Where to Get Drugs Tested Now DrugsData Is Paused
DrugsData stopped accepting samples in April 2024 and stays paused into 2027. The drug checking services that are actually operating right now.
August 14, 2026 · Jordan Mercer
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For 23 years, DrugsData was the answer to “where can I get my drugs tested.” You mailed a sample, paid a co-pay, and a licensed lab published an anonymous GC-MS result. That stopped on 10 April 2024 and has not restarted. Erowid Center’s June 2026 update says they are still working with legal counsel and expect no change before 2027.
The reason is regulatory, not financial. The DEA ordered the lab to stop analyzing DrugsData samples and re-apply for its exception to the rules that bar anonymous testing and the mailing of suspected controlled substances without a licence.
What catches people is that the site still looks alive. The searchable database of past results is fully online, so you land on it, assume the service works, and never find the banner reading “New Sample Submissions Are Not Being Accepted.” That database is still good for pill press markings and historical context, and Erowid still republishes results from other checking groups, but nothing DrugsData analyzed itself is newer than early April 2024.
Below is what was operating when this page was checked on 14 August 2026. Check any program’s own site before you post a sample. Every one of these has changed status at least once in the last two years.
Labs that take samples in the mail
Transparency Testing (US, commercial, operating). Analysis by FTIR, LC-MS, NMR and NIR. Their order form on 14 August 2026 listed powders, pills, blotters and geltabs, mushroom products, cannabis, kratom, plant and cactus material, extracts and steroids. Liquids they cannot currently accept. Payment can be made anonymously, and they say customer data is deleted one month after results. Identification alone is cheaper than identification plus purity, and specialist panels such as tryptamine screens cost more. DanceSafe points people here for mail-in checking. Be clear about what it is: a paid commercial lab, not a public-interest project, and the cost is a real barrier for plenty of people.
Energy Control (Spain, international, operating). Running a drug checking service since 1999 and an international mail-in service since 2014, using GC-MS and LC-MS. They identify most common substances and adulterants and quantify some, with one caveat of their own: they cannot quantify anything submitted as an unknown.
Get Your Drugs Tested (Vancouver, operating again). Free community analysis by FTIR and test strips, with a public results database. On 14 August 2026 their site said the mail-in program had reopened as of 1 August 2026 and in-person storefront services would restart in late August. Confirm before travelling there.
Community and public health programs
These are the ones most likely to be free. Most are reached through a local harm reduction organisation rather than by mailing a sample yourself.
UNC Street Drug Analysis Lab (streetsafe.supply). High resolution GC-MS on mailed samples, all results published anonymously. Their results site showed 23,533 completed samples from 42 states on 14 August 2026. They hold DEA authorisation, state that they do not work with law enforcement, and collect no identifying information. They are built to serve harm reduction programs, health departments and user unions, so the way in is usually a partner organisation. Their method tells you what is present, not how much.
StreetCheck and MADDS. A Brandeis-run community drug checking project with a public results and drug trends database and published test strip performance data. It started in Massachusetts as the Massachusetts Drug Supply Data Stream and now links sites across the Northeast, and Massachusetts agencies checking through MADDS do it free. A sample needs to be visible to the naked eye, roughly half a grain of rice. Powders, rocks, crystals, pills, and once-used pipes, cookers and cottons are accepted. Syringes are not, and plant material including mushrooms does not test well. Current information is at info.streetcheck.org; old madds.org links did not resolve when checked.
OnPoint NYC. On-site checking at their East Harlem and Washington Heights locations during business hours, run with the NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. FTIR spectroscopy plus immunoassay strips for fentanyl, morphine, cocaine, benzodiazepines, xylazine, ketamine and methamphetamine, with secondary lab verification.
CanTEST (Canberra). Free, confidential, fixed-site checking from Directions Health Services with CAHMA and Pill Testing Australia, funded by ACT Health. Hours published on 14 August 2026 were Thursdays 3pm to 6pm and Fridays 6pm to 9pm at the City Community Health Centre, 1 Moore Street. Pills, capsules, powders, crystals, liquids and blotters are accepted; plant material and dilute solutions often are not. CanTEST is Australian, not Canadian, which trips a lot of people up.
Finding something near you
There is no reliable national map, but two directories are worth trying. StreetCheck’s service finder covers New England and notes honestly that not every pin offers real-time results. The Harm Reduction Innovation Lab’s directory of North American drug checking programs is the widest listing and the one DrugsData itself points to; its entries are not dated, so phone a program before you travel.
For events, DanceSafe runs booths at many US festivals and The Loop runs on-site mass spectrometry at participating UK events. What they detect and the evidence behind them is in drug checking at festivals.
What most people will actually do
Mailing a sample somewhere is not going to happen before the weekend. So the realistic default in the US is a reagent kit for identification plus fentanyl test strips for the thing most likely to kill you.
Know the limits of both. Colour reagents are presumptive: they suggest which compound family is present, tell you nothing about milligrams, and a fast dark colour change is not evidence of strength. Strips are presumptive too. A 2024 laboratory evaluation of BTNX fentanyl test strips across five manufacturing lots found cross-reactivity with fentanyl and eleven analogues, false positives from diphenhydramine, lidocaine, MDMA and methamphetamine, and real lot-to-lot variation in sensitivity. A 2023 review of drug checking technologies makes the broader point: the supply changes faster than any one method tracks, which is why you use more than one.
Three things make the home setup worth doing:
- A multi-reagent kit, so one reaction cross-checks another. Our reagent colour chart shows expected reactions and which test kit do I need matches kits to substances. There is also a vendor comparison.
- Strips read correctly. One line means fentanyl detected. Two lines means not detected. That is backwards from what most people expect and it is the single most misread result in harm reduction. Strips are single use, one per sample. See how to use fentanyl test strips.
- More than one spot per batch. Powder is not evenly mixed, so a clean result on one pinch does not clear the rest of it.
Where that leaves you
The replacement for DrugsData is not one service, it is a scattered set: a commercial lab, a few university and public health programs you usually reach through a local organisation, event booths where they exist, and reagents and strips for everyone else. None of that is as good as what was lost. It is what there is, and using the weaker version carefully beats not testing at all.