Government-Backed Party Drug-Testing: Inside Uruguay’s No-Penalty Harm Reduction Program

Far from demonizing people who use drugs—a global reality that some countries have chosen to acknowledge and address rather than forbid—Uruguay is joining an initiative that has already proven successful: testing drugs at parties, raves, and festivals, according to El Debate.

Uruguay’s National Drug Board (Junta Nacional de Drogas, JND), part of the Executive Branch, has launched a program to fund the analysis of some of the most commonly used drugs in the country’s nightlife scene over the course of 2026. The goal is to identify the chemical components of illegal drugs that attendees voluntarily submit for testing, in collaboration with the harm reduction organization Imaginario9.

Put simply: without punishment or snitching, people who attend these events and carry substances—such as MDMA, LSD, or cocaine—will be able to access concrete information about what they bought, allowing them to make more responsible decisions.

The State’s responsibility in drug use

Harm reduction could be part of any country’s public policy framework—in fact, some states have started moving in this direction.  This time, it’s Uruguay that has begun to recognize its responsibility here. But the State isn’t doing so alone.

Imaginario9, a civil society collective made up of chemists, lawyers, psychologists, sociologists, and professionals from other disciplines—all postgraduate students in drug policy at the University of the Republic—has aligned with the JND to help ensure safer experiences for people who use drugs at parties.

This is not the first time drug testing has taken place at events and through harm-reduction interventions in Uruguay. Early precedents include voluntary pill-testing initiatives carried out at events in 2016. At the time, local NGOs worked with the support of specialized harm reduction groups such as Proderechos and Energy Control, a leading Spain-based organization.

Thanks to the interdisciplinary work of these professionals—and a significant donation of reagents and equipment that made it possible to assemble the mobile laboratory Imaginario9 uses today—135 samples of synthetic drugs were analyzed, and several turned out to be adulterated.

That first intervention helped pave the way, albeit without state involvement. This is where the current shift becomes clear: for the first time, the Uruguayan state is formally inviting civil society groups—and funding the work systematically—through a public call to carry out drug testing across multiple events.

When State and civil society work together

Imaginario9 has been part of the Early Warning System (Sistema de Alerta Temprana, SAT) for years—a fact that, according to the organization, shows that their work “is useful and that the State coordinator considers the information we provide to be valuable.” As a result, Imaginario9 secured State funding through a public call issued late last year.

This opportunity arose after the government issued a call for civil society organizations already conducting interventions at parties and nightlife venues, including substance testing. The explicit goal was for organizations to submit proposals incorporating harm reduction strategies, reliable drug information, collective care, and peer-to-peer guidance in recreational settings.

Several proposals were submitted, and the contract was ultimately awarded to Imaginario9. Other organizations involved in the evaluation process included the Uruguayan Red Cross, Espacio Kablam, Montblanc, Coopetca, and Casa Ambiental de Castillos, underscoring the initiative’s intent to work alongside a diverse range of specialized social actors.

That way, after being selected to run the program, the group committed to carrying out interventions at six mid-sized parties (500–800 people), three large parties (over 1,000 people), and three additional activity-based sessions throughout 2026. “A very important challenge for us,” they say, “and one that gives us the chance to bring some regularity to our work, which has always been volunteer-driven, run on sheer effort”.

Along those same lines, Florencia, a political scientist from the University of the Republic with a postgraduate diploma in Drug Policy, Regulation, and Control, brings a perspective that expands the public health lens into the realm of human rights. With more than a decade of experience in social organizations focused on drug policy and harm reduction, she explains that Imaginario9’s work goes beyond substance testing: “We also work to expand and defend the human rights of people who engage with drugs, with the goal of building articulation and advocacy efforts to reform prohibitionist drug policy.”

From that perspective, Harm Reduction and Pleasure Management also means mitigating the harms produced by repressive policies themselves, questioning drug policy through gender, generational, and intersectional lenses, and confronting the processes of stigmatization, discrimination, and criminalization that affect both people who use drugs and those who become entangled in low-level trafficking dynamics.

“We denounce the consequences that the application of punitive criminal laws and repression have on the social fabric of our communities,” she notes.

Imaginario9 has been active since 2016, carrying out drug tests with varying frequency. Because the work has been volunteer-based, the pace and number of testing sessions and related activities have been limited by time availability. Usually, they manage to maintain at least four to six testing sessions per year (around one every two to three months). The project developed in collaboration with the JND, however, will provide more resources and allow for greater structure if higher frequency can be achieved.

