NEW DRUG BLAMED IN UP TO 6 DEATHS

ORLANDO - A new drug being sold in Central Florida nightclubs may have
caused six deaths, the Orange County medical examiner said.

The pills burn out users' central nervous systems by raising body
temperatures to as high as 108 degrees, Orange-Osceola Medical Examiner
Shashi Gore said Wednesday.

The state Medical Examiners Commission issued a statewide alert after the
Orlando deaths.

The pills, containing a mixture of Ecstasy and paramethoxyamphetamine, or
PMA, are the latest in a series of illegal drug-related health threats in
greater Orlando that began with crack cocaine in the mid- 1980s and
continued with heroin, Ecstasy and GHB in the 1990s.

Costing as little as $10, each dose is white, slightly larger than an
aspirin and is stamped with three diamonds in the shape of a Mitsubishi
logo.

The pills, which have no connection with the Japanese company, apparently
came from illegal labs in Germany and Denmark. They appeared in the United
States in the spring and caused the deaths of three young people in the
Chicago area, according to drug agents.

Authorities do not know when the pills arrived in Central Florida, but the
drug was first detected in July after Wuesthoff Reference Laboratories in
Melbourne ran screens on a suspected Ecstasy overdose victim.

The Wuesthoff tests showed that five of seven Ecstasy-related deaths in
Orange and Osceola counties this year involved PMA. In two deaths, the
victims were found twisting and flipping on the floor, drug agents said.