As the United States experiences an overwhelming opioid crisis; as the world’s press is flooded with extra-judicial killings targeting drug “offenders” in the Philippines; as young Australians overdose on novel psychoactive substances and teenagers in the UK on ecstasy, there can be only one certainty: drugs are here to stay. Despite some countries reaffirming farcical commitments to a drug-free world, with over $100bn spent annually on the War on Drugs, and 20% of the world’s prison population incarcerated on drug offences, drugs have never been cheaper or purer.

Providing regulated drug markets remain a pipe-dream (excluding cannabis) and transnational drug supply the remit of the criminal underworld; profit will always reign supreme. To maximise profit, drugs are frequently diluted with adulterants to make two kilos into three, or simply mimicked by cheaper, possibly harmful, replacements. Whilst some adulterants are benign (caffeine in cocaine), many are not (PMA/PMMA in ecstasy, fentanyl in heroin).  Consequently, in addition to the known potential harms intrinsic to any given drug, users expose themselves to an array of truly unknown harms. (IDPC - International Drug Policy Consortium, 05.01.2017)

http://idpc.net/blog/2017/01/recreational-mdma-testing-a-european-perspective?utm