to.”

Lockdowns and travel restrictions have also likely increased the prevalence of adulterants in most types of unregulated drugs. According to Vakharia, this is both because many people’s access to their regular sellers has been disrupted, and because the supply itself has been more complicated to transport, which incentivizes sellers to stretch their products as far as possible.

While fentanyl has been prevalent in the heroin supply for a decade, it is increasingly found in non-opioid drugs that are more regularly associated with nightlife and partying, like powder cocaine. And the pandemic appears to have exacerbated the risk—in New York City, fentanyl-involved cocaine overdose increased 30 percent between October 2019 and October 2020. Many people who use nightlife drugs don’t have opioid tolerance, adding to their vulnerability to overdose.

“I’m going to really stick to the scene where everyone knows each other, because I trust them and feel safer that way,” Alex told Filter. “There’s a mutual aid element to LES’s underground punk scene where everyone kind of looks out for each other. A lot of us even carry Narcan! I’m much more diligent now about really doing drug-checking in every way that I can. A good friend of mine uses cocaine when she’s out, but [during the pandemic] she tested a batch that came up positive for fentanyl.”

“If you go six months between buying drugs, something else may be in it. The market is changing so quickly.”

Research suggests that use of nightlife-associated drugs like MDMA and powder cocaine has decreased during the pandemic. Reasons include less contact with peers, fewer occasions to use these types of drugs and not enjoying using them at home alone. This in itself is grounds for caution when resuming use.

Another factor that many drug users might not be considering as they re-enter the nightlife scene is the proliferation of Novel Psychoactive Substances (NPS), like isotonitazine and etizolam, in unregulated supplies.

“Now, NPS opioids are coming and going in cycles of three to six months,” Alex Krotulski, the associate director for Center for Forensic Science Research & Education (CFSRE), told Filter. If “you go six months between buying drugs, something else may be in it. The drug market is changing so quickly.”

Follow basic harm reduction advice when getting back into nightlife this summer, advised Stefanie Jones, DPA’s interim managing director of communications and former director of its #SaferPartying campaign. “Go slow. Use with people that you know. Be in an environment [where] you feel safe. It’s going to be important to remind people of that, because they haven’t been thinking about these things for several months.”

Drug-Checking and Its Limitations

A large portion of people who use traditional party drugs are aware that they don’t fully know what they’re taking. According to the 2020 Global Drug Survey, nearly half the people who reported taking MDMA pills between October 2019 and October 2020 did so without knowing much actual MDMA their pills contained. This is where drug-checking can help.

Yuna Blair, a regular in San Diego’s underground EDM/rave scene, has been using drug-checking kits since 2016. At first, she only used one type of testing reagent. Then came a negative experience with what she thought was an MDMA pill.

“I’m still not quite sure what was in there,” Blair said. “I wish I didn’t take it, it wasn’t a good time … if you’re expecting one thing, and you get something else, it’s destabilizing.” These days, she uses three to five different reagents on every sample.

Organizations such as DanceSafe offer multiple types of reagent kits. But these are considered “drug paraphernalia,” and thus criminalized, in all US states except Alaska, California, Colorado, Nebraska, New York, South Carolina and Wyoming, as well as the District of Columbia.  

Mohawk Greene, director of DanceSafe’s New York chapter, said that even in a state where drug-checking kits are legal, like New York, venue managers often object to their presence.

“What’s the real use of giving [people] drug education info and talking about the importance of drug-checking,” Greene asked, “if they don’t have the tools themselves?”

Reagent kits also have functional limitations. They can only detect whether a given number of substances—like fentanyl—are present or not, and they give no indication of how much is present; just if it’s there at all.

“Drug-checking is an imperfect solution to an unregulated drug supply,” Dr. Vakharia said. “Even fentanyl testing strips—they’re great but they’re a dollar each, which can add up.”

“If we had a regulated drug supply, we wouldn’t need to check what’s in it.”

Nonetheless, valuable services do operate across North America. In Toronto, partying-focused harm reduction group the Trip! Project runs booths at local events. It’s staffed by outreach volunteers who offer drug-checking, safer use supplies and educational materials. It also works with emergency medical services to facilitate safer experiences.

“If someone’s vomiting or having a seizure and what not, it’s way easier for us to be able to bring them to the medical tents than for their friends to try to drag them there themselves,” project coordinator Lori Kufner told Filter. “So we really are working under the health and safety umbrella.”

Trip! Project works with Toronto’s Drug Checking Service which, similar to CFSRE, uses mass-spectrometry to reveal sample compositions, which are then made publicly accessible.

Safe consumption sites (SCS) have taken Canada’s drug-checking capacity to a new level, since they can often perform the service onsite. Results are recorded and provided to Health Canada for publication, and samples can be sent to designated laboratories with mass-spectrometry for evaluation.

“The mass-spec is the best checking there is, because we want to do it right and catch the analogs,” Kufner said. “I would really press cities or countries to allow SCS.”

If sellers had increased access to technology like mass-spectrometry, they’d be able to make more informed decisions about their product, as well as share that information with their buyers. But ultimately, the only way to remove dangerous adulterants from the supply is to regulate that supply.

“When I go to the store and buy lotion, a box of cereal, liquor, I know what’s in it so I don’t need to check it,” Vakharia said. “If we had a regulated drug supply, we wouldn’t need to check what’s in it.”

Photograph via Flickr/Creative Commons 2.0

* Name has been changed at source’s request

DPA previously provided a restricted grant to The Influence Foundation, which operates Filter, to support a Drug War Journalism Diversity Fellowship. Dr. Vakharia is a member of the board of directors of The Influence Foundation.

The post Nightlife Is Reopening, But the Drugs Have Changed—And So Have We appeared first on Filter.