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From Here Forward shares stories and ideas about amazing things UBC and its alumni are doing around the world. It covers people and places, truths, science, art, and accomplishments with the view that sharing better inspires better. Join hosts Carol Eugene Park and Jeevan Sangha, both UBC grads, in exploring solutions for the negative stuff out there — focussing on the good for a change, from here forward.
[00:00:00] Carol Eugene Park: Hello, friendly alumni. Welcome back to From Here Forward, your favorite UBC Podcast, network. Podcast. My name is Carol,
[00:00:14] Jeevan Sangha: and I'm Jeevan.
[00:00:16] Carol Eugene Park: Happy July folks. So normally I would have a witty intro before we get into the conversation, but there's truly no way to make jokes about being safe in public spaces cause that is still a thing we have to think about in 2025.
[00:00:30] Jeevan Sangha: So, let's paint a bit of a picture. You're on a night out with your girls and the drinks are flowing. You're taking all the safety precautions that you're used to, including making sure you've seen every single drink get poured just in case someone spikes it.
[00:00:41] Carol Eugene Park: Now, let's say the venue you're at has mandated stir sticks to ensure that drinks are safe every step of the way. Everyone there can test their drinks, and if it does get spiked, you'll know before you drink it.
[00:00:52] Jeevan Sangha: This is exactly the kind of model that UBC associate professor in chemical and biological Engineering, Dr. Johann Foster. And UBC Sexual violence prevention office educator Sasha Santos are hoping to build
[00:01:04] Carol Eugene Park: In 2011, Dr. Foster and his brother conceptualized Spikeless, an unassuming stir stick that is capable of detecting common drink spiking drugs in under 30 seconds.
[00:01:14] Jeevan Sangha: Once the technology was developed, Dr. Foster joined forces with Sasha Santos, a subject area expert with experience in public health and violence prevention. Together they're working towards building a community-based model that will make Spikeless a staple in bars, music venues, and restaurants. And the idea is everyone will feel a lot safer going out.
[00:01:31] Carol Eugene Park: What more can we ask for? Truly? It was a really interesting conversation. So, let's dive in.
[00:01:36] Dr. Johan Foster: My name's Johan Foster. I am an associate professor in Chemical and Biological Engineering at the University of British Columbia.
[00:01:43] Sasha Santos: I'm Sasha Santos. My day job is as a sexual violence prevention educator with UBC's Sexual Violence Prevention and Response Office. I also do just a lot of different forms of community-based anti-violence work, and so that's kind of where this falls. I'm a bit of an anti-violence activist type, and so I've been kind of advising on this project. I'm also a UBC alumni, what am I, BA'05, B. ED '06? So,
[00:02:11] Carol Eugene Park: Love that shout out. Okay, so why don't we go straight into Spikeless, if I'm not mistaken, in 2011. Dr. Foster, you conceptualized Spikeless. Can you take us back to that genesis?
[00:02:22] Dr. Johan Foster: Yeah. This, so this was 10 or 12 years ago, a conversation with one of my older brothers talking about spiking of drinks and whether it was possible to test inside the drink. So, we've been noodling around with that in my lab for, for many years, just recently coming together with a solution. And that's a stir stick that tests for those drugs in, in a drink. So, we have called this Spikeless. And yeah, it is simply a paper stir stick that draws a tiny bit of your drink up into the top of the, the stir stick and changes color in the presence of bad things in your drink.
[00:02:56] Jeevan Sangha: And can you talk to us a bit about the research process and the development process? Are there any obstacles that you encountered as you were figuring out how you wanted to. Make this product come to life.
[00:03:06] Dr. Johan Foster: Yeah. So, there are a few things out there that we're sort of competing against or people have conceptualized. On the market there are things like a coaster that you take a couple drops of your drink out of your drink. I don't know if you do that with your fingers or I'm not really sure how that's done. You put it on a couple of test windows. And it changes color, or it doesn't, and that works to an extent, but does require kind of active interaction with your drink, and you to suspect that something has happened
[00:03:31] There are a few other things out there that have been conceptualized but fundamentally cannot work. Things like a straw or cup that changes color, or t he other one that is that was had some great photos, but again, could not work, is nail polish. They make a nail polish that changes color in the presence of one of these drugs.