According to a chart shared by the collective with El Planteo, the most recent testing dates were as follows:

Uruguay: The current state of adulterated drugs at parties

When we think about the volume of illegal drugs purchased globally, we must also consider the lack of information about what is actually being consumed.

As the Imaginario9 collective explains, the frequency with which people who test their substances discover that what they were sold is not, in fact, what they thought they bought is higher than they would like.

They note that “it varies greatly depending on the testing session, but in our reports we calculate an ‘adulteration index’ that generally falls between 30% and 60%,” adding that the highest levels of adulteration are found in cocaine compared to other substances.

Another key observation, according to the collective, is that prior to the 2020 pandemic, most of the analyzed samples did in fact turn out to be what they claimed to be. MDMA—whether in pill or crystal form—generally was MDMA, and adulteration rates were low. After 2020, however, the situation shifted, with the emergence of MDMA’s precursor and analog compound, MDA.

MDA’s effects are less empathogenic and more hallucinogenic, and it also takes longer to take effect. This often leads users to “redose quickly in search of the familiar empathogenic effects of ecstasy, at which point they may ‘overdo it,’ increasing the risk of intoxication.”

Pills containing amphetamines or caffeine have also been detected: these adulterants are quite common due to their stimulant effects, according to the organization. Users often describe this experience as a “rough comedown”, since it makes it much more difficult to fall asleep afterward.

When it comes to LSD, adulteration rates tend to be lower, although blotters are sometimes found to be adulterated with NBOMes, a synthetic phenethylamine with a higher toxicity risk.

Taken together, these findings show that illegality does not reduce drug use or guarantee public safety. Quite the opposite. People continue to purchase drugs on illicit markets without knowing what they are actually ingesting.

And what happens when we actually do know what we’re consuming?

Despite criticism often directed at these intervention spaces and at people who choose to consume anyway, drug testing at parties does not promote use. Rather, it prevents deaths—plain and simple—because when people learn that the substances they’re carrying are not what they thought they bought, they often choose to discard them.

“What happens many times is that people who receive a ‘negative’ result for their substance—that is, they learn it’s adulterated—decide to throw it away and not consume it. In that case, it’s a clear deterrent to use,” Imaginario9 explains.

But when the situation is reversed, the equation doesn’t change much: the decision was already made. “In the opposite case, when someone receives a ‘positive’ result, that can’t be understood as promoting use either. A person who approaches a testing device with a pill in hand already made the decision to ingest it long before, back when they obtained the substance. The only difference now is that they have more information about it. And if we’ve done our job right, we also share safer-use practices that help prevent overdosing,” they add.

Drug testing works (and it has for a long time)

Bruno González, who holds a PhD in Chemistry from the University of the Republic, is a researcher of non-classical psychedelics, activist, defender of the rights of people who use drugs, and a member of the Imaginario9 collective. He spoke with El Planteo about why this kind of practice is so important.

“As people who use substances ourselves, we know that prohibition and the existence of an unregulated market leave people extremely exposed,” he explained. “When someone accesses a substance, there’s no real certainty about what’s actually in that pill, blotter, or powder. And the first step toward safer use is having more information about its chemical identity.”

No one here is trying to point fingers at people who use drugs. That reality already exists, it’s happening, and trying to push back against a tide that only seems to keep rising is almost unrealistic. Drug checking in spaces where use is highly likely is not a new policy, even if it may sound revolutionary. Just looking at ARDA or PAF! in Argentina, RD in Chile, Soma in Peru, Échele Cabeza in Colombia, Checa tu Sustancia in Mexico, or DanceSafe in the U.S. shows that awareness about what we’re using—and the desire to share information—crosses borders.

“It’s done all over the world; it’s a first step to mitigating the consequences of prohibition,” González explains. He goes on: “But the Imaginario9 collective is about much more than that, because substance testing (which, yes, is very eye-catching) is only part of the work. Many times, it’s the excuse to build closer contact with users, to share experiences, harm-reduction practices, and to talk about pleasure too, because there’s a reason people use drugs in the first place. And I think that’s more valuable than the result alone,” he admits.

What changes from place to place are the model, the scale, and the resources available to these organizations. “Some focus more on communication, others on testing and on-site interventions at parties. We’re in touch with this whole network of allied organizations, especially across Latin America, that regularly attend the Drug Policy Alliance conference,” González adds.

