What About Drug Checking? Systematic Review and Netnographic Analysis of Social Media

Abstract

: Drug checking services have been operating worldwide as a harm reduction tool in places like festivals and nightclubs. A systematic review and netnographic analysis were conducted to explore the public’s perception of drug checking. Although public perceptions of drug checking had not been previously evaluated in the literature, some positive and negative perceptions were captured. From Twitter, a total of 1316 tweets were initially identified. Following the removal of irrelevant tweets, 235 relevant tweets were identified of which about 95% (n = 223) tweets were in favour and about 5% (n = 12) were not in favour of drug checking as a harm reduction intervention. Tweets perceived the service as part of effective law reforms, public health intervention that serves in raising awareness and countering the role of the internet, an initiative to prevent harm and/ or potentially premature deaths, a help in identifying novel trends related to drugs, enabling a scientific basis to capture data, reducing harms from risky drugs or risky consumption, reducing the economic and social burden on society and preventing young people from having criminal records and punitive fines. Drug checking was perceived to support engagement with treatment services and support individuals in making more informed decisions. Tweets against drug checking focussed on the concerns over the quality of drug checking particularly with false positive results, which may lead to punitive outcomes, discrimination and prejudice. The present study showed that Twitter can be a useful platform to capture people’s perceptions on drug checking.

Identifying New/Emerging Psychoactive Substances at the Time of COVID-19; A Web-Based Approach

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“…The analysis of available online information [qualitative analysis ( 17 )] can be an effective tool to understand and identify consumers' needs and decisions and markets supplies and demands' balance. Overall, “social media listening” has been proven to be an effective tool for public health concerns ( 18 ).…”

Drug Checking as Strategy for Harm Reduction in Recreational Contests: Evaluation of Two Different Drug Analysis Methodologies

“…Despite a consolidated body of literature that shows the effectiveness of drug-checking initiatives for public health surveillance ( 24 – 27 ), there are criticisms about the limitations of these initiatives and the potential false sense of security that might be related to the use of color reagent test kits. To address the latter issue, the use of more discriminatory testing methods that may provide more reliable results is recommended ( 20 , 24 , 28 ).…”

Piloting the UK’s First Home-Office-Licensed Pharmacist-Led Drug Checking Service at a Community Substance Misuse Service

“…In these reviews, established drug checking services were compared with respect to their impact and limitations. In addition, the latter review captured the general public’s perceptions on drug checking via Twitter [ 10 ].…”

“…In 2018, Oute et al also carried out a comprehensive review of drug checking services based within the nighttime economy [8]. An updated review of drug checking services was carried out by Guirguis et al (2020) [10]. In these reviews, established drug checking services were compared with respect to their impact and limitations.…”