It’s Friday night and you’re sitting in a dimly lit bar, sipping an Alabama Slammer and watching drunken girls dancing on the counter in front of you. Everything seems normal until you hear a screech and turn to see a young woman seated close to you frantically scramble to her feet and throw her drink on the man sitting at the bar next to her. As she runs out of the door, tears streaming her reddened cheeks, you walk over to inspect the scene. Lying on the bar is a small, square object resembling a regular drink coaster. You read the words on the coaster, and that’s when it all comes together. That drink that she dumped on the man was no ordinary drink—it had been spiked. And this was no ordinary drink coaster; it was a Drink Spike Detector.
Date rape has long been a concern, especially among the college population. The prevalence of alcohol experimentation in college has a large impact on the instances of unwanted sexual encounters, but within the last decade the focus has fallen not on alcohol, but what can be added to it without the drinker’s knowledge: date rape drugs.
Gamma hydroxybutyrate (GHB), Ketamine, and Rohypnol (the now ubiquitous “roofie”) are the most prevalent date rape drugs. They all can cause confusion, unconsciousness, and, most notably, a loss of memory. They have come to the forefront of the date rape issue, as more and more stories of sexual misconduct, especially at universities, involve the covert drugging of the victim. The result has been a call for a scientific method to eliminate the danger of date rape drugs.
Enter the Drink Spike Detector (DSD), a drug-testing device shaped like a drink coaster which can be used to detect the date rape drugs GHB and Ketamine in drinks in the field, most likely at a bar or party. While the DSD was designed with a noble purpose in mind, research conducted at the University at Buffalo suggests the device may be unreliable. In fact, there are members of the UB community who say the device’s shortcomings could be potentially dangerous.
Development of the DSD
The DSD was developed by Australian-based Drink Safe Technologies in 2003. Inventor Fransisco Guerra developed this device after his close friend was raped after being drugged. According to the company’s website, Guerra was “outraged,” and thus began to formulate a device which would test for levels of commonly used drugs in any kind of beverage, with or without alcohol.
Guerra teamed up with Dr. Brian Glover, and together they received a patent for the DSD device to achieve Guerra’s dream of reducing the occurrence of date rape. It was developed and tested in Australia, and the company believes the product to be effective.
The device is currently widely available in Australia, but can be bought online via the company’s website, www.drinksafetech.com. They are under $1 apiece, so they are not cost prohibitive like some other tests (the competing Drink Detective goes for $5 a pop). You can even customize the coasters if you wish to have your own personal message printed on the device. Of course, it isn’t the detector’s appearance that matters—it’s the performance.
The DSD detects the presence of date rape drugs by pH levels. Each tester has two different testing locations on it with spaces for both GHB Ketamine, an anesthetic drug more commonly known as Special K. To test the drink, you put a drop on one test and wait two minutes to see if the color changes. If there is a positive reading for GHB, the area will change from white to blue. If Ketamine is present, the location will turn from pink to blue.
A Warm Reception
The DSD seems to have been well received. There have been numerous articles praising the device, including stories written in The Herald Sun, The Australian, The New Zealand Herald, and it even made a Time Magazine article rounding up 2002’s best inventions. There are also many testimonials on the website which portray the experiences of some satisfied customers.
For example, Tony Loneragan, general manger of a bar in Australia, writes, “These inexpensive and easy kits will not stop spiking incidents, but at least now we have something to combat this crime and ultimately drug-facilitated sexual assault, making our bar a safer place for our patrons.”
This device seems to have been successful in Australia. However, research performed at UB has yielded some disappointing results, making some skeptical.
A Second Look From Across the Ocean
The DSD coasters caught the attention of Dr. Ho-Leung Fung, a professor and chairman of pharmaceutics at UB. When Dr. Fung came across the device, he wanted to conduct his own research to try and find alternative purposes for the DSD. His focus was on developing a faster method of testing for date rape drugs in hospitals.
The only current way to test for the presence of these drugs in the body is through lengthy lab studies with blood or urine samples that could take up to 12 hours to show results. By that time, drug like GHB would have been long gone from the person’s system and the effects of the drug would have faded. Dr. Fung was hoping that by adding a saliva sample to the DSD, it would be possible to get results within the two minutes it takes the test to work.
To do this research, Dr. Fung hired students to test out the DSD. One of these students was Nathaniel Page, a senior pharmacy major. Page spent about five hours a day working on this research over the summer and into the fall of 2005. In the end, he came up with some disappointing results.
Page discovered that, not only did the device not function as a way to test for GHB in hospitals, but it also did not serve well as the product it was originally designed to be. Page said, “It was not a very reliable way to test for GHB. I was hoping it would work better than it did.”
Page said that the DSD has many shortcomings. For example, if you are in a dimly lit area, such as a bar or club, it would be difficult to tell a positive reading from a negative one since the test relies on color. Also, any colored drinks will affect the outcome of the test because the color of the drink can stain the coaster. Testing for GHB in a Blue Hawaiian, for example, would be nearly impossible since the drink itself is blue.
There are many other attributes of the DSD that make it unreliable. There is a warning printed on the back of the coaster which reads, “Not to be used with wine products, beverages containing milk products or cream, oily liquors, tonic waters, or beverages containing fruit juices.” This long list excludes many of the more popular alcoholic beverages such as the Mudslide, Jack and Coke, or Sex-on-the-Beach. As Page said, “This basically only leaves you with clear alcohol which is served plain,” such as a shot of vodka or rum. The device works with beer, although the coloring sometimes alters the reading.
While the possibility of a false positive is unnerving, a false negative could be far worse. Since GHB is a basic drug, the test relies upon the fact that this base will raise the pH level of a drink, and thus reflect a positive reading on the coaster. However, if a drink is extremely acidic, the pH level may not be able to raise high enough to reflect a positive reading.
Another risk that Page warns of lies in the chemical content of the drug itself. There are two components of GHB: butanediol and gamma butylactone. Separately, these chemicals will have no effect on the pH level of a drink and would thus reflect a negative reading. However, once consumed, these chemicals can combine within the system to form GHB. The drug would still affect the person as it would normally, although the DSD test results would come back negative. Unfortunately, this practice is far from rare as many people do buy the chemicals separately because, as Page said, it’s “all they can get their hands on.”
The Student Response
Many students who have heard about this device originally believed it to be a great idea. For example, Alex Meglin, a sophomore majoring in media production, said that this product could make “people feel a lot safer at parties,” adding, “I think it would be helpful.”
Katrina Mercado, a senior studying international business, said, “I think this is a very good invention. It would be awesome to be able to use this device on my drink and know for sure whether there is a date rape drug in it.”
Many other students were not thrilled, even though they were unaware of the research done at UB. Jeanna Vanille, a sophomore majoring in French, said, “I think it would be a good idea, but it may be expensive or not something that someone would want to carry. I think the best defense is to keep track of your drink at all times and to be aware and knowledgeable about the drug.”
Lauren Licata, a sophomore majoring in business and marketing at UB, points out that this product could lead to paranoia. “People may be making too big of a deal out of the issue,” she said.
Page partly shares this sentiment, acknowledging the DSD may give some “a false sense of security.” He goes on to say that, in his opinion, the DSD is “more dangerous than beneficial.” He explains that someone’s test could result in a false negative on a suspicious beverage, causing the tester to consume it anyways and putting them in a dangerous situation. He insists that the DSD is “not something to rely on.”
Despite the shortcomings of this device, it is still being manufactured and sold on the public market. Page advises that if you do use this device, to take caution in doing so. While the DSD could be a useful tool, he remains steadfast in his opinion. “I don’t recommend it,” said Page.
