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Monday, July 28, 2025

T&T gets drink safety testing with SipChip

by

2368 days ago
20190202

Gail Alexan­der

From bad, can come some good.

A fright­en­ing ex­pe­ri­ence with tam­pered drinks which hurt cer­tain pa­trons at a Car­ni­val fete three years ago has opened an av­enue to pre­vent such oc­cur­rences in T&T again.

The "bad scene" which those pa­trons suf­fered from that in­ci­dent made San Fer­nan­do res­i­dent Sean Good­man livid. The pa­trons had been friends of his. It made him de­ter­mined to find some­thing to de­tect date rape drugs in drinks and which could pro­tect Tri­nis.

Good­man per­se­vered for al­most two years. The out­come is the in­tro­duc­tion to T&T and the Caribbean of the SipChip—a patent­ed so­phis­ti­cat­ed di­ag­nos­tic test which de­tects Ben­zo­di­azepines in­clud­ing Ro­hyp­nol (aka "Roofies"), Xanax, Val­i­um, Ser­ax, Versed, and Resto­ril drugs in over 100 bev­er­ages.

Good­man re­lat­ed: "About three years ago, a close rel­a­tive of mine and friends went to a pop­u­lar Car­ni­val fete. I was shocked to hear some of the women in the group had their drinks tam­pered with. They be­came se­vere­ly ill, land­ing up at a med­ical fa­cil­i­ty.

"When blood tests re­turned, it was pos­i­tive for a known date rape drug. Ter­ri­fy­ing! It was an all-in­clu­sive fete and they’d been go­ing to the bar them­selves, no­body was of­fer­ing them drinks. It nev­er en­tered their minds there was a threat. I was tak­en aback and start­ed re­search­ing what could be done and how can we in T&T can pro­tect our­selves from this in­ca­pac­i­tat­ing form of at­tack."

Good­man’s re­search led him to SipChip pro­duc­ers, Un­der­cov­er Col­ors. When the prod­uct launched in the US, dis­cus­sions were held about in­tro­duc­ing it lo­cal­ly. The rest has start­ed SipChip his­to­ry in T&T.

How does SipChip work?

The small key-ring sized chip in­volves a sim­ple for­mat with in­stant re­sults.

Re­move the proac­tive seal. Put a drop of your drink on­to the chip’s test pad. Re­sults ap­pear in 30 sec­onds.

Good­man said, "The test is sim­ple, portable, ac­cu­rate, quick, safe and the on­ly one of its kind. For a look at the work­ings: https://youtu.be/ZPXEdJ_Gtx0.

"It's re­gard­ed as a 'must have' to car­ry, es­pe­cial­ly for pub­lic events. I hope that in to­day's re­al­i­ty in T&T, it can de­ter ill-mind­ed in­di­vid­u­als who sit around con­coct­ing ways to wreck lives. Know­ing there's some­thing that can de­tect 'dirty' drinks, may stop them."

US pro­duc­ers’ spokesman Bar­bara Cook said, "The orig­i­nal idea was born out of per­son­al ex­pe­ri­ences in the lives of the prod­uct’s (US) founders. They want­ed to do some­thing that would stop drug-fa­cil­i­tat­ed date rape and have an im­pact on so­cial be­hav­iour."

Cook said the prod­uct was cre­at­ed by a team of sci­en­tists led by Dr Nick Le­tourneau, whose "ob­jec­tive was pro­vid­ing a tool that was de­pend­able to keep peo­ple safe".

"Cre­ation of SipChip as the form in which the test is sold was dri­ven by glob­al con­sumer feed­back. We lis­tened and their re­quests were clear: they want­ed a prod­uct that could de­tect the most com­mon date rape drugs in the widest va­ri­ety of bev­er­ages, some­thing ac­cu­rate, fast and could be used as dis­creet­ly or overt­ly as nec­es­sary, and was com­plete­ly gen­der neu­tral.

"SipChip has achieved over 99 per cent ac­cu­ra­cy in more than 12,000 de­vices test­ed. It’s sold in the US and South Africa and there’s deep in­ter­est from Eu­rope and Asia/Pa­cif­ic re­gions."

Cook added, "Pos­i­tive feed­back in­cludes from peo­ple who’ve said they are sur­vivors and wished they'd had this ear­li­er. Lia Ka­mana, sur­vivor and ABC7 News re­porter said our prod­uct was ‘the most im­pres­sive’ in the mar­ket and she has it on her phone now which al­lows her to go out with peace of mind again.

"For­mer Se­cret Ser­vice agent Evy Poumpouras—who's pro­tect­ed three US pres­i­dents—said on a To­day show it’s a ‘must have’ for per­son­al safe­ty."

For T&T's Good­man, he said he just didn't want any­one else to suf­fer at a Car­ni­val or oth­er fetes, "I wouldn’t want any­one to go through what my friends did..."


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