[00:03:47] The problem with that is the stuff that changes color is not good for you. So, if you stick your finger with the nail polish into your drink, stirred around whether it changes color or not, you should never drink that drink because it's come in contact with some of those color changing compounds that are chromium and cobalt and really not, not good for you. Our stick takes a little bit of your drink out of the drink. At the top of the stir stick, it changes color, but then that part of the drink doesn't go back in. So that was kind of one of the big scientific hurdles to come over.
[00:04:15] And then it was really through conversations with Sasha and others that realizing that just having a scientific solution isn't enough. We need to have conversations to, to hold space to really understand how people are going to interact with this, how society is going to interact with this, how we are going to use this to really do harm reduction.
[00:04:36] Jeevan Sangha: And Sasha, do you want to speak to what some of those conversations were like and the considerations that you were bringing to the table in light of your expertise?
[00:04:43] Sasha Santos: I'll be blunt, I come from the sector that often roasts the latest scientific safety inventions on social media for entertainment And that ends up happening because very little that comes out in the world of violence prevention is actually informed by, our sector's expertise of, now many generations of working on violence prevention and response.
[00:05:05] A lot of the products that come out around safety are very heavily criticized cause they're called violence prevention, but they don't actually do that. So that's like, selling me a coaster that I can take to the bar and test my drink on, but it's also, teaching me personal defense or certain gentleman who once told me that violence prevention was about telling women to buy better running shoes. That was in recent history. I hate to tell you. And these things of course, like are not actual prevention. I do a lot of work with my colleagues over in safety and risk and those kinds of worlds.
[00:05:35] And one of the terms they use over there is target hardening. And it's this idea that we take something that might be targeted with violence or harm or whatever, and we protect that one thing. And you know, that's what we do if we teach someone self-defence or if I buy the electronic device that might come out to test my drinks or if I carry on drink covers or whatever, like all of those things potentially harden me as a target.
[00:05:55] But I'm interested in violence prevention, so I'm not just interested in, my drink being safe. I also want your drink to be safe and every other. drink to be safe. We know that people are targeted by violence and harm on the basis of how vulnerable they are. So, if all we're doing is target hardening, then what that means is we're displacing more violence and harm onto the people who are already the most vulnerable, who can't afford to buy the product.
[00:06:17] So for me, part of what's so powerful about Spikeless is a, like a non individualized approach to violence prevention. So, it's an end to selling things to people who would be targeted by violence as though it's our responsibility to prevent it. And instead, the idea that the venue, the club, the concert, the festival, whoever's benefiting from the selling of the beverages that creates the risk, has a responsibility to play in mitigating it.
[00:06:42] one of the grim realities, you know, in my area is that we know that taking safety measures.
[00:06:47] Is unfortunately not always safe. So, if you can think about, for instance, say I'm out having a drink. How do I decide whether or not I'm going to test my drink? Right? If it's this coaster or any of these decision-making processes, then I'm asking do I trust the person I'm with? We know, unfortunately, most people are harmed by someone they trust, so that's not a safe question to rely on.
[00:07:08] Also, if I do something that implies maybe I don't trust this person, how safe is that going to be for me? Right? If I decide I'm going to test the drink this guy brought me, how is he going to react? All of those things really get in the water and make it so that nothing that's out there in the drink spiking space is an actual prevention tool.
[00:07:25] And so, I call Spikeless a technology with a worldview because it really like was engineered to align with what we know in the sector about violence prevention. And I think that kind of activism science combination and having those things come together, like actually in the development is part of what makes this special and is probably too rare.
[00:07:43] Dr. Johan Foster: Thank you for that context. Dr. Foster. you were saying that this came out from conversations you were having with your brother. Yeah. At the time he was an engineer in New Zealand.
[00:07:52] It just came up in conversation of here's a problem. We all know it's a problem. We probably don't understand how big the problem is, but what can we do to engineer solutions for this? Right. The ability to test the drink is there, but there needs to be more to it in terms of the simplicity of the science.
