What's in 679 samples sold as methamphetamine?

How often are drug types found together in confirmed drug checking results?

A given drug sample can have multiple positive results for different drugs. One way to examine these results is to look at how often things are detected together. In the heatmaps below, we present the percentage of samples testing positive for the pair of drugs or drug categories listed. This comparison of the co-presence of two drugs cannot account for the fact that there are often three or more drugs present. The diagonal (where the column name and row name are the same) represents those samples testing positive for only that drug category (these samples may have tested positive for a drug category not listed here). The rows and columns are ordered from largest to smallest share of drug checking samples, alone or in combination. For more details on drug categories named, click here.

For example, if you mouse over the Methamphetamine alone cell (Meth row and Meth column), you can see that 90% of samples tested positive for methamphetamine and for no other drug category in the matrix. If you move along the Meth row (or column) you can see the share of all samples that tested positive for meth and that other drug type, with or without any other drug mentioned here or any drug not included in the matrix. The Fentanyl alone cell indicates one sample sold as meth actually contained fentanyl and not methamphetamine (or any other drug category listed here, including fentanyl analogues). The Rx benzos alone cell similarly indicates one sample had only a legally available benzodiazepine, the Cocaine alone cell that two samples had only cocaine, and the Phenethylamines alone cell indicates one sample had one or more substances like MDMA and MDA in the phenethylamines class and no other class represented here. There were five additional samples that were positive for no drug in the matrix. The remaining 10 samples with no methamphetamine had fentanyl, fentanyl analogues, a novel synthetic opioid, other analgesics, and/or cocaine.

Data notes

Drug testing sites can do little about potential cross-contamination: The container a client used may or may not have been used before. Therefore, any unusual combination may be due to cross-contamination and not represent drugs actually sold together. Results are cumulative and reflect all confirmatory testing results as of 12:15PM PST 17 December 2024.

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