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