[00:08:08] So we want to keep this as simple as possible. And we have started a, a company to commercialize this, but we want to keep it as cheap as possible. cause we don't want to sell five, we don't want to sell it 10 or 20 or 10,000, right? No. We want to go to this venue level kind of application of this and I, I think that's where the, the real key part of this innovation is. The science works can show, it works. but it is really that combination, like Sasha said, with implementation on a venue wide, hopefully citywide, hopefully countrywide, right, where we can really go through harm reduction rather than target hardening.
[00:08:42] That makes this impactful. So, it was really that, it was just a conversation with my brother that started kind of this ball rolling, realizing we have a solution working with people like Sasha to make this work better.
[00:08:53] Carol Eugene Park: When I think of products like this, I tend to think, oh, it must have been created by a woman because, and these are things that we have to consider.
[00:08:59] So I'm curious, like were you surprised that a male researcher was thinking about these things?
[00:09:05] Sasha Santos: I joke that one of the reasons I think Johan and I work well together is because we're both sort of big picture problem solvers, so neither of us were ever going to approach a problem like this with like, how do we protect one drink?
[00:09:17] Both of us really think of it, in terms of that big picture. How do we come for, for all of the drinks?
[00:09:23] One of the things of course we would love to see happen is the California model.
[00:09:27] So in California they have now brought in a bill that requires venues that have a certain, I think it's like if they have a seating capacity of over 50. So, it's fairly small venues and up if they have a liquor license. Then they have to provide a mechanism for drink testing. The challenges are one, as we've talked about, there aren't really good mechanisms for drink testing.
[00:09:46] So selling coasters and things of that nature. They only have to make them available for purchase at a reasonable cost. So, all that like decision making, do I need to test it, is it safe to test comes in? And so that is, is receiving a lot of criticism in California.
[00:10:00] But when I think about policy actions like that and a tool like Spikeless. that costs like, a few cents to make so we can make enough of them that every drink that comes across the bar has a testing stick in it, and every table has more testing sticks in it.
[00:10:13] I want dispensers in the hallway to the washroom, so you remember to grab one when you're going back to your table. All that right?
[00:10:18] What if we can go, policy routes and say this actually isn't a risk that folks who are vulnerable should be having to bear. We are not all equally safe in the nightlife right now.
[00:10:28] It sounds a little bit shallow sometimes to say like, we're focused on, nightlife and people's ability to go out and socialize. Those are so fundamental to people's wellbeing, to people's feelings of belonging, to people's feelings of connectivity. If we think about like young folks in the loneliness crisis, it doesn't surprise me that we see that, young folks are going out less and less and that safety is a major determiner when they're making that decision. Right. I. So how can we amp up that safety so that nightlife, social connection, all those things are safe for everyone.
[00:10:57] Jeevan Sangha: I find the community-based action really impactful. And I'm wondering, in talking about getting, venues on board and the entertainment industry on board, I. What is the process and policy action, what is the process like, and is that something that Spikeless has already begun engaging with? Like what are the hurdles to getting venues on board?
[00:11:15] Dr. Johan Foster: Yeah, sure. So, from the production of the stick, right? We, there's a few things that we need to, I. To keep in mind, we want to make this thing biodegradable and safe to use and safe to dispose of, right? So, there's certain aspects that do need to be worked in on in terms of the, the safety of use.
[00:11:33] So for example, like the stuff that changes color, I. You shouldn't eat, right? So, how many drinks in before somebody puts the stick in upside down or starts chewing on it, or things like that. So, putting a thin coating of a bioplastic over the stick to make sure it's used the right way.
[00:11:49] And that can be mitigated by design. You know, put a little tab on the top that has maybe an advertisement of the venue or, or the, the brand that is being endorsed, right? Spikeless could be anything. So, taking those into account then for the production, because we want to scale this up again to the millions and tens of millions really, again, to be able to, to get it into every venue that wants it, that that sees the value in this.
