Test your cocktail for date rape drugs at Seattle club, Chop Suey
Sep 26, 2016, 5:49 PM | Updated: Oct 11, 2024, 9:57 am
(Photo by CitizenM hotels, CC Images)
(Photo by CitizenM hotels, CC Images)
Over the summer, there have been several reports of both men and women being roofied while out at Capitol Hill bars. According to this article in The Stranger titled, At Least 10 People Say They’ve Been Drugged at Seattle Bars This Summer, most of them don’t report the incident to the police. Now, a couple of bars are doing something to combat date rape drugs.
Over at Chop Suey, a popular bar and concert venue on the hill, co-owner Brianna Rettig says they’ve decided to be pro-active about drinks getting drugged.
“It’s actually happened once or twice at Chop,” says Rettig.. “It happened to friends, I mean, I’ve personally been drugged before. It’s something we have to do something about.”
“We have to take responsibility, as well as the patrons just not leaving their drinks around,” she said. “We have signs up now that say that we value everybody’s safety and that all of the drinks that are unattended will be bussed. Just because it’s something that we all kind of, as a community, need to be aware of and take as much action as we can.”
So if you put down your drink, put a napkin on top of it, and go out for a smoke — it will not be there when you get back.
“Yeah, we’re bussing everything,” Rettig said. “Then people get upset that we take their drinks. But I’d rather they be upset that they didn’t get a drink rather than get drugged.”
Testing for date rape drugs
Chop Suey is also making it possible for people to test their own drinks for date rape drugs.
“We actually got the lead from Bar Sue, Ian over there, they got these test strips. Basically they just test for ketamine or GHB,” Rettig said. “You do a little straw test on there, wait a minute, when it turns dark blue that’s a positive. If there’s no read or it’s a slightly different color because it’s wet, that means there’s nothing in there.”
She says anyone can ask the bartender for a test strip specifically designed to react to date rape drugs.
“We keep them at the bar,” Rettig said. “People like things to do anyways, while they’re at the bar. It’s a conversation piece, it’s something that we have, they’re just sitting up on the till and you can just test it out.”
Rettig says people have to look out for themselves, because it can be tough for the staff to do it for them.
“People will ask security to watch their drinks but when you’ve got, like, 30 drinks up there,” she said. “The security is there to watch the club and keep an eye on the safety of our patrons. But, at the end of the day, I don’t want them being so concerned with a row of 30 drinks, rather than the people actually in the club who could potentially be a problem. There’s just so many things that can possible happen when you have 300 people in a room.”
