Pill-testing as selective prevention

Abstract

Concern in the European Union has increased during the past years about the content of pills sold as ecstasy. However, within this context, the challenge of taking the necessary prevention measures is great – in particular to approach and inform hard-to-reach target groups such as ecstasy consumers about health risks, as these groups do not access the traditional drug care systems. On-site pill testing originally emerged as a concrete response to the adulteration of pills commonly sold as ecstasy but is revealing now as an innovative means to approach specific risk groups. Although some countries nowadays offer comparable information regarding modus operandi, contents and aims of on-site pill testing projects, discussions about this issue are still very vivid and, sometimes, ideological. The present article’s aim is to provide an objective overview of goals, methods, results and evaluation efforts of pill-testing projects. This overview gathers and discusses the most common opinions about these projects. The pseudo-legality of most projects is both the cause and consequence of the lack of rigorous evaluations in this area. Nevertheless, the information available nowadays in Europe opens the possibility of defining research and quality criteria (strategy, training, equipment) for pill testing projects.