How to Test Amphetamine (such as Adderall)
How to Test Amphetamine, including Adderall Pills (2026 guide)
Testing a pill or a capsule? Start here
Pressed tablets are the hardest thing to reagent test. Dye, coatings and a small amount of active ingredient all work against you — and the pill that looks most convincing is the one worth testing.
Most people arriving here have a tablet or capsule sold as Adderall, dexamphetamine or generic amphetamine salts, or a powder or paste sold as speed. Testing gives you information you wouldn't otherwise have — it can flag a substitute active, or tell you a pill isn't what its imprint claims. It cannot make a sample safe, and no test rules out every risk. Counterfeit pressed pills are convincing: imprint, color, scoring and shape are all easy to reproduce, and none of them are evidence. See our guide to spotting fake Adderall.
Which test do I need?
Run this first on any pressed pill. Dilute properly, read at five minutes.
Shop FentKitReagents narrow it down. Only a lab names it and quantifies it.
Transparency Testing lab
The amphetamine testing flow chart. The sections below walk this same path in order.
Test for fentanyl first
The counterfeit pressed-pill supply is the single most documented route for fentanyl reaching people who never intended to take an opioid, and counterfeit stimulant tablets are part of it. Most people taking a stimulant have no opioid tolerance. Our FentKit includes strips plus the measuring tools for correct dilution.
- Crush the whole tablet, or a representative portion of it, rather than scraping one spot.
- Dissolve roughly 10 mg in about half a teaspoon of water. Binders won't fully dissolve — that's fine, dip the strip anyway.
- Read at five minutes.
- Test more than one pill from a batch. Pressed pills are notorious for inconsistent content between tablets from the same press.
Do not skip the dilution. Concentrated stimulant solutions are documented to cause false positives on fentanyl strips. More sample in less water makes the strip less reliable, not more.
- They don't detect nitazenes. These need separate nitazene strips.
- They don't detect every fentanyl analog. Some analogs and novel opioids read negative.
- A negative describes only the portion you tested — and with pressed pills, only the pill you tested.
What color should amphetamine turn?
Marquis is the primary test. Simon's is what rules methamphetamine in or out — which matters here, because counterfeit stimulant pills containing methamphetamine are well documented. Run both on separate portions of the same scraping and read them together. Every reaction below is from our official reaction library, filmed on verified amphetamine.
The package trio: Marquis, Simon's, Mecke
The primary test — often faint from pill material. Meth and mescaline give the same yellow-orange; this narrows to the family, not the compound.
Watch full reaction
Amphetamine's reference is a yellow-to-red development. A strong dark blue-purple-black instead means a secondary amine — in a stimulant pill, most likely methamphetamine.
Watch full reaction
A cross-reference, not an identification. Strong color here means something other than an amphetamine is abundant.
Watch full reactionGoing deeper: the full reaction library
Mandelin is naturally mustard yellow — run a blank drop alongside.
Watch full reaction
Robadope reacts to primary amines — amphetamine's strong response here is the mirror image of Simon's role for secondary amines.
Watch full reaction
Purple would mean an indole — never expected here.
Watch full reactionAn actual Adderall tablet, for comparison
The set above was filmed on pure amphetamine. This set was filmed on a pharmaceutical Adderall tablet — and the difference is the whole lesson of this page. Nearly everything reads orange, because the tablet dye and filler dominate the reaction, and Simon's goes flat instead of yellow-red. If you're testing a tablet, compare against this set; if you want the cleaner compound reactions, scrape from deep inside the pill as described below.
The expected amphetamine orange — with the tablet's own orange underneath it.
Watch full reaction
No secondary amine — the result you want from a tablet sold as Adderall. A strong dark blue-purple would mean meth.
Watch full reaction
Pure amphetamine stays clear on Mecke — this orange is the tablet matrix, not the drug. Dye interference, demonstrated.
Watch full reaction
- Simon's goes strong dark blue-purple-black — a secondary amine. In something sold as Adderall or amphetamine, methamphetamine is the most likely reading. Rule out blue tablet dye, then treat it seriously.
- Marquis goes purple-black almost immediately — MDMA or MDA, not amphetamine.
- Marquis reads orange-yellow rather than true orange — methylphenidate is plausible; compare against the booklet.
- Marquis goes straight to dull brown, skipping orange — likely the tablet matrix; sugars darken with Marquis. Re-run on a cleaner interior scraping.
- Marquis fizzes with little to no color — 2-FMA is documented to do exactly this; fluorinated amphetamines, cathinones, caffeine and fillers all read quiet.
- Any strong Mecke or Froehde surprise — something other than an amphetamine is abundant.
A yellow-orange-to-brown Marquis reaction is shared by amphetamine, methamphetamine and a long list of other substituted amphetamines. It's also the expected Marquis result for mescaline. Orange tells you which family you're probably in. It does not name the compound, and it does not tell you the dose.
Marquis reagent color guide — compare your reaction against the reference plates rather than against memory, especially for the orange-to-brown range. Printed booklet included with every Marquis Spot Test Kit.
