The Drink Spike Detector is the size of a credit card and can be easily kept in a pocket or wallet.
By RUTH EGLASHdate rape 88(photo credit: )
Following a slew of media reports about the increase in drug-induced rapes, importer Benny Kalman has announced that the first consignments of the little cards that can detect the presence of date rape drugs GHB and Ketamine will arrive in the country as soon as next week.
"I saw the product a year and a half ago but was not interested in it as there were still no reports of date rape in Israel then," Kalman told The Jerusalem Post on Sunday. "Sadly, everything gets here eventually and a few weeks ago I realized that this problem was growing in Israel. It has really become a crisis in Israel with this rape drug."
Kalman planned to encourage nightclubs and places of entertainment to offer the Drink Safe Coasters to their patrons for free. "We will even approach the Dome club," said Kalman of the notorious Tel Aviv club where the GHB drug was recently detected in bottles of alcohol belonging to the owner.
According to Drink Safe Technologies literature, the Drink Spike Detector is the size of a credit card and can be easily kept in a pocket or wallet. It incorporates a technology that displays a visible color change when a drink spiked with GHB or Ketamine is tested.
While he thought the cards were not a bad preventive measure, Dr. Sigi Rotmensch, director of Maternal Fetal Medicine at Wolfson Hospital in Holon and head of the National Center for Treatment of Sexual Assault, cautioned that they might give the public a false sense of security. He urged women to remain vigilant about their environment, to not accept drinks from strangers and to keep their beverages with them at all times.
Over the past year, the center, which was set up by Rotmensch, has treated more than 20 women who were most likely raped after having their drinks spiked with a date-rape drug. The drugs are very difficult to detect in a person's body and they can wipe out large chunks of the victim's immediate memory, therefore this crime is not widely reported.
