DRUG-TESTING KIT COMES UNDER FIRE

A pocket-size kit that allows drug users to test the purity of their
purchases has gone on sale in Sydney.

The EZI-Test kit is selling through at least one city shop for $12.95
and can be used to identify speed, ecstasy and the hallucinogen 2CB.

Its availability has outraged anti-drugs campaigners, who say it
offers little protection from illegal drugs and normalises drug use.
But drug law reformers believe the kit may help reduce harm to drug
users.

Sold in a small plastic tube, the kit contains a small tube of
reagent, which users apply to a sample of the drug they have bought.

Working along the same principle as a litmus test, the reagent turns
ecstasy purple, amphetamines orange and 2CB green.

Users can compare results with a color chart included in the kit. A
brochure advises drug users not to consume the drug if a sample fails
to change color.

A salesman at a Darlinghurst music store, where the test kit is
available, said the reagent, which contains sulphuric acid and
formaldehyde, could be used up to four times if it was refrigerated
after opening.

The manager of the store later refused to comment on the product. He
also refused to pass a message on to the store's owner.

A Salvation Army spokesman, Mr Pat Daley, said the availability of the
kit would contribute to young people seeing hard drugs as a normal
part of life. "It's another example of the normalisation of drug use
in our society," he said.

The kit also raised the concern of the anti-drugs campaigner Mr Tony
Wood whose daughter, Anna, died after taking ecstasy in 1995.

Mr Wood said that while the kit claimed to allow drug users to
identify various drug types, it could not say what was a safe dose or
what effect it would have on an individual's body.

But Mr Michael Moore, from the Australian Drug Law Reform Foundation,
said there was merit in helping drug users determine what drug they
were consuming.

Mr Moore, who is also Health Minister in the Australian Capital
Territory, said testing street drugs for impurities had proved
successful in Holland.