Pill testing in situ

Abstract

On-site pill testing is a sort of secondary prevention, which emerged as a concrete response to the problem caused by adulteration of pills commonly sold as ecstasy. Although some European Union countries nowadays offer comparable information regarding development status, modus operandi, contents and aims of on-site pill testing projects, discussions about this issue are still very vivid and, sometimes, just based on ideological backgrounds. The present article gathers and studies the most common opinions about these projects with the aim of producing a clear and realistic idea that would enable us to point out positive and negative aspects. The pseudo-legality of most projects is both the cause and consequence of the lack of rigorous results for investigations in this area. At the same time, this fact makes it difficult to develop a real scientific debate and come up with a conclusive political recommendation about this kind of projects. Nevertheless, the level of information available nowadays in Europe opens the possibility of defining research and quality criteria (strategy, training, equipment) for pill testing projects. In order to achieve an evidence-based assessment, it would be more useful to implement these quality criteria in the framework of the projects in existence, instead of beforehand demonising them on the basis of weak arguments.