Doctor calls it unlikely that three teens overdosed on Ecstasy [CAN] - Shroomery News Service

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veggie

Registered: 07/25/04
Posts: 17,504

Doctor calls it unlikely that three teens overdosed on Ecstasy [CAN]

#10266725 - 05/01/09 12:35 AM (14 years, 11 months ago)

Doctor suspects Ecstasy tainted
May 1, 2009 - nationalpost.com

When two girls, ages 14 and 15, died last month in an Edmonton hospital after taking pills they believed to be the dance-club drug Ecstasy, there were rumours that the tablets had been laced with rat poison.

The theory made little sense from the start:Nine girls of the Paul First Nation had taken the same pills before a wedding at the native reserve west of Edmonton. Three became ill, two died. Lethal poisons are not typically this selective.

The hospital did not find rat poison in the girls' bloodstream and did find Ecstasy. But in a region desperately seeking answers to the Ecstasy mystery -- one that deepened after another 14-year-old girl died after taking what she believed was Ecstasy last Friday at a party at West Edmonton Mall -- the poison theory may have been closer to the truth, drug researchers say, than the story offered by local news reports that the girls overdosed.

Charles Grob believes there is a strong chance that a deadly batch of adulterated pills is making the rounds in and around Edmonton, though health officials and law-enforcement groups have issued no such public warning.

Dr. Grob, a professor of psychiatry at UCLA, was the first U. S. researcher to conduct human tests of methylenedioxymethamphetamine, or MDMA, the technical name for Ecstasy, since it was outlawed in the U. S. in 1984. It is rare for anyone to "overdose" on the drug in its pure form, he said.

There are but a few dozen deaths linked annually with Ecstasy in North America; mostly, they arise from complications, such as pre-existing heart problems or hyperthermia that occurs when high, frenetic raver kids overheat themselves.

But three girls, all within a few weeks of each other, in the same vicinity, and none of whom were observed exercising hyper-actively, he says, is too unusual to be MDMA-caused. "I think there's something else in those pills," Dr. Grob says. "It would be awfully coincidental if all three of these teenage girls had congenital heart problems that had not been identified earlier. I'd put my money on a drug substitute."

Ecstasy is generally one of the least-lethal illegal drugs available: The chairman of the U. K. Home Office's Council on the Misuse of Drugs stirred controversy this year when he published a paper in a medical journal arguing that, based on mortality figures, Ecstasy is a less pressing public health matter than the more deadly horseback riding. But it is frequently falsely advertised. Fifty per cent or more of pills marketed on the street as Ecstasy are actually a cocktail of a different sort: some MDMA mixed with tranquilizers, caffeine, cocaine or "whatever is in the back of the [manufacturer's] cupboard," Dr. Grob says.

"The chance that this is MDMA or straight MDMA is so infinitesimal," says Ethan Nadelmann, executive director of the New York-based Drug Policy Alliance, a group advocating drug policy reform. "This explanation of an overdose makes no sense."

Like Dr. Grob, he believes that the aberrant cluster of Ecstasy-related deaths all in the same localized area surely points to dangerous, adulterated pills on the market -- including a more toxic substance that the three dead girls may have taken inadvertently in lethal amounts. Cassandra Williams, who died from pills bought at the mall party, reportedly took six; Trinity Dawn Bird and Leah Dominique House, from the Paul Band, reportedly took five each.

"The number of fatalities associated just with pure ingestion of MDMA is so close to zero," Mr. Nadelmann says. "This must have been something involving a drug that was not MDMA. That's the scary thing, that there must be something out there being marketed as Ecstasy, which is not actually MDMA."

What may be particularly concerning, he says, is that Edmonton's Ecstasy users are being led to believe these were simple "overdoses," and have not been publicly warned about this more dangerous possibility, leaving open the worrying prospect of more deaths. The RCMP, in charge of the Paul Band case, arrested a dealer alleged to have sold the girls the drugs, but could not recover any samples of the pills for analysis. Corporal Wayne Oakes says there is no evidence of "overdose" yet, but neither is there any evidence of possible toxic drug cocktails. Both theories must wait until the medical examiner's pathological report, which will likely take three months or longer. Until then, the Mounties can issue no warnings about unproven dangers. "The whole thing is about being factual," he says.

So far, police have stuck with warning teens to stay away from drugs altogether. "The extremely tragic consequences associated with this drug use speaks to the dangers of illicit street drugs, regardless of their chemical ingredients," read an RCMP press release following the Paul Band incident. "There is a rather old saying that continues to hold a resounding message, 'Just say no!'."

But this only goes so far, Mr. Nadelmann warns: teens who have used Ecstasy frequently, with no ill effects (there are likely many; data show Ecstasy use in Western Canada has roughly tripled in the past five years) are unlikely to be much persuaded by Reagan-era platitudes. Some experts note that warnings about particularly dangerous pills in circulation might grab their attention. When overdose clusters appear in Vancouver, usually involving excessively potent heroin, police, emergency responders and clinics don't wait for toxicology reports to get the word out to street users, says David Marsh, a medical director at Vancouver's Coastal Health authority.

Elsewhere, however, authorities are sometimes so dedicated to the drug war that they will not or cannot consider "harm reduction" strategies, including drug-use safety precautions, Mr. Nadelmann says.

In Edmonton, police so far have been heartfelt in expressing sympathy for the families of the dead victims, and in pleading with children to stay clean. But until someone warns those children of at least the possibility of dangerous pills being passed off as Ecstasy, Mr. Nadelmann worries there remains a very real chance that Edmonton's bad Ecstasy could lead to more agony yet.

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