More and more countries and organisations emphasise the value of harm reduction
measures in the context of illicit drug use and abuse. One of these measures is drug
checking, a preventive action that can represent a quick win by tailored consultation
on the risks of substance use upon analytical screening of a submitted sample. Unlike
drop-in centres that operate within a fixed setting, enabling drug checking in a harm
reduction context at events requires portable, easy to use analytical approaches,
operated by personnel with limited knowledge of analytical chemistry. In this case
study, four different approaches were compared for the characterisation of
3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine samples and this in the way the approaches
would be applied today in an event context. The four approaches are mid-infrared
(MIR), near-infrared, and Raman spectroscopy, which are today used in drug checking
context in Belgium, as well as an electrochemical sensor approach initially developed
in the context of law enforcement at ports. The MIR and the electrochemical
approach came out best, with the latter allowing for a direct straightforward analysis
of the percentage 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine (as base equivalent) in the
samples. However, MIR has the advantage that, in a broader drug checking context,
it allows to screen for several molecules and so is able to identify unexpected active
components or at least the group to which such components belong. The latter is also
an important advantage in the context of the growing emergence of new psychotropic
substances.
