A New Way To Detect Ecstasy Has Been Discovered

Researchers have found a new, reliable, and simple way to detect traces of ecstasy in a more efficient method of drug testing. The discovery heightens accuracy for home testing kits and professional uses of drug testing.

Chemists at the University of Southern Denmark, the Polytechnic University of Valencia and the Biomedical Research Networking Center in Bioengineering, Biomaterials & Nanomedicine (CIBER-BBN) in Spain are to be thanked for this awesome revelation. They saw the need for a better way to make cheaper, faster, and easier to use tests that don’t require the use heavy, expensive machinery in a laboratory. It is so accurate that it’s predicted to reduce the number of false positive and need for re-takes.

The process is explained as such:

“You start with a ball composed of atoms, which is simple to make. The ball is porous and filled with holes, meaning it can be filled up with smaller molecules. In this method, the ball is filled with molecules that are designed to light up if they are released from the holes. If there is no MDMA (methylenedioxymethamphetamine, the active ingredient in ecstasy) within range, the molecules cannot leave the ball. This is because a kind of arm is installed on the exterior of the ball that can open the ball’s pores once it comes into contact with MDMA and keeps the molecules sealed in until that happens. When the ball ‘opens up’, so to speak, the luminescent molecules stream out and can be detected by a sensor. The ball only opens up once it comes into contact with MDMA, and it can detect even minuscule concentrations of MDMA”.

You can read more of their findings here.