[00:12:11] we are basically fundraising now to be able to do that larger scale production. Because with that also comes some health regulations, right? We're putting this inside of a drink or it's contacting your drink.
[00:12:21] So it has to be food safe. We need to go through those sorts of regulations. All of the components that we use that actually touch your drink are food safe, but you still need to prove that. And then working with that design that comes with some education of people that are going to use it venues about how this is going to work, what it's going to look like, what it's going to look like when it's positive versus negative.
[00:12:40] And working with, Sasha and her team to really be able to do this in the right way.
[00:12:44] Sasha Santos: We have to get to the point where we have that commercial product ready for venue use. It's Fundraising and, development and all those kinds of things going on. But I'll tell you interest in it has been enormous. And even, historically, alcohol companies have not been particularly interested in the conversation about drink spiking
[00:13:02] But, as awareness of this problem is growing, like I've been really surprised to see even people in that sector approaching us and saying, hey, when can we have this? So, I think the appetite is finally exceeding the fear.
[00:13:15] I also think for venues it is like potentially incredibly powerful. So, if I think back to like me and my gout pals and how we chose where we were, like going out dancing, going out, partying, going out, drinking, it was based on where we felt the safest, right? There's a pretty significant competitive advantage,
[00:13:30] If you, work with us. Our goal is to make you a Spikeless venue. So, to train, all your staff to do the public education and marketing materials and all those things to get all your clientele engaged in the social good of stirring their drinks. And what is that message to your clientele, right?
[00:13:46] We're a venue that's investing in the safety and wellbeing of our community. I know for me, that becomes where I want to book my parties, celebrations, family events, or whatever
[00:13:54] And in an era where we've lost so many performance venues in Vancouver. Attendance is struggling everywhere. The whole restaurant and bar sector is struggling. You know that kind of competitive advantage that can come from saying we really care about the safety of our community, I think can be a game changer.
[00:14:09] So, so far who we've, talked to are excited to work with us. There are loads of other areas I want us to crack into right though, like. How many beverages are going over counters at sporting events, major overnight festivals, all these kinds of, quite high-risk situations. So, the bars and restaurants, I, they see this as their thing and we need the whole rest of the beverage serving world to, to pick that up as well.
[00:14:33] Carol Eugene Park: I love it. I wanted to ask, how did Sasha kind of become involved with your work? did you seek her out or what's that story behind there?
[00:14:41] Dr. Johan Foster: very separate conversations from this led to conversations about what's going on in the lab and here’s, this thing we're developing and her having a very different set of knowledge than I do.
[00:14:52] and just realizing that. this needs to be done by the right people supported by the science but ultimately led by a team that can be very diverse and by social scientists, by people that, that can help with the implementation.
[00:15:05] That is a very different thing than the science itself.
[00:15:09] Sasha Santos: I find the relative rarity of a uh, scientist who doesn't think that science is the whole answer, right. That in order to have a good social impact, needs to be informed by folks who focus on social impact, right?
[00:15:19] Dr. Johan Foster: We've seen, especially through conversations that we've had with other companies that have tried to implement these harm reduction devices, they don't necessarily do very well because. Again, target hardening, selling to individuals all creates this environment where certain types of people, the people you're trying to sell them to, are the ones that are made to feel bad about that.
[00:15:43] And for example, if somebody's sitting across from me and I decide to test my drink, how does that person feel? Right? basically saying, well, I am accusing you of potentially spiking my drink by testing this. Venue wide implementation is the, is the bare minimum we need to be able to do to really move this forward.
[00:16:00] It's something that I never thought about. In this case, the science is just the start of it.
[00:16:02] Jeevan Sangha: I'm curious about, I think something that kind of is an extension of what you were talking about, education or engagement around what happens when unfortunately, and inevitably, someone does have their drinks spiked and the stir stick comes back positive.
[00:16:16] And so I wonder what a more holistic approach to ensuring that that person is able to safely exit?
[00:16:21] Sasha Santos: When we like individualize the responsibility for violence prevention, then that individualized approach guides the entire viewing of it, the entire framing. And so, it also means we individualize blame. So that's what leads us into the sort of victim blaming territory.
