Sensor detects the date rape drug

There isn’t a college student or young woman out there in the club scene who doesn’t know she should never walk away or even look away from her drink. Psychoactive substances classified as “date rape” drugs are easy enough to get and easy enough to administer by just dropping in a drink when the girl looks away. Once the drugs take effect, the girl is rendered barely conscious and completely unable to defend herself from sexual assault. Memory is often vague the next day.

Now two professors at Tel Aviv University’s Sackler Faculty of Exact Sciences have developed an easy-to-use sensor that instantly detects the presence of a date rape drug when discreetly dipped in a beverage. It is lightweight, easily transportable and it works. The sensor will detect GHB and ketamine with 100% accuracy. These are the two most popular date rape drugs used. The kit should be available in a few short years.

Prof. Fernando Patolsky said that with rates of drug-assisted sexual assault growing around the world, it’s a dangerous social problem and a system for detection at the scene needs to be found and distributed. In the US alone, 200,000 women reported drug-influenced rape in 2007. Because the memory is unreliable and the women often experience black outs, authorities suspect these numbers are low by as much as double.

A real time test for date rape drugs has been difficult. Odorless and tasteless and effectively losing all testable properties after a few hours, these drugs can’t even be substantiated in a blood test unless the timing is right. This detection system goes around to a backdoor by testing optical properties. Date rape drugs actually change the optical properties of a drink and the sensor tabs “see” the subtle differentiation and either sound an alarm or flash a light.

Source: Tel Aviv University, Medical News Today