Drug Checking in the US and Other Countries

"Drug checking, or the use of technology to provide insight into the contents of illicit drug products, is an evidence-based strategy for overdose prevention [10,11,12,13,14]. Drug checking services of various kinds have been operating across Europe and North America for several decades, with an estimated 31 services operational in 20 countries by 2017 [15]. In the United States, the use and distribution of fentanyl test strips is a relatively new but increasingly common drug checking strategy employed by SSPs and other programs, typically provided alongside harm reduction materials like sterile syringes and naloxone [16]. More complex technologies, like portable spectrometry devices, have been used for drug checking in several European countries since at least the 1990s [15] yet are only now emerging as an approach to drug checking in the United States [17,18,19]."