Three Florida high school students are being praised after they successfully invented a straw that detects date rape drugs in drinks.
The Miami Herald holds a Business Plan Challenge each year, where young entrepreneurs can showcase their inventions as well as their ability to make a business plan.
This year's winners on the high school level were Susana Cappello, Carolina Baigorri and Victoria Roca with their product, the Smart Straw. The straw can detect two common types of date drugs, GHB and Ketamine, which often do not have a smell or taste when slipped into a drink.
"Being young women, I feel like this is a problem that we hear about a lot, especially when we came to high school," Baigorri said in an interview with Inside Edition. "It's such a common problem. Statistics say it's one in every five women [that experiences rape], which is so many people."
The teens designed the straw with two test strips on it that turn blue when exposed to a drink that contains the specific drugs. The hope is that the straw will be able to detect even more drugs in the future. The product will be marketed toward college-aged consumers, and will hopefully be available to students, bars and college organizations once the business gets off the ground.
"My older sister is at university where there were reports of date rape drugs being used," Cappello said. "My friends and I knew we needed to come up with a simple solution to test for drugs. I remember my dad always says 'the best ideas are the ideas that help people,' so we just thought of a simple, easy, inexpensive solution -- Smart Straws."
The girls -- whose classmates call them the "the straw ladies" -- hope to begin consulting manufacturers who could potentially make the product for them, and eventually start a crowd-funding campaign to make money for the project. They currently have a patent pending for their straw.
“We were really passionate about this so we kept on pursuing it,” said Capello. "But it’s a real and growing problem. Our goal is to reduce the [date rape] statistics.”