This Ingenious Straw Detects Date Rape Drugs

These girls came up with a genius invention — a straw that can prevent date rape pic.twitter.com/hs6EvUoxU5

— NowThis (@nowthisnews) May 30, 2017

When you see reports of young people being drugged and taken advantage of, you can’t help but immediately think of your loved ones, freak out, and pray that it just stops happening, period. We might be one step closer to putting a stop to that, thankfully,  as a drug detecting drinking straw has just been invented, according to the Miami Herald.

The Smart Straws detect GHB and Ketamine, which are the chemicals often linked to date rape drugs, so when you stir your drink, the clear straw will change to blue if it has been tampered with.

Photo via Smart Straws Twitter

Just as remarkable, the three young women who invented the straw are just in high school. Susana Cappello, Carolina Baigorri and Victoria Roca, the innovative Floridians out of Gulliver Preparatory, were tired of the disgusting date rape culture, and decided to do something revolutionary about it.

With a patent pending, the straw is easy to make, cheap to make, and simple to distribute anywhere, from bars to sororities. The girls are even looking to expand the chemicals that the straw can detect.

Arguably the most important aspects of the straw are their ease of use, and the fact that they’re easy to carry. There are already date rape detectors on the market, but having it in straw form seems a lot more natural in the scenes they’d be used in. You’d probably be a lot more inclined to stir a straw in your drink than you would be to pour drops of your drink on a drug testing card.

They still have a long way to go before releasing something like this for sale, but they’re on the right track, as they’re working on a patent and thinking about a crowdfunding campaign.

Any ideas that help eliminate the “date rape” culture are always great ideas, and this straw sounds like it can protect a lot of lives.