[00:16:35] So if we take that outta the water. And instead, we say the venue is going to make sure that there's a Spikeless in every drink, and that every table always has access to more of them to use for retesting. The venue is, working with our team to do the customer education. To do the staff education on how it works, why it works, why we all stir.
[00:16:56] If I'm having a drink with Johan, I'm still stirring my cocktail. I want those young people over there to also be in a safe venue, right? We all stir for everyone's safety is the idea. And so, then if a drink is spiked, it's not about what that individual did, right?
[00:17:10] because it's a venue wide prevention mechanism, why something happened then becomes a venue wide question. So, it's not about what that individual did.
[00:17:18] That individual is as blameless as they always ought to be. And instead, we look at a social problem as a social problem, right? What is happening in our venue, in our community? That something like this happened, but I will also say like, you know that making perpetration riskier, right? That's what we're trying to do.
[00:17:35] It should not be risky for you or me to go out and have a beverage or have a soda or whatever. It should be risky for someone to put drugs in someone else's drink. It relies on stealth. It relies on people not knowing. And so, if we can change that factor so that people routinely do know what is in their drinks, then we can potentially do some real, make some real progress in harm reduction.
[00:17:55] Carol Eugene Park: So, I'm going to think aloud here. So once Spikeless hits market, everything's gone well, regulation wise and all that, and you guys are ready to start promoting this thing. Venues are putting on their social media. The girlies are loving it. The dudes are loving it, considering how social media is very divisive and can be very hostile.
[00:18:13] Especially just like given how people tend to react to women only spaces already. I'm just wondering, are there things within the marketing or things in terms of like social media reception that you guys are like bracing for or like concerned about or thinking about? Once this moves into the mainstream,
[00:18:32] Sasha Santos: so, like in my office, we talk a lot about gender based and sexualized forms of violence, right?
[00:18:37] But even those forms of violence, like gender is not the only factor that's related to their perpetration. People really are targeted on the basis of vulnerability. So, in a society that you know, has loads of patriarchy and misogyny and negative associations with the feminine and whatever, women face that discrimination and marginalization, and so do people who are indigenous, racialized.
[00:18:59] Disabled, queer, non cis, right? Like all those kinds of identities and drink spiking happens like across that entire constellation. So, so you are not going to see us necessarily marketing this in a super gender-based way. For instance, one of the biggest studies on drinks spiking to come outta the US it was of college age.
[00:19:17] Guys in the us I'm going to scare you a little bit here. One in eight of them. Said that they had spiked a drink. However, of those drink spikers, more than 70% spiked the drink of another male. With the idea that it was for having fun and making someone loosen up, and even the vast majority of those who had spiked the drink of someone of a different gender.
[00:19:37] Those were their same motivations. I wanted them to have fun. I wanted them to loosen up. Like we are not even at the point yet of acknowledging that drugging someone without their knowledge and consent is a problem. Like that's something that could have massively deleterious health impacts that could like literally cause death.
[00:19:54] It's also a grave violation of someone's bodily autonomy.
[00:19:57] You know, when I do trainings with our men's basketball team, I remember talking with them about what happens to the first guy who passes out at a party. That gets written off as like boys will be boys and those are the things they're doing.
[00:20:07] But then if any of that happens in interaction with other gender, That's a bad guy. That's an unsafe guy. When he probably also is a guy who's been made unsafe in his own context and for whom violence has been really normalized. Right? So, our campaign's not going to be necessarily talking about gender.
[00:20:22] It's going to be talking about doing things towards safety that affect everyone that are community based, that are not individualized because those are not the key demographic factors around vulnerability. I think we are going to avoid the divisive internet world.
[00:20:38] Carol Eugene Park: Great. Awesome. So as researchers, this is not just a Canadian triumph, but it's also helping in in the harm reduction space. how do you guys feel about the fact that this is going to be the Canadian made thing that America has not been able to successfully do, or has struggles with doing?
[00:20:55] Sasha Santos: in the times we're in I, can't help but think back to a time when Canada had a really active role, peacemaking and working for global safety, right?
