Using our interactive charts
Drug checking programs are a response to the increase in unregulated drug markets, particularly methamphetamine and fake pharmaceuticals, including illictly produced fentanyls with unknown and widely varying drug content. As part of the ADAI-coordinated drug checking effort in Washington, we present here various data and graphics of results of chemical analysis of samples brought in for testing at one of the drug checking sites.
Samples are provided voluntarily and anonymously by members of the community concerned about what might be in the drug supply. They may provide a sample of the drug itself (such as a fraction of a pill) or they may offer residue in a pipe or cooker after use. Data presented here are intended to be representative of drugs not residue. There is more on relevant data details at the bottom of the page. For even more details about the data gathering and analysis process, see our Data details page. Mouseover (or tap on) the graph on the right to see the number of samples in the most recently analyzed three-month period (the outer ring).
Drug checking sites use multiple testing technologies to assess each sample. The substance results presented here are currently based on confirmatory testing at an analytic chemistry laboratory. The inner ring in the gauge at right shows the number of samples with comfirmatory test results.
Although we present some results aggregated across all samples (in a given time period), this is not representative of the total drug supply. A common question is "What's in things sold as ______?" See the "sold as" page for how we define these expected drug categories, or see some key examples below. Another way to look at these data are to focus on all samples positive for a given substance, for example xylazine, and show what those samples were sold as, other substances found, etc.
Below we present the 10 most common drug categories found by detailed chemical analysis. A given sample can have many substances identified, whether due to trace substances left behind after refinement or synthesis, to mixing before delivery to the consumer, to mixing by the consumer, or to cross-contamination in a container (although our data analysis typically filters out cases with known cross-contamination). We use mutually exclusive categories to simplify ranking and presentation of the most common drug types: A given substance result can be in only one drug category, but a given sample can be coded to multiple drug categories because it contains multiple distinct drugs.
Community members are asked what the particular sample was sold or given to them as, that is, what they expect the drug to be before trying (or testing) it. Below we present some key categories of these expectations. For more information, see "sold as". Examples include:
For some important "sold as" categories, we present the number of samples positive for the given key substance, alone or in combination, among samples collected over the past 3 months. Mouseover (or tap on) the graphs to see:
"Fentanyl pills" refers to pills sold as either fentanyls or M30 or both. For more information about these and other categories of expected drugs, explore the links below. Note that carfentanil numbers below are included in the fentanyls count.
We present more on found drugs of interest (with further explanation of the categories) for subsets of samples reportedly sold as our key categories:
As noted above, another question of interest might focus not on a single category of what the sample was sold as, but rather on all samples positive for ____. Xylazine, for example, is most associated with fentanyls, but illicit drug suppliers could starting mixing xylazine into other products. Looking at all samples positive for xylazine can tell us more about where this sedative does show up and with what.
Most of our analyses on these pages concentrate on testing samples of the drug itself before use, as testing pipes, etc., brings up issues of cross-contamination (finding what might have been in that pipe last week) and positive results for substances that appear after use (metabolites) or after exposure to heat or light (degradants). We cannot rule out all cross-contamination, however, because the container a community member uses might be used multiple times: We might still detect a substance that was in the baggy or tin earlier, but was not actually sold with the item the person wants tested.
Detailed chemical analysis is done on each sample using mass spectrometry by our testing partners at either the University of North Carolina (UNC) Opioid Data Lab or the National Institute for Standards and Technologies (NIST). Shipping, lab processing, and compilation of results creates a lag of at least two weeks, often longer. The gauge on the upper right of this page gives an idea of what proportion of samples submitted have undergone this testing. Drug categories identified include: