Harm reduction is an approach to the opioid crisis that focuses on public health considerations and reducing negative health consequences for people who use drugs, rather than policing. Syringe exchanges and HIV testing clinics are examples of past harm reduction initiatives. In the past five years, drug checking using fentanyl test strips (FTS) has become a critical harm reduction tool. Though FTS are useful for testing for the presence of fentanyl, they are unable to provide quantitative information, are limited by false positives, and cannot identify any other components of the sample. As a response to the growing need for drug checking, we developed the idPAD as a tool to identify the bulk components in illicit street drugs. The idPAD is a wax-printed paper analytical device that utilizes colorimetric functional group tests to elicit a color “barcode” which can be matched to standard barcodes for identification. The idPAD currently detects illicit drugs and cutting agents including cocaine, crack cocaine, methamphetamine, heroin, and starch. It has been difficult to validate the idPAD in field settings because although it can be used to test substances at the point of use, shipment of portions of the sample for analysis by high accuracy liquid chromatography with tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS-MS) ran into DEA restrictions. To avoid shipping issues, we adapted the idPAD to include a sample collection spot from which the drug sample can later be extracted in the lab and analyzed by LC-MS-MS. In order to increase usability and field-friendliness a phone app and neural network are in development which will be able to photograph the idPAD and report drug identity to the idPAD user. This presentation will focus on the current capabilities and limitations of the idPAD within the context of current drug checking needs.

The idPAD: Advancing towards more comprehensive drug checking tools

Fall 2022 abstracts, posters, and presentations will launch in mid-September.

ACS Fall 2022

The official archive and repository for all ACS Meetings & Expositions abstracts and select posters or presentations.