Screening for Drivers under the Influence of Drugs The new Drugwipe® for Sweat and Saliva Testing

Drugwipe® is a pen-size detector for invisible traces of drugs on surfaces and was initially developed for Customs applications. Since 1998 Drugwipe® is in use by German Traffic Police Forces to identify Drivers under the Influence of Drugs. In the following paper the experiences of the German traffic police and data from controlled studies with Drugwipe® are summarized. Also an improved product generation of DrugWipe is presented. The 2 generation Drugwipe is specifically developed for traffic control applications taking into consideration the comments and experiences of the traffic police in Germany and other European Countries. Introduction Securetec was founded in 1995 to develop, manufacture and market devices for the rapid onsite detection and identification of illegal narcotics. Drugwipe® was initially developed for Customs and Law Enforcement Officers to detect smuggling and dealing with illegal narcotics. The main advantages of Drugwipe® are lying in its small size, fast response time and low false alarm rate. In 1997 and 1998 the German State Baden-Württemberg evaluated Drugwipe® as a sweat test for roadside applications [1]. In 1998 the German Traffic Law was extended to make Driving under the Influence of Drugs (DUID) a crime. As the new law was implemented executives of the traffic police were trained in the recognition and detection of DUID. In parallel, several German states started to work with Drugwipe® as a roadside screening device. To date Drugwipe® is in use in Baden-Württemberg, Saxonia, Berlin, Thuringia and Lower Saxonia – always based on sweat as test specimen. In 1999 the European Union asked a consortium of 9 Institutes and 3 companies to test and evaluate urine, saliva and sweat test devices and to develop recommendations for the application of roadside screening devices for DUID. The project was named ROSITA ("Roadside-Testing-Assessment") and Drugwipe® participated as a sweat and saliva test [2, 3]. This presentation will provide an overview on the experiences and results of the traffic police in Germany with the Drugwipe® device. The new Drugwipe® generation will be introduced and the main features will be discussed. The Drugwipe® System Drugwipe® is a pen-size rapid test for the detection of invisible traces of drugs on surfaces, on the skin (sweat) or in saliva. Sample collection and transfer is performed with a wiping fleece located on a special wiping element. The sample is analysed with a lateral flow immunoassay housed in a plastic protection (detection element). Figure 1: Construction of the the Drugwipe® drug detector Sampling is based on wiping over a surface of suspicion. This may be a personal item (suitcase, passport) but can also be the skin of a person. A body location is chosen where external contamination is of less concern and drug residues deposited on the skin by perspiration can be detected. Alternatively samples can be collected from inside the mouth or from the tongue (saliva). Experiences with the 1 Generation Drugwipe® In Germany roadside screening is performed when there is an initial suspicion of Driving under the Influence of Drugs. Drivers showing a positive screening result have to supply a blood sample for confirmatory analysis in the laboratory. Punishment is based on the laboratory results in blood and additionally documented observations of the police officer. Wiping Fleece Water Container Wiping Element Detection Element Absorbant Fleece The following diagrams are providing the field test results of the traffic police in BadenWürttemberg with Drugwipe®. Drugwipe® was used as a sweat test and either the armpit or the forehead were used as a sampling location. Blood is the reference specimen. Figure 2: Correlation of the Drugwipe® results under field conditions with the blood status of suspicious driver Table 1: Concentration of MDMA and HMMA in plasma and Drugwipe® result in dependence of time after administration of 100 mg MDMA [4] Volunteer A Volunteer B Sweat Plasma [ng/ml] Sweat Plasma [ng/ml] Time (hours) Drugwipe ® result MDMA HMMA Time (hours) Drugwipe ® result MDMA HMMA 0 0.0 0.0 0 0.0 0.0 2 + 88.1 151.7 2 + 160.7 308.8 4 N.A. 164.4 160.4 4 N.A. 136.7 245.3 6 + 152.8 147.4 6 + 120.3 200.1 8 + 119.7 108.1 8 + 100.4 151.7 12 + 77.9 74.2 12 + 78.3 108.7 24 26.5 45.2 24 24.4 54.0 36 N.A. N.A. 36 N.A. N.A. 48 N.A. N.A. 48 N.A. N.A. N.A . : not available MDMA: Methylenedioxymethamphtamine HMMA: 2-Hydroxy-3-methoxymethamphetamine OPIATE Reference method n=25 + D RUGWIPE + 8 0 2 15 Reference method n=52 + DRUGWIPE + 45 3 0 4 Amphetamines KOKAIN Reference method n=19 + DRUGWIPE + 5 1 1 12 Besides these field studies the Drugwipe® Amphetamines was also evaluated in controlled studies with Ecstasy [4]. MDMA was administered to volunteers and the detectability of MDMA with Drugwipe® and Drugread was tested. Table 1 shows the MDMA concentration in plasma of 2 volunteers after administration of a single 100 mg dose. In parallel the Drugwipe® was applied in the armpit to measure the excretion of MDMA in the sweat. It was possible to detect the consumption of MDMA in a time window between 2 hours and 12 hours after drug administration. This covers most of the time, which is of importance for roadside testing. For saliva testing a combination of the Drugwipe® Amphetamines and an optical reader (Drugread) was used. MDMA concentrations have been measured quantitatively in saliva after calibrating the system. Figure 2 is providing the MDMA concentrations in saliva measured with GC/MS and simultaneously measured with Drugwipe®/DrugRead in dependence of time after administration of a single 100 mg dose. DrugRead is an absorption photometer measuring the coloration in the Drugwipe® readout window in arbitrary digits. The number of digits is directly proportional to the Drugwipe® signal. 400 500 600 700 800 90