Partygoers have been urged to get their drugs tested after four different coloured ‘Pharaoh’ pills at Parklife festival were found to contain completely different substances.
The Loop, a charity that checks drugs at festivals, clubs, found at the Manchester event last weekend that only one variety of this pill actually contained MDMA (ecstasy) as advertised.
While safety alerts about certain shapes of pills have their place, it says they sometimes mislead people into thinking they all come from the same manufacturer and that their content is consistent.
The Loop has found a website where anyone can buy a Pharaoh ‘candy press’ online for just under £40, meaning they can use it to pack whatever substance they want into a pill.
At a time when the UK is facing a serious drought of MDMA, misselling has been particularly high this summer, meaning drug testing is particularly important.
The Loop found at Parklife that one variety of Pharaoh pill contained 4-CMC – a short acting cathinone – another type of stimulant that can be stronger and potentially more harmful than ecstasy.
Another contained benzocaine – a cutting agent found in cocaine – while the fourth contained a drug called eutylone – which can have some horrific consequences.
The Loop’s senior health team member Adam Waugh told Metro.co.uk: ‘Eutylone is a pretty nasty drug.
‘It first came up on a large scale in New Zealand last summer, somewhere between 30-40% of samples contained Eutylone and not MDMA.
‘It has a short initial euphoria that lasts a couple of hours that’s quite mild. But then what follows that is quite a long lasting period of stimulation and agitation and anxiety.
‘The risk is people think they’ve just got slightly crap MDMA, so they take more of it, feeling this mild initial buzz, then maybe re-dose over six or eight hours and then that leads to a period of four hours or more where they’re very agitated.
‘They have a tightened chest, they often can’t sleep, and in 10 to 20% of cases it leads to drug induced psychosis, people start hearing voices and have quite paranoid thoughts.
‘It’s pretty unpleasant for someone if they accidentally take it. It has caused deaths before but most cases don’t. They cause admissions to hospital for psychotic episodes.’
Adam says quite a few people around the country are likely to have bought this Pharaoh press.
Adam added: ‘They get this drug, which they believe is MDMA or know isn’t MDMA and don’t care. They mix it with a dye and the filler to make the pill and then they’re just pressing them out.
‘Often people will say “have you tried a blue Punisher pill, oh yeah they’re amazing”, an they think there’s uniformity and think “oh, if I had a blue Punisher pill two years ago and it was good then the next one is going to be similar”.
‘What these four pills show is that anyone can buy the press, anyone can put whatever drug they want in them.’
The Loop tested this design of pill a couple of years ago and found it had high strength MDMA, so it’s possible it gained a reputation.
‘You have five or six generations of pills where initially it was made by a lab in Holland who knew what they were doing and the last press is made by an 18-year-old in his mother’s spare bedroom.’
Adam says that drug alerts about particular pills are sometimes put out without a proper evidence base as to why they’re being issued.
He added: ‘There have been times that an alert’s put out because a drug has caused some form of harm, but it might not be that the drug itself is particularly high risk. It could be due to the context of how it’s being used.
‘Someone might be hospitalised as the result of taking a particular pill but it could be that they hadn’t slept for three days, they took five pills, and all this other behavioural stuff.
‘There is a risk among some people who take MDMA who think there are good drugs in circulation and bad drugs in circulation and the way to stay safe is to avoid taking these bad batches. Actually the picture of drug related harm is more complicated than that.’
Earlier this month, Metro.co.uk reported that the Covid pandemic and a shortage of lorry drivers related to Brexit has disrupted even drug supply lines.
This has contributed to a drought of MDMA and has made way for potentially more dangerous imposter substances.
Adam said: ‘Two years ago when we were testing in 2019 roughly 95% of what we expected to be MDMA turned out to be MDMA – this summer it’s been nearer 50%. There’s much, much more misselling than we’ve found in the past.
‘The main substance being sold as MDMA is caffeine crystals but there’s a number of cathinones.’
While the safest option is always to not take any drugs at all, Adam has some advice for people who decide to take them anyway.
He says users should always try to get their drugs lab tested. As well as some festivals, the Loop also sometimes set up pop-up testing sites in city centres.
If this isn’t available near you, you could send samples to WEDINOS, a service run by the Welsh government available to anyone in the UK.
It tests drugs sent to its lab and publishes detailed results, which people can check using an anonymised reference numbers.
However, it is important to note that it is a criminal offence to knowingly send controlled drugs through the UK postal system
Adam added: ‘If neither of those are options the next best thing is to buy a reagent test kit online.
‘It will show a different colour for MDMA than the imposter drugs put in pills. They’re better than nothing and they have more use at the moment.
‘Two years ago when 95% of the market was MDMA and the issue was high strength MDMA, there was a risk that reagent test kits could lure people into a false sense of security.
‘When the market has lots and lots of imposter drugs and lots of misselling, the reagent kits are really useful.’
There are also a few basic precautions once you start using drugs at a club, festival, party or anywhere else.
Adam said: ‘I would say to people, start low, go slow. The safest thing is not to take drugs – but if you are going to use them, start with a little bit, see what effects there are and wait at least 90 minutes, ideally two hours before redosing.
‘If it doesn’t feel like what you think it should feel like, if there’s something about it that seems a bit odd, don’t take any more and dispose of it.’
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