Pill testing
In order to respond to specific information needs emerging from the challenge of synthetic drugs, a specialised form of outreach work was analysed in a recent report on on-site pill testing interventions in the European Union - i.e. interventions which approach hard-to-reach groups in clubs and raves through the offer to analyse on the spot their pills (sold as 'ecstasy').
The Verein Wiener Sozialprojekte and CheckIt (Vienna) were contracted as leading organisations for an inventory project entitled 'On-site pill-testing interventions in the European Union', involving other pill-testing programmes such as DIMS (NL), Médécins du Monde (F), Modus Vivendi (B), Eve and Rave (D). The objectives, evaluation indicators, target groups, methodology, potential and pitfalls of ongoing projects were examined with a view to assessing how pill-testing projects can be used for harm-reduction and prevention purposes and how the information provided through the EMCDDA Joint action on new synthetic drugs can be channelled into daily demand-reduction practice.
The executive summary (42 KB), final report (380KB) and fact files (144KB) are available.
In 2002, the European Commission commissioned an evaluation study on the effectiveness of on-site pill testing interventions. A summary of the study outcomes is available as an EDDRA-entry.
