Friday, March 13, 2009

Ecstasy 'riddled with rat poison'

Thus claims The Daily Telegraph today in a scare story about impurities in ecstasy-type pills.

"During recent drug hauls, the AFP's illicit drug intelligence program has analysed tablets that have shown traces of various "adulterants" including heroin, LSD, rat poison, methamphetamine, veterinary anaesthetics and crushed glass", it says.

"Among 14- to 19-year-old users 17.3 per cent used ecstasy - which experts say is growing in popularity compared with other illicit drugs - at least once a week.

"Recent government statistics also show that over 1.5 million had used ecstasy in their life and males were more likely than females to have used ecstasy."

The irony is, the story constitutes an excellent case against prohibition – firstly, any such impurities would not exist in a regulated market, thus removing the danger, and secondly, that's an awful lot of teenagers taking pills! Clearly prohibition isn't working. Of course that view is not mentioned by The Tele. 

Professional fence-sitter Paul Dillon timidly asserts that we need "ways of dealing with it more effectively."

That's for sure.

It's another beat-up from the Daily Terror!
An AOD (Alcohol and other drugs) professional provided this commentary on the story:

If the AFP has found active doses of Heroin in ersatz “e” pills, it would be a world first. No sample tested anywhere on the planet has been confirmed to contain active doses of Heroin.

This should not be surprising, as Heroin is worth hundreds of dollars per gram when sold as Heroin.

As far as I am aware, the only previous case in the literature is a pill tested by Interpol which tested positive, but to inactively small traces of Heroin. The amount found was so tiny that most commentators believe it had simply been stored in a zip lock bag that had previously contained powder heroin.

The Veterinary Anaesthetics mentioned are of course the dissociative Ketamine, a very common adulterant in dodgy “e”. Ketamine combined in the right dose-ratio with Methamphetamine or Dexamphetamine produces a synergistic effect that mimics true MDMA. In the wrong relative doses, this combination is either very “speedy” or very sedating.

When users describe a pill as “smacky” it almost always contains too much Ketamine. (Better informed users may call this “going in the K-hole.”)
When users describe a pill as “coke-based” it typically contains methamphetamine or other ATS, or caffeine. No pill has been found to contain active doses of cocaine, (for the same reasons that none have been found to contain active doses of heroin).

Very rarely pills are found that contain pesticides or other toxins.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

"Going into a K hole" (ketamine overdose) is a much more dramatic experience than a smacky pill. Isn't it? I wouldn't have thought you could get enough ketamine into a pill to overdose on it.

The Editor said...

My Oxford Street clubber mates tell me a "K-Hole" is when you snort a bit too much Ketamine and spend about ten minutes zombied into another world seeing through tunnel vision. After that it wears off and it's back to partying like you've never partied before.

Apparently it's safe!

Anonymous said...

K-Hole can happen without overdose, but as with a lot of hallucinagens the deepest trips occur when the user has vomited, because vomiting is a sign your ears/sense of gravity is out of synch with your eyes/sight.

So there is a veryyyy fine line.

Ketamine is becoming harder to get and is more expensive than pills at the moment so therefore saying that currently pills most likely have lots of k in them is very incorrect.

This was true about 5 years ago but not now.

Anonymous said...

Nice content. Thank you for your information.