I went to CanTEST, Canberra’s legal drug testing facility. This was my experience.

Photo courtesy: anonymous.

I walk in circles, following my shadow around the same block two or three times before I find the CanTEST facility, Australian’s only legal drug testing facility, in Canberra’s CBD. I’m scared to linger on any street corner, conscious suddenly of the bum bag slung over my shoulder and the Nike Shox on my feet. Questions swirl in my head, cyclone-like. How much of each drug should I have brought? What are the weight thresholds for the new drug decriminalisation laws in the ACT? Are their mechanisms in place preventing police from stepping inside or near the premises?

When I enter, a woman, smiling, directs me to a locker where I place my phone.

“We had some undercover journalists try to take photos and film,” the girl explains.

I immediately tell her of my intentions to write about the experience. She passes me a card with CanTEST contact details when I ask her for a media spokesperson. At no point in this journey do I receive any form of judgment for what I’m doing.

Anonymity is a clear priority at CanTEST. The waiting room is on the second floor and the blinds are pulled down, shielding us from prying eyes. I fill out some basic questions to help staff identity me – say, if I become a regular visitor – and I’m instructed to give a code name instead of my formal name, one that I can remember easily.

At one point, a security guard from a nearby building storms into the waiting room, unannounced, waving around a phone that someone has left downstairs. A staff member ushers her away.

Visiting CanTEST, I quickly realise, is akin to seeing your local GP. All the tropes of Australian healthcare services are present: there’s a white-walled waiting room, fluorescent lighting and kitsch 80s carpeting. If you missed the CanTEST sign – it’s inside the building, not out on the street, so it’s easy to do – you’d think you’re at a dental surgery.

But there are a few key differences: in the place of coffee table magazines there are drug harm reduction resources including books and pamphlets. The staff there rock dyed hair and talk like you. You leave with free naloxone, a nasal spray that rapidly and effectively reverses the effects of an opioid overdose. And, of course, you can openly and truthfully talk about drug usage.

For a Sydneysider visiting the bush capital, it’s an oasis, a glimpse into a future where the failed War on Drugs does not dictate government policy.

There’s a mix of drug users there: normcore twenty-something year olds who look like ANU students, alt art school kids, a well-dressed woman who looks my mum’s age. The girl next to me sits with crossed arms and a grimace on her face. She keeps leaning down to itch her leg.

One man gets his meth tested. He rapid fires facts at the staff about PH levels, the metallic taste of the drug (good, bad?), alkaline-something, fuck knows. He seems to know as much about the testing equipment and the science behind it all as the staff present.

Hailing from the nanny state that is NSW, I’m a kid in a candy store. I’ve brought down a whole smorgasbord of gear. I hand over 5 samples: 2C-B, coke, a dropper bottle of liquid acid and two different batches of MDMA. I want to test more drugs but the staff limit the number. There’s a line of people patiently waiting behind me, and the staff have to turn away someone who turns up while they’re checking my drugs.

“It’s not always this busy,” a staff member tells me, explaining that visitor frequency varies dramatically day to day.

The staff suggest that a number of large-scale local music festivals on that weekend and the next – Strawberry Fields and Spilt Milk – has increased demand. It’s a service usage pattern that has previously led to staff turning away flocks of people, and it’s clear that night owls and psychonauts, rather than meth and heroin users, constitute the bulk of the clientele in these heady frontier days for pill-testing. Indeed, critics from within the drug harm reduction community have suggested that CanTEST needs a mobile or outreach program to better engage disadvantaged hard drug users.

Directions Health Chief Operating Officer Stephanie Stephens later tells No Filter, “we’ve seen an increase in people who inject drugs using CanTEST, but we’d still love to be testing more heroin and ice to keep a close eye on these drugs.”

Regardless of the demographics, the facility has tested over 1400 samples and the data suggests CanTEST is helping users alter habits and reduce risks. The boost to public safety has already seen the facility’s 6 month trial period extended.

Associate Prof Anna Olsen (ANU lead evaluator), Rachel Stephen Smith (Health Minister), and Stephanie Stephens on the day the government announced an extension of the CanTEST pilot. Photo: supplied.

“People are better equipped to make more informed decisions as a result of CanTEST,” Stephens explains. “We’re having conversations that would otherwise go un-had, and finding the actual contents of drugs that would have been consumed blindly.”

“It isn’t surprising to find that things are often not what they were sold as, but it’s still been surprising to see just how variable the market is and what exactly things are being cut or replaced with.”

When I visit, staff tell the girl after me that her ketamine sample is, in fact, a ketamine analogue nicknamed CanKet, which was first discovered in Australia at this very CanTEST facility. She’s shocked and, most noticeably, grateful.  

In line with recent results, the drugs I brought are high purity and exactly what I expected. There are no traces of unexpected drugs among the samples, thank the Lord.

Not everybody is so lucky, but to those who forever complain the drugs are better in Europe, I say: please sit down.

Results

2-CB: confirmed as 2-CB. They couldn’t test the purity.

Cocaine: confirmed as cocaine, 79% pure.

LSD: confirmed as LSD. They couldn’t test the purity.

MDMA (brown rocks): confirmed as MDMA, 90% pure (76/84).

MDMA (white crystals): confirmed as MDMA, 98% pure (82/84).