Gay bars detecting drink spiking
Following from recent PinkNews.co.uk articles addressing the problem of drink spiking come further developments in the war on drink drugging.
By now a large portion of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community will have likely seen the anti drink spiking caps as demonstrated at both Brighton pride and currently being used within numerous South coast gay clubs. Yet now comes a new way of protecting yourself on a night out.
A company called Bloomsbury Innovations has invented what they have termed the ”Drink Detective”.
This invention which comes in a matchbook format, according to its manufacturers tests for virtually all the drugs used in drug rape and other drink spiking crimes. These include GHB, ketamine and more than 60 drugs in the benzodiazepine group that includes Rohypnol, Xanax and Valium.
The drink detective works by dropping a few drops of the alcoholic beverage onto the kit which will then turn a different colour if the drink has been spiked with any of the 60 traceable drugs. It is not proposed that every drink is tested, instead what is proposed is that there are highly visible random checks that create publicity which should hopefully act as a deterrent.
The kit is being marketed to both men and women, men making up 15% of reported drug rapes in the UK. There has already been a successful scheme ran in Brannigans pub, Reading. While the kit has received the support of both Reading council and Poole police.
In the battle against increasing drink drugging amongst the LGBT community the makers hope the new kit could potentially act as a highly visible and highly effective deterrent.
Stanley Grossman, chief executive of Bloomsbury Innovations, said: “We hope that as more and more bars carry these or other, similar, posters and more and more drinkers carry the Drink Detective, the risk will slowly but inexorably move from the drinker to the spiker.”
