Advice center warns

Ingredients of drugs in Vienna as gambling

Cocaine is currently circulating in the city both in a highly pure form and with many, sometimes harmful, diluted substances.

(Bild: motortion - stock.adobe.com)

Anyone who buys "party drugs" in Vienna is now putting their health at even greater risk than ever before with drug use. Additives and purity levels are becoming increasingly unpredictable, warns the "checkit!" advice center. Seven percent of the samples tested were directly hazardous to health.

The fact that purchased substances can be tested anonymously, confidentially and free of charge at checkit!, the competence center of Suchthilfe Wien for recreational drugs, also gives the testers a deep insight into the state of the drug market in Vienna - namely "increasingly complex", as laboratory manager Anton Luf puts it: Only two thirds of all samples tested contained the expected ingredients at all, not to mention the expected degree of purity.

Highly pure and highly diluted at the same time in circulation
What makes drug use all the more risky is easily explained by the example of cocaine: it is currently in circulation in the city both in high-purity form and with many diluted substances, even from one and the same dealer. As a result, it is virtually impossible to know how much drug a consumer is actually taking. This not only means the risk of overdoses, because the inhumane nature of the drug trade is also evident in the type of extenders used.

Life-threatening extenders

Cocaine is currently mainly diluted with levimasol and lidocaine. In the first case, this means the risk of allergic reactions, impairment of the nervous system and a life-threatening immune deficiency due to the change in blood count, and in the second case the risk of life-threatening cardiac arrhythmia.

Every sixth ecstasy tablet highly risky
The situation is no different for the other drugs tested: In the case of speed/amphetamines, around half of the samples contained 25 percent active ingredients, while the other half contained 75 percent. Here, pure caffeine is found as an extender, which, together with the active ingredients, carries the risk of overloading the circulatory system. The active substance content of ecstasy has increased significantly, as has the number of completely different substances found in the samples: One in six samples was directly hazardous to health.

When I have white powder in front of me, it's always risky because I can't see what's in it.

Anton Luf, Pharmazeut, Laborverantwortlicher bei „CheckIt“

Bild: Lukas Zimmer

Substances whose consequences nobody knows yet
Then there is the entire growing market of NPS ("new psychoactive substances"), synthetic drugs newly concocted in drug laboratories. In 2023 alone, 71 different new substances, some of whose effects cannot yet be assessed, were found in the samples tested. NPS were also found in many samples that buyers had purchased as ecstasy, speed or other familiar substances.

The fact that the absolute number of samples tested has also risen to 2429 - almost twice as many as two years ago - is of less concern to checkit! This is mainly due to the return of the party scene after the Covid years and more capacity: drug samples can now also be handed in at three Viennese pharmacies. However, checkit! is all the more important for the prevention of addiction: the testing of drugs is primarily intended to open doors to talk to users who are typically outside the drug scene.