Simon's reagent color guide — the reference for amphetamine's yellow-red against methamphetamine's dark blue-purple, and against a dye artefact. Printed booklet included with the Simon's Spot Test Kit.
- Test a scraping from inside the pill, not the coating. Break or cut the tablet, scrape powder from the interior, and discard the outer surface.
- Crush the scraping to a fine, even powder. Binders keep tablet fragments from wetting properly, which gives a weak or absent reaction.
- Take enough. A pill is mostly filler, so a match head of pill powder contains far less active than a match head of loose powder. Err on the larger side.
- Capsules: empty the contents out, mix the beads or powder, and crush before testing. Different beads in one capsule are not necessarily the same material.
- Read in bright, neutral daylight against a white background.
Orange and blue tablet dyes are common on stimulant pills, and both cause problems. Orange dye leaching into Marquis mimics the orange reaction you're looking for. Blue dye muddies it, and can put a blue tint into a Simon's test that never came from a secondary amine.
Scrape from deep inside the pill and discard any colored coating. If your reagent goes colored the instant the sample touches it, before any reaction would have started, you are probably watching dye dissolve. Re-run on a cleaner scraping.
A 150 mg pressed tablet may contain only around 10 mg of active amphetamine. The rest is filler, binder, coating and dye. That means reactions from pill material are routinely faint, slow or absent even when the active ingredient is exactly what the pill claims — and it means a weak reaction is not evidence of a weak pill, or of a fake one.
It also cuts the other way. If a pill sold as a 10 mg stimulant gives an immediate, saturated reaction, that's worth pausing over rather than celebrating.
- Place your crushed scraping in the test tube.
- Add one to two drops of Simon's A.
- Add one to two drops of Simon's B to that same sample. Do not start a fresh sample for B.
- Read within about 60 seconds. For amphetamine you're expecting the yellow-to-red reference above; a strong dark blue-purple-black means a secondary amine such as methamphetamine.
This is the single most common two-part reagent mistake. Our Our Types of Test Kits page tells you to use a separate test tube for each spot kit — Marquis and Simon's each get their own tube and their own portion of sample. It does not mean Simon's A and Simon's B go on separate samples. Split them and the test can't develop at all — and a test that can't react will always agree with whatever you were hoping for.
- Reagents report what's most abundant. In a pill, what's most abundant is filler. A minor but potent adulterant can be masked entirely.
- Reagents cannot detect fentanyl at realistic adulterant levels. That needs strips.
- Reagents cannot verify a dose. Nothing here tells you whether a pill holds 5 mg or 30 mg, or whether it's an immediate or extended-release formulation.
- Reagents cannot check imprints. A correct-looking imprint is not a test result.
- A weak or absent reaction is not a pass. On pill material it's especially uninformative.
Cross-reference with the package
The Meth / Amphetamine Spot Kit Package is $45 and costs less than buying the three kits individually.
- Marquis reagent
- The primary test. Yellow into orange is consistent with a substituted amphetamine. Purple-black flags MDMA or MDA; orange-yellow raises methylphenidate.
- Simon's reagent (two-part)
- Rules methamphetamine in or out. Yellow-to-red is the amphetamine reference; a strong dark blue-purple means a secondary amine. Part A then part B on the same sample.
- Mecke reagent
- A cross-reference, not an identification. Amphetamine stays clear with Mecke, so a strong reaction means something else is abundant in the sample.
We used to say Mecke "detects" Adderall, 2-FA, 2-FMA and 4-FMA. That was wrong in a way worth spelling out: amphetamine-type compounds give little to no color with Mecke, and a non-reaction cannot be told apart from expired reagent or too small a sample. Mecke's value here is flagging the unexpected, not naming compounds.
What turns up in pills sold as amphetamine
| What might be in it | How to check for it |
|---|---|
| Fentanyl and analogs | Fentanyl test strips. No reagent color will show this. The main documented hazard in counterfeit pressed pills |
| Nitazenes | Nitazene strips — fentanyl strips do not detect these |
| Methamphetamine pressed as a stimulant tablet | Simon's — a strong dark blue-purple, where genuine amphetamine gives yellow-red |
| Methylphenidate | Marquis — an orange-yellow rather than a true orange. Suggestive only; compare against the booklet |
| MDMA or MDA | Marquis — purple to black instead of orange to brown |
| Caffeine | No Marquis color change. Very common in pills sold as speed, and not distinguishable from other inert fillers by reagent |
| Cathinones (bath salts) | Varies by compound and several give no useful color. Reagents can flag some, confirm none. Lab analysis for certainty |
| 2-FA, 2-FMA, 4-FMA and other fluorinated amphetamines | Not reliably identified by reagent. 2-FMA is documented to fizz and dissolve with little color, which is easy to misread as a failed test |
| Tablet dye | Not an adulterant, but a direct interference. Scrape from inside the pill |
| Sugars, lactose and other binders | No reagent test. Can darken Marquis toward brown and dilute every other reaction |
Can you test how strong a pill is?
Not with a QTest. We don't make an amphetamine purity kit, and the MDMA, cocaine, LSD, psilocybin and cannabis QTest kits are calibrated for their own substances — none will give you a meaningful amphetamine number. Nothing sold for home use will confirm that a tablet contains the milligram amount printed on its packaging.
