Checking Unregulated Drugs
Services / Drug Checking
Harm reduction through education
What is Drug Checking?
Drug checking is a form of harm reduction that involves chemically analyzing unregulated drugs or drug residue to understand what contaminants are in local drugs.
Why is There a Need for Drug Checking?
Street drugs are no longer what they used to be
Most communities have seen the entrance of contaminants in the unregulated supply of heroin, cocaine, methamphetamines, Adderall, Xanax and many other drugs. Street drugs are no longer what they appear to be. Those selling and using drugs are often unaware of what they are selling or using.
How Does the Project Work?
People Who Use Drugs (PWUD) or people willing to educate PWUD come to a drug checking training
Participants receive take-home test kits. Test strips in the kit are used to test drugs for immediate results
The used test strips are then sent to Lieberman labs at the University of Notre Dame for a more in-depth analysis of other contaminants
Results from lab testing are released anonymously in the Naxos OD app for any community member to view
How Does Drug Checking Help?
What education can do for your community
If we rely on the work of coroners, law enforcement, or medical professionals to check for new contaminants, we may never find them because these labs doesn’t generally test for the presence of all possible substances.
Research shows that people who use drugs are more likely to throw away drugs or choose safer behaviors when they learn what is in them and what it means for their health.
We can use drug checking information to:
Reduce the harm caused to PWUD
Educate clinicians about how to offer more appropriate care to PWUD
Direct public health resources toward interventions that save lives such as public health alerts and overdose response plans
How Can I Participate?
If you are in St. Joseph County, IN
Download the app, Naxos OD
Get trained to have access to entering your results into the Naxos OD app
See the results as they are released and receive alerts related to overdose risks
If you are interested in drug checking in your community or partnering in some way, contact us at info@naxosneighbors.com
Partner Testimonial
Our partner’s success story
A Notre Dame chemist decided to let the local community’s needs drive her scientific process and found herself in the fight against fentanyl.
Marya Lieberman decided to let the local community’s needs drive her scientific process. She found herself out of the lab and on the front lines of the opioid epidemic.
Your friendly neighborhood analytical chemist: If there is such a thing, Marya Lieberman embodies it…
Drug Checking Gallery
Shared moments from drug checking
Participant Testimonial
“I am a former heroin user and I have friends that still use and if I could save one of them by learning from this study it will have been worth it.”
This project was funded with support from the Indiana Clinical and Translational Sciences Institute which is funded in part by Award Number UM1TR004402 from the National Institutes of Health, National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences, Clinical and Translational Sciences Award. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.