Nearly a thousand people have come forward to have their drugs tested at Australia’s first drop-in drug-checking clinic in just over a year, but cracking the community of Canberrans addicted to harder drugs is proving to be a challenge.
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00:00 As night falls in Canberra's city centre, Australia's only public drug testing clinic opens its doors.
00:13 Hi, how are you doing? Welcome, have you been here before?
00:19 No, I haven't.
00:20 Well, welcome.
00:21 Over the past year the CanTest service has checked more than a thousand recreational drugs like ecstasy and cocaine
00:28 and harder drugs like heroin and ice, looking for contaminants and potentially lethal new drug cocktails.
00:36 Have you heard about this drug testing service before?
00:39 Yeah, I've spoken to directions before about it.
00:43 Donna has years of lived experience with drugs and tonight she'll finally learn what's in the drugs she takes.
00:51 What do you think the sample is?
00:54 Heroin.
00:55 Heroin, yep, sure. What makes you think that the drug is heroin?
00:59 Because that's what I asked for when I bought it.
01:02 Yeah, sure, so that's what you were told by the person supplying it.
01:07 Heroin doesn't come cheap and handing over even a tiny sample is an exercise in trust,
01:13 but Donna wants to rule out any potentially deadly surprises.
01:18 Do you know much about the quality of drugs in circulation?
01:22 It's not too bad at the moment, it's pretty safe at the moment.
01:26 As compared to maybe three months ago, there was a batch going around that was killing people.
01:33 While chemists analyse her drugs, Donna can talk to nursing staff about anything from health worries to rehab.
01:41 Yeah, home detoxing is definitely not an option.
01:44 The CanTest results have confirmed what authorities have known all along,
01:48 that each player in the illicit drug supply chain is simply in it for themselves.
01:53 Dealers can dilute their drugs with a host of contaminants to make as much money as possible,
01:59 with no concern for the safety of those at the end of the chain, people like Donna.
02:05 So your heroin's only at 20%, which means 80% of it is something else.
02:08 So that could just be a filler.
02:10 Oh yeah, how do you explain it like that?
02:12 Yeah, so it could be a filler, but it could also be something dangerous that we can't ID on site at the moment.
02:17 Donna's drugs require further analysis, but she's dependent on heroin, so prepared to risk it.
02:24 If you are concerned about this, we do have the option to dispose of your sample here.
02:27 If not, you are free to take it.
02:29 Yeah, I'll just take it.
02:30 We know that the heroin market's really heavily cut.
02:34 It's adulterated and added to, it's cut as it changes hands, and it's come a long way to get here typically.
02:40 So it's not surprising, but the concern is often, what is the rest of that drug?
02:45 Directions Health is one of the partners behind CANTEST, and says the results of the first year have been eye-opening.
02:52 We know overall at CANTEST, about half the drugs presented contained things people really didn't expect,
02:57 or they weren't the drug that people expected.
02:59 Since July last year, CANTEST has sampled 1,250 drugs.
03:04 142 of those were eventually tossed out after clients learned exactly what was in them.
03:11 Cocaine was the most variable, and overall drugs were most commonly cut with things like caffeine, sugar, paracetamol and baking soda,
03:22 but also some high-risk substitutes.
03:25 We know we've identified drugs that were potentially or likely lethal, that people would have otherwise taken
03:31 had CANTEST not been there to test it.
03:33 So yes, we think we're fulfilling the purpose of the service as far as reducing deaths, reducing overdoses.
03:40 Mark Ransom sees the damaging effects of drug dependency daily, as he supports tenants from the city's big public housing complexes.
03:49 He often has to break up drug-fuelled fights and treat overdose victims.
03:54 You put that up, insert the nozzle into the nostril of the person who's overdosed, inhale into the nose, and hopefully it does the trick.
04:03 And he knows when a bad batch of drugs is doing the rounds.
04:07 The ice at the moment, I don't know what's in it, but it's really turning people into hyper-aggressive individuals.
04:14 We've seen that just the other day, where people who I know use pretty much every day, but their behaviours were off the scale.
04:23 Mark Ransom agrees the CANTEST service has life-saving potential, if only it can be brought to those who need it most.
04:31 Most of these guys, they're in need. And once they're scored, they want to use it.
04:37 They're not going to spend another hour walking into town and then coming back and saying, "Oh, it's OK," or "It's not."
04:42 I would think if something like a CANTEST was brought, perhaps, into this community from a harm minimisation perspective, it could be very valuable.
04:51 Certainly, we would like to be more accessible for those who can't make it in.
04:55 In other countries, they have mail-in and outreach services. That's certainly not where we're at yet, as far as the model goes in the ACT.
05:02 But over time, hopefully, we will keep adapting to really meet the needs of the community.
05:08 Donna's first brush with CANTEST has answered some questions about what she's been injecting.
05:16 Even at just 20% purity, she's convinced her heroin is enough to keep her going.
05:23 For now.
05:25 [BLANK_AUDIO]