The closest thing available at home is a Skylab separation kit, which separates a mixture into components so you can test each one and get an approximate sense of how much of each is present — useful on a pill, where the active is a minority of the mass. For an actual number, Transparency Testing's mail-in lab analysis is the answer.
Step by step
- Test for fentanyl. Crush a representative portion, roughly 10 mg in half a teaspoon of water, read at five minutes. Don't concentrate the solution.
- Break the pill and scrape from inside it. Discard the coating. Crush the scraping to a fine, even powder.
- Split it. A generous few milligrams for each reagent, each in its own tube. Pill material needs more than loose powder does.
- Run Marquis. One drop. Watch the first five seconds. Yellow into orange is consistent with a substituted amphetamine; instant color before any reaction could start is probably dye.
- Run Simon's. One to two drops of A, then one to two drops of B on the same sample. Yellow-to-red matches the amphetamine reference. A strong dark blue-purple does not.
- Run Mecke as a cross-reference. Little to no color is expected. Anything strong means something else is abundant.
- Record it. Photograph the pill, the imprint and your results in daylight — and send unresolved pills to Transparency Testing for a definitive answer and an actual dose figure.
- Splitting Simon's A and B across two samples. The test can't develop, and a test that can't react always agrees with you.
- Testing the coating instead of the interior. You're testing dye and film-coat.
- Using a match head of pill powder as if it were a match head of pure powder. There's far less active in it.
- Reading a dye color as a reaction color. Real reactions develop; dye dissolves instantly.
- Reading the final color only. Marquis speed distinguishes MDMA's instant purple-black from a slow grey-black.
- Dim or colored lighting. Orange, orange-yellow and brown are the hardest colors on the chart to separate.
- Old reagent. It degrades — store it cool and dark, and replace it annually.
- Testing one pill from a batch and treating the rest as cleared.
Your result wasn't what you expected
- Find out what it actually is. Mail a sample to Transparency Testing, our mail-in lab analysis service — a definitive answer where reagents can only narrow the field, and the only way to know the actual dose.
- If an opioid is plausible, have naloxone in the room. Never use alone. Anyone taking a stimulant pill typically has no opioid tolerance, so the margin is very small.
- Rule out the test itself. Re-run on a fresh interior scraping with fresh reagent, correct two-part Simon's technique, more sample, and better lighting before drawing conclusions.
Questions
Can a reagent kit tell me if my Adderall is real?
It can narrow it down and it can catch some substitutions. A yellow-orange Marquis with a yellow-red Simon's is consistent with amphetamine, which is what a genuine tablet should give. What reagents cannot do is verify the dose, verify the formulation, or confirm the pill came from a pharmaceutical manufacturer. For that you need lab analysis through Transparency Testing. For visual red flags, see spotting fake Adderall.
My reaction was very faint. Is the pill fake?
Not necessarily, and this is the most common worry we hear. A 150 mg tablet may hold only around 10 mg of active amphetamine, so faint or slow reactions are routine from pill material. Take a larger interior scraping, crush it finer, and re-run before concluding anything.
Simon's gave me nothing at all. Does that confirm amphetamine?
No. Amphetamine's library reference is a yellow-to-red development, so a completely flat Simon's more likely means the test didn't work — expired reagent, too little sample, or a missing part B. Confirm your Marquis was a clear yellow-orange and re-run with both parts on one sample before reading anything into it.
Simon's turned dark blue or purple. What does that mean?
A secondary amine is present. In something sold as amphetamine or Adderall, methamphetamine is the most likely explanation, particularly if Marquis was yellow-orange. Don't take it as prescribed amphetamine, and consider lab testing through Transparency Testing. Rule out blue tablet dye first by re-running on a clean interior scraping.
How much sample do I need?
A generous few milligrams of pill powder per reagent, each in its own test tube — more than you'd use for loose powder. Fentanyl strips need roughly 10 mg of crushed pill in half a teaspoon of water.
I'm testing crystal or loose powder, not a pill.
Different problems apply — sampling across crystals, MSM cuts and over-large samples. See how to test methamphetamine.
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More resources
- Amphetamine reaction video library — every reaction above, in full, plus substance info
- How to spot fake Adderall — pressed pills vs. the real deal
- Our types of test kits
- How to test methamphetamine — crystal and loose powder
- How to test MDMA — why a purple-black Marquis changes everything
- How to test for fentanyl
- How to test for nitazenes — why fentanyl strips aren't enough
- Skylab separation kit basics
- Spectrum color guide
- Lab testing with Transparency Testing — for the questions reagents can't answer
A sample that has been tested should not be considered safe. There is inherent risk when choosing to consume any substance.
Many factors are involved when conducting a test and examining reactions, and The Bunk Police does not assume responsibility for the interpretation of results. Reactions of individual samples can vary depending on lighting differences and the specific mixtures of substances being tested.
Bunk Police kits are intended for identifying unknown substances for harm reduction purposes only. The Bunk Police does not assume responsibility for the use or misuse of this information. Proceed at your own risk.
