Spiked drinks can be tested with sensor that detects date rape drugs

Spiking a person’s drink with date rape drugs puts the individual at a greater risk of being sexually exploited. Whether a drink has been spiked or not can be accurately determined using a new sensor that resembles a tiny stirrer or straw, which can be dipped in the drink.

Professor Fernando Patolsky and Doctor Michael Ioffe of Tel Aviv University’s school of chemistry, inventors and developers of the sensor say that it resembles a straw, which can simply be placed in the drink, and it would be made to resemble a stirrer in the final production.

Readings can be obtained even without lifting the tiny device into the light.

Ioffe said: “We haven’t decided how it will let you know. Maybe it will just light up, or a part of it will rotate or maybe it will send a signal to your cell phone because you want to be discreet about it.”
The researchers claim 100% accuracy of results with their device. In 2007, consumption of a spiked drink led to the rape of nearly 200,000 women in the US, says the US Department of Justice. Unfortunately, the incident was reported by only about 16% women.

Spiking usually takes place while partying at clubs or bars, and a vast majority of the victims are teenagers or young adults. Worldwide stats reveal that nearly half a million women are raped annually after consuming adulterated drinks.
Study researchers used the developed solution to blind test a series of randomly selected 50 cocktails and detected several drugs, including ketamine and GHB (gamma-hydroxybutyric acid), with 100% accuracy.

Monetary support is being sought by the team in order to invent a device for Rohypnol detection. Popularly known as roofies, Rohypnol is a drug frequently used to sedate date rape victims.

Drugs used to facilitate a sexual assault, exploitation, and rape of date victims are known as Date rape drugs. These drugs can be easily used by the attacker to spike the food or drinks of the victims without their awareness resulting in amnesic dissociative, hypnotic, and/or sedative effects.

Drink spiking, or the addition of date rape drugs to drinks, is done by people out of spite, weird amusement, or for theft or sexual assault.

Alcohol, GHB (gamma-hydroxybutyric acid), and benzodiazepines such as flunitrazepam (Rohypnol or roofies) are the three most popular date rape drugs. Substance-assisted sexual assault still employs alcohol as its most often used drug.