You can now legally use strips to test drinks for drugs in KS. But will they be widely used?

Kansas this month legalized test strips that can detect two drugs commonly used to facilitate sexual assaults, but sexual assault prevention groups have cautioned against viewing the newly legal tool as a key measure to stop assaults.

The tool, commonly a paper pad, will change color if a drink containing ketamine or gamma-hydroxybutyrate is dropped on it. They’re designed to be used at bars or parties to verify a drink hasn’t been unknowingly spiked.

Because the drugs it detects are illegal, Kansas law considered the detecting strips to be illegal drug paraphernalia until this month.

When lawmakers acted earlier this year to lift the state’s strict ban on testing strips for fentanyl, a dangerous synthetic opioid, they also lifted the prohibition on testing strips for the date rape drugs.

But despite their newfound legality, the strips are unlikely to become ubiquitous across the state. Major pharmacies do not sell the strips in person.

And sexual assault prevention organizations do not have immediate plans to purchase and distribute the strips on a wide basis, citing caution about their effectiveness for preventing sexual assault.

“We caution folks about viewing the test strips as a preventative tool because it isn’t necessarily a strategy that targets the appropriate party,” said Michelle McCormick, executive director of the Kansas Coalition against Sexual and Domestic Violence.

“We really think the emphasis should remain on the folks who need to be held accountable who perpetrate and use these drugs in order to commit sexual assault.”

Lawmakers who approved the policy said that legalizing these tools alongside fentanyl test strips was common sense.

Rep. Brenda Landwehr, a Wichita Republican, said the policy would be worth it if it saved even a single life or prevented one rape.

Legalizing the test strips

Kansas’ criminal statutes on drug possession classified testing strips for illicit drugs as drug paraphernalia and could carry a misdemeanor or felony offense. Because ketamine and gamma-hydroxybutyrate were illegal their testing strips were considered paraphernalia, regardless of the reason a person possessed them.

Ed Klumpp, a lobbyist for the Kansas Sheriff’s Association and Kansas Association of Chiefs of Police, said his members were not aware of any instances in which criminal charges were sought because of the date rape strips.

“They would use them once in a while for probable cause, or they’d find them in a search for drugs,” Klumpp said. “But they weren’t ever charging for them.”

Legalization of strips for the date rape drugs were included in Senate bill 174, a law that legalized test strips for fentanyl and increased penalties for production of the synthetic opioid.

Klumpp said he believed the legalization would clear the door to sale and distribution of the strips within Kansas.

Paula Mitchell, a victim advocate at Bright House, a survivor support center in Hutchinson, testified on behalf of the legalization. Mitchell was the victim of these drugs in the 1990s and spoke about watching a man slip something into her 21-year-old daughter’s drink.

“Predators use these drugs to trap and immobilize their victims,” Mitchell said in written testimony.

Where to buy tests

Currently, the test strips are not sold in person at pharmacies in Kansas.

Lance Norris, the owner of Drink Safe Technologies, which manufactures several of these test strips, said he is working on a deal with a distributor to put his product in stores across the country.

Norris sells online and does a lot of business with law enforcement and universities that purchase his product to hand out to residents.

Various brands of test strips can be purchased on Amazon or directly from manufacturers.

The strips have been available for online purchase for years. Morris said he has often shipped test strips to Kansas, fully unaware of the state law that banned them.

Limits as a prevention tool

McCormick, executive director of the Kansas Coalition Against Sexual and Domestic Violence, said she appreciated the Legislature’s recognition of sexual assault as a problem. But she said the newly legal strips were not likely to be a major piece of the coalition’s prevention strategy.

At this point, McCormick said, none of the coalitions’ members have developed plans to purchase and distribute the tests. Those members include domestic violence shelters and sexual assault prevention and support centers across the state.

If individual survivors would feel safer to have tests, McCormick said, she has no issue with helping them obtain them.

But emphasizing the tests as a prevention strategy, McCormick said, runs the risk of shifting the burden of preventing assault to potential victims.

If someone failed to test their drink does it become their fault? What if the test doesn’t work? Or what if a drug was slipped into a drink that wasn’t one of the two substances the tests detect?

“It might prevent one person from consuming a drug that would incapacitate them but just because someone doesn’t have a test strip and doesn’t use them doesn’t mean we should blame them,” she said.

Instead, McCormick said, the coalition’s focus remains on proven prevention measures focused around cultural change and bystander intervention.

Gabby Doyle, who oversees the Sexual Trauma & Abuse Care Center’s SafeBar Alliance in Lawrence, said she was not expecting any changes to the program. The SafeBar Alliance partners with bars in Lawrence to train staff on prevention tactics.

“We believe that folks should be empowered to know what they’re consuming if they’re using substances,” Doyle said. But, the SafeBar Alliance does not focus on individual action, instead working with bar staff on bystander intervention to prevent drug facilitated sexual assault.

That work, Doyle said, is more effective in addressing the broad range of drug facilitated sexual assault which can often involve a perpetrator taking advantage of a person’s state as a result of voluntarily consumed substances rather than surreptitious drugging.

“While test strips are an important tool, prevention really is looking at those kind of upstream factors, and looking at how can we address these while making sure people feel safe and supported in their daily life,”she said.

Legal test strips, Doyle said, are a tool in the toolbox for someone worried about their safety. But they have limitations.

“If they feel like that is a protective measure we certainly want to make sure that’s accessible to them,” she said. “It’s important to recognize someone may for instance test their drink at the beginning of their evening or right when they order it and it may be clean … something could change throughout the evening.”

Stephanie Foran, assistant director of Kansas State University’s Center for Advocacy, Response and Education, said test strips have the potential to do a lot of good, but that people still need to be prepared to step in if they witness something concerning.

“We need to look for each other, we need to call out the bad behavior when that’s happening,” she said.