All emergency rooms in the Quebec health network are now equipped with kits to detect traces of intoxication with psychoactive substances in urine, including gamma-hydroxybutyrate (GHB), commonly known as the date rape drug.
Quebec authorities claim that these kits will make it easier for victims of unknowing poisoning to report sexual attackers to the police and, above all, to better support them.
Any person who believes they have been poisoned can now go to triage for any emergency, in all regions of Quebec, and request a legal urine kit. To benefit from this kit, the intoxication must have occurred within the previous 48 hours, because after this period, it becomes more difficult to detect the substances that may have been used by the author of the intoxication.
The test allows the detection of more than 200 intoxicants, including GHB, but the detection window varies from one substance to another. For example, GHB remains detectable within 10 to 12 hours following intoxication.
In addition to the kit offering, each victim will be supported to facilitate the reporting process. She will first be informed of the possibility of filing a report with the police, if the test turns out to be positive, and of the resources available to help her.
The emergency department will collect the urine sample and, with the person’s consent, will contact their local police department. The kits will then be analyzed by the Forensic Sciences and Forensic Medicine Laboratory.
The relevant police service will then communicate the results to the victim with a view to discussing further investigation, if applicable.
This approach will be voluntary and the victim can decide at any time not to pursue it.
“On the eve of the holiday season, as the festivities begin, we want to ensure that people who may be victims of poisoning without their knowledge can have rapid access to kits to detect it,” the minister declared in a press release. of Health, Christian Dubé.
The government reminds that the organization Info-aide sexual violence offers assistance to victims of sexual assault and those around them at all times, throughout Quebec.
At a press scrum in Quebec on Friday, the Minister of Public Security, François Bonnardel, spoke of the kits as a “decisive tool to counter date rape drugs.”
“It is above all an interesting bridge between justice, the health system and so that the police forces have evidence to get the cowards who drug these women out of circulation,” declared Mr. Bonnardel.