The benefit is clear: reducing the number of intoxications that can end in fatal outcomes. A reality that emerges when people lack quality information about the substances they’re using.

How will the testing work?

To start, testing will take place at parties, as part of an on-site intervention set up within nightlife venues. It’s not just a mobile lab, González explains, but also a kind of “cool-down” or safety space.

“Getting into the technical side, what we do are qualitative analyses,” he says. “That means we can tell people whether their substance is—or isn’t—what they think it is, or whether it contains an adulterant. We run two different tests: a colorimetric test and a thin-layer chromatography analysis. Both require a very small sample, usually a scraping from a pill or a small amount of powder provided by the user.”

For the first test, reagents are used that produce different colors when they come into contact with the substance. At least three different reagents are used for greater reliability, aiming for a clear answer: all or nothing. It either is, or it isn’t.

What this first analysis can’t determine is whether the substance contains “something else,” such as an adulterant. That’s where the second test comes in: thin-layer chromatography, or TLC. This is a separative technique, meaning it allows the different components of a sample to be seen individually. “That’s when we compare it against known adulterant standards and can tell you, for example, whether it’s been cut with caffeine,” the chemist explains.

In short, they can’t yet quantify dosage. The analysis can reliably determine whether, for example, your pill is or isn’t MDMA, or whether it contains something else, but it can’t tell you the dose or how many milligrams are in that pill. “For me, that would be the goal,” González says. “To incorporate a technique that would allow us to provide that kind of information in the future.”

Safeguarding user safety and anonymity

Samples are received at the mobile lab on a voluntary and anonymous basis. “Sometimes we ask basic demographic questions, or whether the person has already ingested part of the substance and what they report about the experience, whether it was bad, whether it matched their expectations, and so on,” the organization explains.

Part of their process involves photographing the substance, which is particularly relevant for pills, as they are often identified by color and logo. From there, analysis reports are produced and published.

There are two main types of publications: one is shared on public-facing social media platforms, made by users, for users, and usually consists of a table with all the analysis data, along with photos of the substances. The other takes the form of a technical report shared through the SAT platform, coordinated with the JND. This latter channel also involves public actors such as healthcare providers (hospitals) that report severe intoxication cases, as well as forensic police and the judicial system when large-scale seizures occur.

The goal is to be clear and straightforward when informing users about what they’re using. In fact, being very clear is part of the strategy. At times, the organization takes information from these technical reports produced by public agencies and translates it into plain language to share among users. “Be aware that this pill triggered an alert because it contained that adulterant,” they offer as an example.

González adds that the purpose of drug checking is to “create strategies to engage with people who use drugs to share reliable information about the harms, risks, and pleasures associated with psychoactive substance use; to advise and guide users about the composition of substances and how different substances interact with the body; and to strengthen people’s decision-making capacity by creating spaces that foster autonomy and collective care.”

Drugs, the State, testing, and desire

Where the State has historically been absent, NGOs, collectives, and grassroots organizations have stepped in and carried the work forward. Today, the Uruguayan government not only recognizes these efforts, but has chosen to work alongside them. Even so, González dreams of a day when his work will be irrelevant.

“I hope that one day our testing work won’t be necessary, because there will be a legal market where the drugs people can access come from a system of controlled production and quality that is, so to speak, pharmaceutical,” he says. And that’s where the best results can be achieved: through work that aligns with desire, rather than against it.

The perspective of this collective—and likely many others—is one of Harm Reduction and Pleasure Management (RDGP, by its full name) as it relates to the use of psychoactive substances. It’s not only about minimizing risks or avoiding negative outcomes, but also about acknowledging that drug use exists because it produces pleasure, connection, and meaning, and that denying this dimension only pushes people toward less safe practices.

From this perspective, care does not stand in opposition to enjoyment: it moves alongside it. RDGP seeks to enable more informed, autonomous, and safer experiences, where people can exercise their right to pleasure without being unnecessarily exposed to serious or preventable harm. Within this framework, the role of the State would not be limited to regulation or punishment, but would also include guaranteeing health and care in practices that, even if not always formally legitimized, are part of the social lives of a large portion of the population.

The Uruguayan State, together with the Imaginario9 collective, is not promoting drug use by conducting testing. Drug checking is, rather, a palliative measure, one that emerges as a consequence of prohibitionist, war-on-drugs policies. “What we do need is legitimacy for our work, protection, and clear signals from authorities that what we do is valued and necessary. I believe this new project with the JND is precisely that,” the civil society organization concludes.