JIMSON WEED USERS CHASE HIGH ALL THE WAY TO HOSPITAL

Teenagers seeking a hallucinogenic high from the seeds of a poisonous
weed that now is in bloom are landing in hospitals across the country,
police and health officials say.

Fall is prime time for jimson weed, a legal plant that can grow nearly
anywhere. Police and hospitals have reported scattered outbreaks of
jimson weed poisonings in California, Colorado, Indiana, Oklahoma,
Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

"Lunatic, crazy kids," says Dodge County, Wis., Sheriff Todd Nehls,
whose deputies picked up three hallucinating teenagers in October. "I
can't imagine what would possess them to start eating strange seeds
from the pod of some plant that they read about on the Internet."

Poison centers last year recorded 975 incidents involving
anticholinergic plants such as jimson weed, down from 1,058 in 2004,
according to the American Association of Poison Control Centers'
annual report.

Poisonings typically increase in late summer and fall when jimson weed
plants are at their peak, says Steven Marcus, director of the New
Jersey Poison Information and Education System in Newark. New Jersey
has had three reports of poisonings since July, he says.

"It's all over the place," Marcus says. "You can find it on the side
of the road."

Jimson weed also is known as stinkweed, locoweed and moonflower. Its
pods contain seeds that when eaten or brewed in a tea can cause severe
hallucinations and other reactions, including dry mouth, overheating,
agitation, urinary retention and hallucinations, Marcus says.
Overdoses can lead to seizures, comas or death. It can take up to an
hour for someone to feel the effects, so people often consume
excessive amounts, thinking the seeds aren't working, he says.

Most people hospitalized after eating jimson weed have hallucinations
that make them so erratic they are a danger to themselves, Marcus
says. Some cannot urinate and need to have a catheter inserted.

Richard MacKenzie, an emergency room physician who treated a victim
last month at Lehigh Valley Hospital and Health Network in Allentown,
Pa., says doctors have a saying about jimson weed users: "Hot as a
hare, blind as a bat, dry as a bone, red as a beet, mad as a hatter."
Such patients are "hallucinating up a storm, talking to people in the
room who aren't there, removing (imaginary) bugs from their body," he
says.

In the Lehigh Valley area, three youths who ate the seeds were
hospitalized in October. The first incident on Oct. 8 puzzled police
in Slatington, Pa., who responded to a call about a delusional
15-year-old boy, Police Chief Dave Rachman says. When officers asked
the boy to put on his shoes, he put his gym bag on one foot, Rachman
says.

Slatington police determined the source of the problem two days later,
when officers in a nearby town found two Slatington youths who were
hallucinating, Rachman says. One had seeds in his pocket that he said
he had gotten from plants on the banks of the Lehigh River, Rachman
says.

"Every year we get this," says Tim Munsch of the Lehigh Valley Drug
and Alcohol Intake Unit. He says the use of jimson weed rarely becomes
a drug trend because few people use it twice.

"I don't know any kids who do it and then do it again," he says.