Scientists find new drugs at ACT pill-testing service

Three new types of recreational drugs have been discovered by the drug-checking service, canTEST.

Transcript

00:00 The majority of these novel drugs are probably coming from southwest China.

00:07 They're almost certainly not synthesized in Australia.

00:12 And they're cousins of drugs that we know well already.

00:17 But as is often the case in toxicology, mere similarities don't necessarily imply same

00:24 effects.

00:25 We have a drug that is very similar to a drug that was doing the rounds in New Zealand a

00:31 few years back, benzopyprazine.

00:34 Your viewers may be familiar with the term bath salts, which is a very colloquial term

00:41 for a category of drugs that we call cathinones.

00:44 And then there's another entity that looks a little bit like MDMA or ecstasy.

00:48 So how were they found?

00:50 How did you come across them?

00:52 So in the ACT in Canberra, we have the opportunity, or people who use drugs have the opportunity

01:00 to come to our fixed site testing service and present the drugs that they've acquired,

01:07 either purchased or been given, and get some really detailed information about what's actually

01:13 in them.

01:14 And so that's how they arrived in our possession and in the possession of our analysts who

01:22 were able to basically do a tour de force with their flying machines and work out what

01:28 was actually inside.

01:29 So, David, why do we need a national monitoring and reporting system for recreational drugs,

01:36 which is what you're calling for?

01:37 What difference could that make?

01:39 Well, the analogy I'd give you, Ros, is say, for example, with infectious diseases, there's

01:45 already a very good Australian national monitoring system for influenza, for example.

01:52 There has been a pretty strong one for COVID.

01:55 And it's very useful to healthcare providers to sample at a very granular level what is

02:02 going on in the community, patterns, shifts of use, and indeed the emergence of very new,

02:08 novel and potentially highly dangerous drugs.

02:11 And that way we can provide a lot of information to healthcare workers all around the country.

02:18 At the moment, this sort of data is only coming out of the ACT.

02:22 And of course, we would like to share that data with other jurisdictions who might be

02:28 able to set up their own systems.

02:30 And David, what's been the response to your idea so far?

02:34 Look, I think there is some interest.

02:37 Obviously, at the moment, we're in the middle of the formation on the back of COVID of a

02:43 formation of a centre of disease control.

02:46 Now, if you look overseas, obviously, these sort of surveillance systems don't just monitor

02:52 infectious diseases.

02:53 They also monitor the emergence of new drugs.

02:55 And this would be a sort of endeavour, would be a very well-placed entity within any novel

03:02 CDC as it emerges.

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