Last week, Dr Chris Luke wrote in The Journal about why suspected cases of drink spiking can sometimes go unheeded by medics in emergency departments. This week, he shares his thoughts on a new approach that he says is needed to tackle the problem. 

IN MY PREVIOUS article about so-called ‘date rape drugs’, I explained how I’d been persuaded that the scepticism of some frontline clinicians towards a complaint of ‘I think my drink was spiked’ was no longer justifiable.

I explained that the scepticism originated in the sheer scale of recreational intoxication that staff have to deal with, in every urban emergency department, especially at weekends, plus the dearth of substantial medical research proving the intentional ‘spiking’ of people’s drinks.

But what had altered my view radically (after many years’ working in emergency medicine) was a recent series of court cases in England, Scotland and France involving hundreds of cases of ‘drug-facilitated sexual assault’ (DFSA), where convictions were secured not by medical tests, but by CCTV and phone camera footage of the actual acts of ‘spiking’ and subsequent assaults.

The scale of harm was devastating. In a few cases, it was lethal, and in most cases, it took years to be recognised. That is why I am convinced that a new approach is now required.

So what should we do about ‘spiked drinks’?

Firstly, we must take the issue more seriously. Experience teaches us that it is sometimes only the catastrophic consequences of ‘drink spiking’ (death or acquisition of HIV) that convinces people that ‘spiking’ is not an urban myth.

Now, we can refer to a growing ‘panel’ of precedents proving that the issue is devastatingly real, and ‘ordinary-looking’ perpetrators may get away with repeated attacks because of the victims’ shame, amnesia (a common feature of almost all drugs used to incapacitate) or ‘gaslighting’. Like in France, where Gisèle Pelicot’s husband convinced her she was suffering from brain failure when she ‘sort of’ recalled frightening memories’. The issue of ‘drink spiking’ is........

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