THREAT OF DATE-RAPE DRUG MAY BE EXAGGERATED

It was at a Grade 8 graduation party that I first observed the effects
of the date-rape drug scare. Not the drug itself, you understand, just
the scare.

I'd been enlisted as a chaperone. One of the first things I noticed
was the way that the graduating girls were holding their soft drinks.
When they weren't actually drinking, they always kept one hand flat,
palm down, on top of the can. They were all doing it. It was as if
they were trying to keep the fizz in.

To see all of these girls holding their drinks in exactly the same,
affected way was almost creepy. When I remarked on it to one of the
chaperoning moms, she knew all about it, as moms usually do. The
girls, she explained, were holding their drinks as they did in order
to prevent some sexual predator from slipping in a date-rape drug.
Obviously, they'd been warned. But how real was the risk, I wondered.

Not very. If you lined up all of the males in the world in order of
the likelihood of them slipping someone a date-rape drug, the boys in
this particular Grade 8 class would be very near the back of the line.
Besides, the place was crawling with parents and teachers. Someone was
even keeping track of who went in and out of the bathrooms. There
would be no date rape here.

What, exactly, led to the warning, no one seemed to know. I'd never
heard of anyone being slipped a date-rape drug in Saskatoon. Neither
had anyone else. A search through published Saskatchewan court
decisions revealed then, as now, no convictions in this jurisdiction,
ever, for any crime involving a date-rape drug. That's not to say it
never happens, only that no one has been caught. Ever.

The issue of date-rape drugs has come up in Saskatchewan courts only
twice, and not in the way you might expect. In one case last year, a
Saskatoon woman charged with impaired driving claimed her impairment
was not voluntary. Her story was that she had only three drinks and
then blacked out after someone slipped her a date-rape drug. She
therefore could not be held responsible for any subsequent drinking.

The Court of Appeal didn't buy it. There was "not a shred of direct
evidence" that the accused had ever been slipped anything, the court
ruled. What the direct evidence did reveal was a blood-alcohol content
approaching twice the legal limit. The accused was found guilty as
charged.

The date-rape drug came up again in a more recent case, this one
ending in the conviction for sexual assault of a Buffalo Narrows man.
This time, it was the victim who believed she might have been slipped
a date-rape drug. As in the other case, however, there was no direct
evidence of any such drug. Rather, the evidence suggested that the
victim was more likely impaired by alcohol. What mattered more than
the source of impairment, however, was the absence of consent. Of
that, there was direct evidence. The accused pleaded guilty.

Confirming allegations of date-rape drugging can be problematic. The
most notorious of the so-called date-rape drugs, properly known as
gamma-hydroxybutyrate, or GHB, is quickly metabolized. According to
the experts, a dose sufficient to render a person helpless might be
undetectable in a blood analysis done 24 hours later. But the stuff
hasn't been detected before 24 hours, either, at least not in this
jurisdiction.

Evidence of date-rape drugging elsewhere is almost as rare;
allegations slightly less so. Among the latter was a weekend news
report out of Winnipeg. That's what got me thinking again about the
date-rape drug.

According to the Winnipeg Sun, three women were rushed to hospital
during the city's big folk festival after eating cookies that "may"
have been laced with the date-rape drug. The women reportedly felt
groggy after someone gave them cookies, but they couldn't remember
who. They recovered fully and made no complaint to police.

None of the three were sexually assaulted and there were no other such
incidents at the festival. It is on the basis of the women's symptoms,
not any chemical analysis, that the date-rape drug GHB is suspected.
So there's no real confirmation of anything, really, except three
groggy women at a folk festival. For this, there are many explanations
more likely than someone slipping them the date-rape drug. Any way you
look at it, date rape appears not to have been a factor.

Incidentally, or not, GHB is sometimes taken voluntarily, for the
high. It's reportedly associated with raves and with actor Nick Nolte.
When he was arrested for impaired driving in 2002, blood tests
revealed the presence of GHB, of all things. To his credit, Nolte did
not claim that anyone slipped him the drug.

I raise all this not to diminish the seriousness or the prevalence of
date rape. I only point out that the threat of being slipped a
date-rape drug might not be as great as our daughters are led to believe.