SCIRe: Substance Consumption Informative Research - testing hair in electronic music festivals

Background In recent years, we have witnessed an alarming increase in the consumption of psychoactive substances, especially at electronic music parties, representing a significant challenge to public health. Thus, the SCIRe project appears as a beacon in this scenario, seeking to identify patterns and trends in drug consumption through advanced toxicological analysis techniques. For this purpose, hair matrix was chosen given its incredible ability to provide a timeline of drug use. Our mission is to dispel the obscurantism surrounding this consumption and promote the implementation of harm reduction policies, making society itself safer and more aware. Methods Volunteers were recruited at the Origens Electronic Music Festival in the city of São Francisco de Paula in the state of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil. Hair samples were collected by cutting a pencil-thickness amount of hair from the vertex posterior region (crown of the head) and storing it into individually labeled foil wraps followed by a paper envelope. To each subject, a questionnaire was also applied including 22 questions from demographics to drug usage habits, together with the relevant consent forms. Hair samples were extracted via general methanolic incubation for 16 h, followed by a clean-up step and identification via liquid-chromatography tandem mass-spectrometry (LC-MS/MS).  Results From all collected samples (n=30), 26 have tested positive for at least one of the 14 substances tested. The top three substances detected were nicotine (n=22), cocaine (n=19) and MDMA (n=10). The sociodemographic results of the pilot study point to an equal gender distribution (50% female, 43.3% male and 6.3% not informed) and volunteers with an average age of 30.5 ± 4.8 years, of whom, 70% complete higher education. Furthermore, 86.7% reported recreational use of a psychoactive substance in the last 24 hours prior to collection.   Conclusions It was possible to observe a significantly high positivity rate for one or multiple psychoactive substances (26 out of 30). The substances that showed the greatest positivity were nicotine, cocaine and MDMA, which are compounds known to stimulate the central nervous system. This highlights the elevated incidence of drugs of abuse in the context of electronic music festivals and their detection could aid the formulation of appropriate and helpful harm reduction measures to benefit the user and provide safe-using guidelines.