A mysterious new recreational drug that has never been seen in Australia before has been detected through the Territory’s pill testing service, CanTEST Health and Drug Checking service.
CanTEST is a collaboration between ACT Health, Directions Health Services, Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services, and Pill Testing Australia with testing and independent evaluations provided by ANU.
Associate Professor at ANU’s Research School of Chemistry, Malcolm McLeod said the drug, which scientists are labelling ‘CanKet’, shared similar chemical qualities to ketamine, but with a unique makeup previously unseen.
“Someone presented a small plastic bag of crystals and powder to the testing service,” Professor McLeod said.
“They told us that they thought it was ketamine but that the effects of the drug were very different to what they expected, so they wanted us to test it,” he said.
“But when we tested the substance it was clear it wasn’t ketamine, but rather a ketamine-like substance.
“That’s why we have called it CanKet -as in Canberra ketamine.”
Professor McLeod said while the team had a clear read out of the chemical structure of the drug, they still weren’t quite sure of its effects.
“Our initial reaction was ‘whoa, this is really weird’,” he said.
Emergency Department Consultant and Senior Clinical Lecturer at ANU, David Caldicott said assuming that this new drug was ‘safe’ because it appeared related to ketamine would be an error of judgement.
“While it would be fair to say we understand ketamine very well as a drug, we literally have no other data as to what the acute or chronic effects of this close cousin might be,” Professor Caldicott said.
He said services like CanTEST were invaluable.
“It allows us to identify never-before-seen drugs, as well as common drugs, and provide people who use the service clear guidance on the likely health and other effects of these drugs,” Professor Caldicott said.
“This can potentially save lives.”