[00:21:04] The fact that it's Canadians who are succeeding in this area when we're thinking about how to keep people safer, how to reduce violence.
[00:21:12] I think those are things that people all over the world have looked. To Canada for leadership in for a long, long time. I think that leadership has been pretty significantly lacking recently,
[00:21:22] I think for many reasons, Canada is a country that you know, both values and benefits so much from global peace, global stability, the real universality of human rights. And I think those are a lot of the values behind this project. So, on the one hand, I know Spikeless can't keep bombs from falling
[00:21:40] But I do know that Canadian contributions, to keeping people safer, have always been a really important part of who we are as a country and international identity.
[00:21:48] Dr. Johan Foster: We want this to go beyond Canada, right? We've been talking to media outlets, but also, police or distribution or other companies that want to take this to Europe the us.
[00:21:59] New Zealand South Korea, Australia, like all over the world. And so, we want to make something that can be used there in the right way, right? We do want to, to push the, the scientific side, but also that, that social side to be able to make an impact. And so yeah, push this as an impact that's, that's not just localized to Canada, but can really change things around the world.
[00:22:20] Jeevan Sangha: Amazing. I think that was our last question for you both today, but if there's anything that we missed, anything about Spikeless that you want to talk about that you didn't get a chance to talk about. Please feel free to add anything else.
[00:22:31] Dr. Johan Foster: in terms of something that's coming out of UBC, there's interesting science, there's that interesting social side. We've created a company called Sip Secure Technologies that's going to try to commercialize this. Get to that seatbelt approach for this on a provincial or a national level, both here and throughout the world.
[00:22:47] So yeah, we see the opportunity here and we really hope we can push this forward and really make an impact.
[00:22:53] Sasha Santos: It just is so inspiring when. Folks who are doing the science and engineering of developing things Actually really connect with and work with the communities who they're trying to benefit. Then the impacts are, magnitudes above what they would be otherwise. So, I think what we're doing with the product is really cool. And I also think what we're doing, bringing together science and activism is really cool.
[00:23:16] And I think the impact of both is that is going to be really interesting to watch unfold.
[00:23:21] Jeevan Sangha: thank you so much for your time. This was cool and horrifying.
[00:23:25] Dr. Johan Foster: The statistics all of the time are eyebrow raising at the very least, and usually just like, no, that can't. No, that can't be true.
[00:23:33] Sasha Santos: Yeah. I will say interesting and horrifying is not an uncommon reaction when I talk about things. And the one thing I always want to say like, the rates of people hurting each other are way, way too high. But we also have to remember that they're lower than they ever have been. We actually generally are safer than we feel. If we can have equality in our lived experiences of safety, I am ready to retire tomorrow. I promise.
[00:23:57] Carol Eugene Park: I fear you will not be.
[00:23:58] Jeevan Sangha: Thank you both so much. This has been such a lovely opportunity to chat with you both.
[00:24:02] Carol Eugene Park: And that's a wrap. I know I said this before in the intro, but I really don't like that we have to think about this. But that being said, it is really cool that we got to meet Dr. Foster and Sasha, two researchers who are creating technology that we can actually use in a community-based way.
[00:24:20] Jeevan Sangha: Yeah, definitely. I mean, like you said, it's bleak to have to worry about your safety every time you leave the house, but I love the approach of creating a community-based model because I think it really takes the pressure off the individual and the idea that like we can all, as a society and as a culture, buy into creating safer spaces.
[00:24:36] It makes me feel a little bit more hopeful for the future.
[00:24:39] Carol Eugene Park: If you are curious to learn more about Spikeless, Dr. Foster, Sasha and their work, make sure to check out the links in our show notes. And with that, happy July everyone. Thanks everyone for listening. Make sure you catch our next episode by subscribing or following our show on Spotify, apple, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:24:56] And if you're feeling your feels, please drop us a review. You can find me on Blue Sky at Carol Eugene Park
[00:25:02] Jeevan Sangha: and me on Twitter at Jeevan K Sangha. From here forward is an alumni UBC podcast produced by Podium Podcast Company.