Date rape drug testing kit for drinks costs $5

Nick Letourneau developed
a button-sized test that checks for roofies and other
benzodiazepines in drinks.
Hilary
Brueck/Business Insider

• A new button-sized drug-testing kit can identify common
  date-rape drugs in drinks. 
• The test is sold by Undercover Colors, a company that
  tried to bring a drug-testing nail polish to market four years
  ago.
• The kits retail for $5-7 online.

In 2014, four male college students at North Carolina State
University came up with an unusual plan to combat
drug-facilitated sexual assaults on campus: drug-detecting nail
polish.

They founded a startup called Undercover
Colors, and the bold idea quickly lit up the internet. Shark
Tank investor
Mark Cuban called it “brilliant,” while feminist author
Jessica Valenti wondered in
a Guardian headline, “Why is it easier to invent anti-rape
nail polish than find a way to stop rapists?”

But four years and $8.2
million in investor funding later, we’re no closer to a
nail polish drug test.

Instead, Undercover Colors is launching a drug test based on the
technology used in pregnancy pee strips. 

Users can dabble a bit of a drink onto the button-sized test, and
within about 30 seconds, you’ll see either one or two little pink
lines that reveal whether the liquid has been contaminated with
any benzodiazepine drugs. Each test costs $5 to
$7 (depending on how many you buy at a time).

The class of drugs the test looks for includes Xanax, Valium,
Lenapain, and Rohypnol, which are some of the most common
date-rape drugs, or roofies, in use according to the US
Department of Health and Human Services.

“They can cause amnesia without necessarily making you pass
out or fall asleep, but they can also sedate you to the
point of, basically, incapacitated,” Undercover Colors biochemist
Nick Letourneau told Business Insider during a demonstration of
his new test. “A lot of these are prescribed for things like
anti-anxiety and insomnia, so that, combined with alcohol, makes
a particularly dangerous combination.”

A drug test that fits on a keychain

The test has two lines on it: the first is a control line,
which lets you know the test is working properly. If a
second line appears, the drink is safe. But the absence of a
second line means your drink has been drugged.

The concept used in the test is called lateral
flow. It’s a kind of obstacle course for liquids, and
depending on how you set it up, the technique can test for
anything from a hormone produced by placenta (in the case of
pregnancy tests) to a date-rape drug.

In this version of the test, liquid droplets on the paper unlock
a bunch of colored particles inside that begin to flow
across the sticky strip. Benzodiazepine drugs, however, prevent
the pink dye from sticking to the paper. So if the test strip
doesn’t fully turn colors, you’ll know drugs may be at work.

To avoid confusion about how to read the results, the test offers
a reminder about how to read the lines — the spot where the first
line appears is labeled “bad” and the second line is labeled
“good.”

The drink tested in this photo, for example, is contaminated:

My drink had an
anti-anxiety drug in it, and the test picked it
up.
Hilary Brueck/Business
Insider

Undercover Colors says its testing has shown the product is 99%
reliable. And when it fails, it gives false positives. 

“We’ve tested 8,000 medallions, and haven’t had a false
negative,” Letourneau said. “Meaning, we always detect the drug,
when it’s there.”

The product launched Thursday and is available on the Undercover Colors
website, where five tests cost $35, and 10 cost $50.

I tried the test out with some tequila, but I’m not sure it will
really prevent rape

Before the test hit the market, I met up with Letourneau to try
out the test. He brought tequila and drugs, and we prepared two
cocktails: one just had a shot of Jose Cuervo, while the other
had tequila that was laced with diazepam, which you may know by
its brand name, Valium. Sure enough, the test of the drugged
drink only had one line, not two. 

But because the test is tiny and bar lighting can be dim, it
might be tough to know for sure whether you’re seeing just one
line or two in a social setting.

I was also dubious whether people would really pay $5 to $7 per
test, but Undercover Colors CEO Barbara Cook assured me that in
focus groups, parents of college students were eager to buy the
new medallions for their kids.

Even so, people have to remember to carry a test around with them
and use it in the right moments. The medallions come with
carrying cases that you can slip onto the back of a smartphone or
add discreetly to a keychain, but it still seems like a lot of
extra steps and cost to ensure your drink isn’t drugged. Using
the test regularly is a total
habit shift — something humans aren’t always so
good at. 

“We do know we’re breaking ground here,” Cook told me. “This is
not culturally how we currently behave.”

A serious problem in need of a larger solution

At least one
in four women in the US have experienced sexual assault,
according to “conservative estimates” from the National
Institutes of Health (NIH).

Around a third of perpetrators use drugs and/or alcohol to
commit rape, according to statistics
compiled by the US Department of Justice in 2000. But it’s hard
to know how many cases involve drugs like benzodiazepines because
most people don’t test their drinks.

A US campus
sexual assault survey of 6,800 undergraduates in 2007 found
that 13.7% reported they’d been victims of at least one sexual
assault since they started college, but just 0.6% were certain
they’d been the victim of a drug-facilitated sexual assault.
A 2009
report in the Canadian Medical Association Journal surveyed
882 women in seven sexual assault treatment centers, and found
that more than 20% reported a drug-facilitated sexual
assault. 

Alcohol, on the other hand, is known to be a major
accessory to rape: the NIH says roughly half
of all sexual assaults involve alcohol. Drinking can
exacerbate an already bad situation, hamper motor control, and
increase impulsivity, which can lead to violence. 

A test for drugs in drinks isn’t going to singlehandedly solve
America’s rape problem. Plus, as many critics have pointed out,
it shouldn’t really be the victim’s responsibility to ensure
every person around them at a bar or a party isn’t a creep.

But the new lateral-flow test may help some people stay safe, and
it could have other possible uses, too.

The test could be used for any kind of liquid, from water, to
blood, sweat, and urine. So a different version of the kit might
some day be able to answer questions like: Is this tap water safe
to drink? Is my blood healthy? Is this tomato
contaminated with salmonella? 

Letourneau said those could all be future ways the company could
expand if the tiny tech takes off. 

“Our overall mission is having an impact on society,” he said.
“Honestly, there’s a lot of different ways we could go.”