〽️ Service Stats
👀 Watch List
Here are the trends in the drug supply we are keeping an eye on this month.
BTMPS - industrial chemical added to plastics
Acetamiprid - insecticide
Xylazine & (dex)medetomidine - sedatives mixed with fentanyl
Carfentanil - potent opioid reemerges but in a new way
2-fluoro-2-oxo-PCE + fentanyl - international club drug mixed with fentanyl
Shift to smoking - broad trend with implications for overdose prevention
👋 Meet our Team Members
Each month will feature different team members 😊
Erin Tracy
Our lead chemist who joined the team in 2022 with 10 years of drug analysis expertise.
Jalice Manso
Our recent addition to the team, with more than 15 years of infrared and mass spectrometry experience as a research chemist.
📣 Team Voices
Check out monthly blog posts from members of our team!
Colin Wasson Miller
Illyana Massey
Natalie Sutton
Adams Sibley
🥼 Lab Visits
We love when we have visitors and to show off the lab!
To find out who these cool individuals are and find out about the work they do-CLICK the link below!
🤖 New Equipment
Our new GCMS!
Thanks to the NC Collaboratory, using opioid settlement funds from the NC General Assembly we purchased our new Agilent GCMS 8890/5977C.
Our new FTIR!
Thanks to the US Food and Drug Administration to help us support a research study on community-based naloxone administration. The FTIR is a Thermo Nicolet iS20.
👩🏼🔬 Lab Tech Summit
This summer, 12 labs supporting community drug checking gathered on the UNC campus in Chapel Hill. Bet ya didn't know there were 12 labs doing this work! See what we discussed, and what makes us mad, sad, and glad.
Erin Tracy
🎙️ Podcasts
Erica Christensen
Narcotica
You can find more podcast under the Tags section of our website.
📖 Reading Room
A place for things that taught us something new. With a focus on the Tar Heel State.
- Secret Shoppers: Evidence-based treatment for opioid use disorder is widely unavailable and often discouraged by providers of residential substance use services in North Carolina [Carroll et al., open access, press release]
- Is "surveillance" a bad word? [Morabia et al., open access]
- Great discussion on naloxone pricing in North Carolina and the importance of IM naloxone, featuring CDC Director Mandy Cohen and NC AG Josh Stein at a kit making event in Raleigh [WRAL Grace Hayba]
- Secret Shoppers: $96 for Narcan® in NC Pharmacies [Marley et al., open access]
- Drug Mention with Involvement (DMI) and Polydrug Poisoning Classification Methodology Tool (DMI2EpiTool) [Slavova et al., open access software]
- This is a great new tool developed by our friends at the Univ. of Kentucky that 1) identifies drugs involved from literal text of death certificates, and 2) classifies them as polysubstance or not. This is a much-anticipated update that runs as a SAS file, and will be invaluable for state health officials. [Funded by US FDA]
🛣️ Maryalice Retires
After more than 2 decades at UNC, our beloved project manager retired earlier this year. She helped create our drug checking service, and is the brilliance behind the kits and mailing paradigm. Maryalice also kept our complex research agenda moving and is an all around mensch. We miss you!
🤮 Corporate Ick Award
Every day we keenly feel the corporate and commercial determinants of health. WHO defines this as "private sector activities that affect people’s health, directly or indirectly, positively or negatively." Read more in AJPH [ironically, behind paywall].
Better yet, check out the videos in DPA's Plunder, Profit, and Punishment: A Syllabus on Drug War Profiteering.
From test strips, to plastic scoops, to vials, to instruments, to computers and printers, to data servers, and package delivery and beyond, we are dependent on the products and services of more than a hundred corporations to operate. Yet, there are a few who's behavior is so outrageous, they deserve to be called out. So, we are taking nominations for a monthly Corporate Ick Award.
🛍️ Department of (un)Safe Supply
We get insights into drug markets by looking at trends in consumer goods. Especially food and booze. We'll highlight examples that have analogies to the drug supply in this spot monthly.
Regulated products have intentional and unintentional problems: Why would we expect different from unregulated street drugs?
Our example this month comes from your grocery store: Avocado oil
The researchers found that at least 21 of the products labeled as avocado oil — nearly two-thirds of the 36 bottles they tested— were adulterated, in some cases with other oils that could pose a hazard to people with food sensitivities. The newly released findings are based on tests conducted in 2021 on bottles of store-brand avocado oil purchased from 19 large grocery stores in the United States and Canada.
Sounds familiar, right? If we can’t get pure avocado oil, let’s not be surprised when dope gets cut, stepped on, bulked up, mislabeled, colorized, hyped, etc.
❤️🩹
We were saddened to hear of the passing of Chip Ezzard, who we knew through our work with WNCAP in Asheville. Chip was often the first person that people saw at the window when they came for help. He was an early adopter to our drug checking program, bringing his paramedic training to connect lab results to people’s lives. Chip’s insightful questions and requests helped make our program better. His calm, compassionate demeanor brought a moment of peace to the people he served, and those he worked with. May he now rest in his own peace.
🏆 Box of the Month
Sometimes our amazing partners write us a warm message, doodle or draw a picture on the return boxes we send out. This is in no way a requirement (♻️ we reuse the boxes), but we love receiving the random surprises!
Each month, we will showcase boxes we love.
🫶🏽 Funders
Nabarun Dasgupta
