PILL TESTING - Bonger Instituut

However, even if a rational decision on pill testing were possible exclusively on the
basis of empirical data, the ethical question still remains as to whether the official
testing of ecstasy pills might have an unintended legitimising effect. This question
could be addressed by carrying out a normative study on pill testing.
5. Research on lengthening the eight-week list
A serious problem in pill testing is that ecstasy users are often not willing to have
their pills forwarded to a laboratory when no immediate identification can be made at
the testing site. There are good reasons, especially relating to safety, to be cautious
before providing test results on individual pills. That caution is now observed by carefully
comparing pills to a list of pills that have undergone analysis in the previous
eight weeks. Our study indicates that fewer new types of pills are now appearing on
the market than the current system implies. We believe that research is needed on
whether this eight-week period can be lengthened. The strongest argument for this is
that a frequent inability to provide immediate test results tends to discourage people
from having their pills tested in future, or may discourage other users from even starting
to test. This inadvertently limits the scope of DIMS.
6. Technical modifications to current testing practices
Current practice in the Netherlands is that only whole pills are forwarded to the laboratory
for analysis. Ecstasy users who cannot be given immediate test results on the
content of their pills are often unwilling to surrender the pills for analysis. In some
countries, such as Austria, analysis is usually performed on a thin sliver of material
scraped off the pill. Identification is based on those test results in combination with
information on the pill’s form, weight and appearance. Our advice is to investigate
whether a similar practice could be applied within the DIMS to improve insight into
the ecstasy market.
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