What's in your drink? - Date rape drug detecting cups to hit the market

Next month, DrinkSavvy will begin shipping plastic cups and straws that change color if a drink contains three drugs commonly used for spiking purposes.

DrinkSavvy founder Mike Abramson worked with chemistry professor John MacDonald at Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts to develop a special material that changes color when it comes in contact with three common 'date rape' drugs: GHB, ketamine, and rohypnol.

The effort began with a successful $50,000 crowdfunding campaign on Indiegogo led by Abramson.

The first line of products --which include 16-ounce plastic cups and straws that shift color when in the presence of these date rape drugs, will be free at select rape crisis centers, and hopes to expand their use at bars, colleges, and clubs. The company hopes to offer an expanded line of products to the public sometime in 2014.

Abramson got the idea for the cups after he was a victim of the drugs himself. "Within the past three years, three of my very close friends — and myself — have been the unwitting victims of being drugged. … And I want to prevent it from happening to anyone else," he said.

Solusi Sehat