A community map of drug checking

What the atlas is

Each listing is written by the service itself and kept up to date by its own team through the center portal. A.CAB volunteers check every new listing and every event before it appears. The atlas doesn’t run any testing, and it doesn’t rank services.

Anyone can search it without an account. The listings are also open data, so other harm reduction tools can use them.

How listings are checked

1. A service fills in the questionnaire. It covers what they test, where and when, what it costs, whether people have to show ID, and the listing standards below.
2. A volunteer reviews it. They check the service is real and the details make sense, and may get in touch with questions. Only then does the listing go live, marked with the month A.CAB checked it.
3. The service keeps it current. Its team updates the listing from the center portal. Those changes go live straight away, and each one is recorded so A.CAB can look back at it. New events are checked before they are shown.
4. The service confirms it again, every 4 months or once a year, as it chooses, listing standards included. Every listing says how many days ago it was last updated and last confirmed. If a listing goes 60 days past its due date without being confirmed, it says “may be out of date”, and after 120 days it leaves the finder until the service confirms.

Listing standards

A.CAB lists services people can use without being identified. Before a service can be listed, it must tell us both of these standards are true for it, and it tells us again every time it confirms its listing. If it withdraws one, its listing leaves the finder.

1. We never keep a person’s name, contact details or ID details with their sample or its result.
2. Anything we publish or share about samples, including drug alerts, can’t be traced back to a person.

We also ask every service to follow this good practice:

• Ask for as little as possible: no legal name, date of birth, home address or ID unless the law requires it.
• If you take contact details to post a kit or send a result, keep them apart from sample data and delete them once they’re used.
• Don’t photograph or film people who bring samples.
• Make sure everyone who handles samples, partner labs included, knows these standards.

Some services need to see ID, for example to check age where the law requires it. Their listings say so: “ID required”, or “ID checked for age” when they look at it and write nothing down.

These are the service’s own statements: volunteers check that each listing is real and makes sense, but can’t inspect how a service runs day to day. Each listing shows this as: The service told us: nothing that identifies you is kept with your sample or its result.

Run a drug checking service?

Listing is free. The questionnaire takes 10 to 15 minutes, and you can save it and come back. Once you are listed, your team can update hours, sites and events from the center portal. If you work differently from the good practice above, talk to us.

List your service

Who runs A.CAB

A.CAB is built and kept up by volunteers who work in harm reduction. You can read about them, and the other projects they work on, on the Team page.

Get in touch

Questions, corrections or a service we should know about? Email m@a.cab.