They are located in Hackney and Camden, managed by the association The Loop, together with the Municipality and the local police.
Is it ecstasy or methamphetamines? Is it cocaine or ketamine? But why is this one pink and that one yellow? From now on, in London, it will be possible to know with almost absolute precision the content and various cuts that a drug contains. The credit goes to the organization The Loop, which has launched, together with the Metropolitan Police and the London borough councils, two “drug-checking” points, that is, safe and anonymous places to bring drugs for analysis. The Loop is a charity that deals with drug monitoring and harm reduction and introduced drug checking services in the UK for the first time in 2016. The two London points of The Loop will be launched in Hackney and Camden.
The model, already successfully tested in Bristol in 2024, relies on teams made up of chemists, doctors, and academics capable of providing rapid analysis and anonymous consultations. It is not just about testing the purity of a substance, but about generating a constant flow of data on the trends of an increasingly opaque and dangerous market, sharing vital information with the community in real time. The fact that the service is entirely funded by the municipalities and authorized by the Home Office marks a paradigm shift in which data collection becomes community defense, a practice that will help prevent overdoses, hospitalizations, and deaths.
As reported by the publication MixMag, the CEO of The Loop, Katy Porter explained that “Hackney and Camden are the first of several London neighborhoods that The Loop is collaborating with. This launch represents another important step forward towards health interventions based on concrete data, at a time when drug-related deaths in England have reached a historic high.” According to the report from the Population Health Monitoring group, in 2024, there were 5,565 drug poisoning-related deaths recorded in England and Wales. This is the highest number since records began in 1993 and a 2.1 percent increase compared to 2023 (5,448 recorded deaths). This equates to a rate of 93.9 deaths per million people, higher than that of 2023 (93.0 deaths per million people). The rate has increased every year since 2012 and is currently more than double the rate recorded in 2012 (46.5 deaths per million).
