SPOTLIGHT ON E

Ecstasy is a fact of party life for some and the end-of-the-year gala
is no exception. Harm-reduction groups in Australia, the U.S. and even
in British Columbia test partiers' pills for dangerous adulterants.
Why is Toronto The Good not doing the same?

Amy Brown-Bowers Special to the Star

It started as ordinary teenage partying on New Year's Eve, a night of
too many drinks, lots of fun and stupid decisions. Dealers of
recreational drugs were circulating freely in the downtown Toronto
club and my roommate scored some complimentary "ecstasy" pills. But
they didn't work like ecstasy pills. After I found her slumped in the
bathroom and got her home and hydrated, she went manic, alternately
cleaning and dancing in her bedroom well into the next day.

A friend directed me to pillreports.com, a website where recreational
drug users post digital images of pills they have taken alongside
detailed descriptions of the effects. Some users do basic chemical
tests of pill contents and post the results online. We quickly found
an image of the pills my roommate took - turns out they were laced
with speed (the common name for methamphetamines).

Ecstasy, or MDMA, is a psychoactive drug that typically induces
feelings of euphoria, empathy, decreased inhibitions and an increased
awareness of tactile and emotional experiences. It was originally
developed as a diet aid and was used experimentally in clinical
settings to help people in couples' counselling before becoming
illegal. Today it is most often used at clubs and raves.

But back to my friend: thankfully, there was no major harm done. Had
she been in Victoria, she might have escaped the ordeal altogether.
That's because harm-reduction organizations such as Island Kidz offer
free and anonymous pill testing at raves and clubs.

On any given weekend, volunteer Jessica Krippendorf, 30, and some
friends pack their glow-in-the-dark bracelets, candy, condoms, flyers
and bottles of chemical reactants, and head to a venue. Once there,
they set up a booth and post their sign: Free pill testing. Then they
wait for the lines to form.

They test ecstasy pills for dangerous adulterants like speed, DXM and
TMA as well as for the presence of actual ecstasy. Many so-called
ecstasy pills actually contain no trace of the drug.

Pill testing is a harm-reduction strategy not unlike needle exchange
programs and safe crack kits that acknowledge people are taking and
will continue to take drugs but try to reduce some of the risks by
giving potential users access to unbiased and non-judgmental
information. Common in Europe, Australia and parts of the U.S., pill
testing is scarce in Canada and not done in Toronto.

The Toronto Drug Strategy, adopted by city council in 2005, supports
needle exchanges and safe crack kits as effective harm-reduction
methods, but makes no mention of pill testing.

When the strategy was debated, pill testing was never "raised as an
option or as a program that was being used in another jurisdiction,"
says councillor Kyle Rae, chair of the advisory committee.

"I just feel it's fraught with liability concerns and why would a
non-profit or the city take on the liability of what a 14- or
15-year-old is consuming .. You may have found the line that I'm
uncomfortable crossing when it comes to harm reduction."

TRIP, a harm-reduction group for ravers that has received grants from
the provincial government and the City of Toronto, doesn't do pill
testing but would, as long as its funding wasn't affected and its
volunteers didn't have to worry about being arrested, says project
co-ordinator Erin Lewis.

"There are too many risks involved right now ... (but) I would love if
we could do it. I think it's a really good thing," she says.

Rae, on the other hand, thinks, "it would be very difficult for the
board of health or for the citizens of Toronto to see this as a priority."

As for legal liabilities, Det. Doug McCutcheon of the Toronto Police
drug squad says the likelihood of possession and trafficking
violations during pill testing would require some kind of special
legal exemption by the government or courts.

"The whole harm-reduction premise flies in the face of law enforcement
. it's the opposite ends of the spectrum," he says. "Harm reduction
. it's saying, 'You know what, we know that you're not going to be a
prohibitionist, we know that you're going to do it, but at least let's
try to minimize the damage you're going to cause to yourself.'

"You can't have a law enforcement officer saying, 'I'm going to arrest
you for possession of ecstasy' and then on the same hand ... (say),
'You know what? I know you're going to do the pills but this is what's
in them so take notice.'"

But out in Victoria, Krippendorf, who started Island Kidz about six
years ago, says she worked with police on the testing process, and
together, they came up with a strict protocol to ensure all the
testing is legal.

She is completing a social work diploma with a specialization in
addiction at Malaspina University-College in Nanaimo.

Jake (not his real name), a jungle DJ from Toronto attending
university out west, has been "dealing and dosing" recreational drugs
since high school. But it wasn't until he moved to B.C. to study that
he heard about pill testing. He bought a home pill testing kit online
that he now uses regularly. Home kits include bottles of chemical
reagents used to test for several substances in pills.

"Even if (the pills) are from a tested source, which I go through,
I'll still usually want to test them out ... I want to know what I've
got, especially if I'm giving it to my friends. I'd feel pretty
responsible if I gave somebody something that did them wrong," he says.

Harm-reduction groups say users don't respond to the "just say no"
approach.

Says Krippendorf: "We accept that drug use is part of the human experience.
We don't condone it nor do we condemn it. We just sort of accept people's
choices as they are.

"The purpose of adulterant screening is not to say, 'Yep, this is E,
have a nice night,'" she notes. It's "to find out what pills that are
sold as ecstasy contain something far more harmful."

The testing process takes seconds. Volunteers take small scrapings of
ecstasy pills - Purple Aliens, Emoticons, Yellow Stars and Blue
Bombers - from ravers, drop chemical reactants on the powder and watch
for instant colour-coded reactions that show the presence of
psychotropic adulterants.

Volunteers tell the pill owner how quickly they will feel a reaction,
what it might be and the possible dangers.

"One of the things we try to do is say, 'This is the drug you're about
to take. Have you taken this drug before? Are you prepared for this
type of evening?'" says Johnboy Davidson, founding member of Enlighten
Harm Reduction, a group based in Melbourne, Australia, that used to do
onsite pill testing at raves. His group took onsite images of the
pills it tested using a microscope. The photos are online at
enlighten.org.au/show Featured.php.

Earlier this year, the group stopped doing onsite testing after the
South Australia Police Commissioner warned that pill testers would be
arrested if they continued. Davidson calls this "a political victory"
in that his group has forced discussion of the issue "at the highest
levels," he says, adding that the Victoria state government recently
tendered for a feasibility study into pill testing and a legal trial
of testing could begin soon.

Le Lui, executive director of DanceSafe, a North American-based
harm-reduction group with several chapters in the United States,
stresses the importance of arming young people with specific, concrete
information so they can make informed decisions.

"How can we expect young people to be smart and healthy if we're
withholding information from them?" he says. "And that's a problem
with drug education in that we withhold a lot of information about
drugs because we're afraid it's going to get them excited and anxious
to use it. (But) if we tell someone that this pill contains two-thirds
of some pharmaceutical substance that he's never heard of and just one
part MDMA, then that person might not take the pill any more because
that's not what that person wanted."

While most users probably end up taking the drugs they've had tested,
volunteers say, the hope is that the really dangerous pills are weeded
out.

"I get very frustrated that we're not doing better monitoring of pills
because we know there's all kinds of stuff in them and as a public
health measure we should be finding out what people are actually
consuming," says Nick Boyce, gay men's harm reduction co-ordinator for
the AIDS Committee of Toronto.

While he doesn't see onsite pill testing happening any time soon in
Toronto, he says more people would support the strategy if they
understood it better.

"I think it's something that can be done. It's just that on top of the
pill testing you have to do very good education around what this
actually means," Boyce says.