BLUE NITRO WORRIES POISON EXPERTS

Touted by its promoters as a euphoric elixir that can boost your mood,
burn fat, rev up your sex life and even send you off into blissful
slumber, a trendy new brew known as Blue Nitro has hit San Francisco.

But even as phones at vitamin stores and sex shops ring with requests
for the potion, police and medical professionals are warning that the
chemical composition of the liquid creates more risks than benefits.

After a few too many comatose patients started arriving at emergency
rooms across The City, the police are going public with their concern.

On Wednesday, officials from the Drug Enforcement Administration, the
Food and Drug Administration and the Poison Control Center plan an
information session to describe the problems some people have
experienced after ingesting the green, minty fluid being sold as Blue
Nitro, or Vitality.

Even though Blue Nitro is legal to sell, recent tests in the crime lab
raised troubling questions about its safety, said Officer Sherman
Ackerson of the San Francisco Police Department.

"We found it has the same chemical composition as GHB, which is
against the law currently," he said.

GHB - or gamma-hydroxybutyrate - is a colorless, odorless substance
known as liquid ecstasy that became popular on the dance club scene
and has been documented as one of several date-rape drugs.

"Blue Nitro is a chemical analog to GHB," explained Jo Ellen Dyer, a
pharmacist with the San Francisco division of the California Poison
Control System.

Commonly put in beverages, GHB gives users a feeling of euphoria, but
when combined with alcohol or in an overdose, it can result in coma
and other serious respiratory problems.

The same is true of Blue Nitro, Dyer said.

"My concern is that I don't want someone walking around thinking this
is the latest form of vitamin C that can cure the common cold," she
said. "This is GHB, it can hurt people, and they shouldn't do it."

Though exact statistics were unavailable, Dyer said there have been at
least a half-dozen emergency room visits involving Blue Nitro
throughout the state since December, shortly after samples were
distributed legally to individuals and sex shops in The City by marketers.

In one case, a 71-year-old man from Monterey said he mistakenly
swigged a few sips from the bottle he left on his night stand,
thinking it was water.

He ended up in the hospital in serious condition, though he has since
recovered. Several other cases - many involving patients who arrive
comatose and in need of intensive care - have been recorded at San
Francisco General Hospital, Dyer said.

It is especially popular in gay circles because it heightens the
sexual experience by making users "feel amorous, like you want to be
touched and touch everybody," said Shawn O'Shea, the former editor of
the gay newspaper San Francisco Spectrum. It's also much less
expensive than ecstasy and other street drugs, often selling for
around $10 a hit, approximately two soda bottle capfuls of liquid.

Rick Alvarez is the exclusive distributor of Blue Nitro, which is
manufactured by a West Palm Beach, Fla.-based company called Alpha
Earth Inc. Alpha Earth is one of about 10 companies currently selling
similar products.

Alvarez defends the safety and legitimacy of his product - which was
introduced just five months ago - and insists that Blue Nitro is not a
drug, as many of its critics claim.

It is a dietary supplement that must be used with great caution to
achieve the benefits with no negative side effects, he said,
explaining that that is why it is not to be sold to anyone under age
21.

Here is the tricky part: While Blue Nitro does not contain GHB, it
metabolizes into GHB inside the body, Alvarez said.

In fact, the company Web site boasts that the positive effects of Blue
Nitro "may be due to the relation to GHB." And it goes on to assert
that the liquid is not toxic and "like GHB is 100% safe when taken as
directed." It also includes a disclaimer - in capital letters and with
exclamation points - that it should never be taken with alcohol or any
drugs.

"This product, when taken properly, does not have any negative side
effects," Alvarez said from his home in Miami.

"But if you abuse it, there is a dark side, no question about it, and
we will never deny that. You're always going to find somebody who
abuses it, just like you can walk into a liquor store and find someone
who will abuse something there."

It is the handful of cases where the product guidelines have not been
followed that gain widespread attention from the press and law
enforcement, he said.

There are thousands of people, who - like himself and his wife -
regularly use the drug and enjoy its benefits, said Alvarez.

"We use it safely as recommended and have great benefits from losing
weight to sleeping in the deepest stage of sleep so we have a lot of
energy," he said, adding that it has also proved to be an incredible
sexual enhancer.

Alvarez also points out that FDA officials in Florida, Alabama and
Georgia have purchased several bottles and sent inspectors down to the
manufacturing plant since the product was first created in August and
have yet to halt its production.

Meanwhile, the popularity of Blue Nitro continues to soar, according
to Alvarez, who heads a national network of 10 distributors.

Last week, for example, he said, he sold nearly 5,000 bottles of Blue
Nitro and the numbers keep climbing every week.

Even shop owners who don't sell the product are growing aware of the
demand for it.

Andy Nevarez, who works at Great Earth Vitamins on Castro Street, said
his store will not sell Blue Nitro but receives daily inquiries from
those looking to buy a bottle for the suggested retail price of
$64.95. "We get lots of requests for it, sometimes as many as three
calls in a day," he said. "I have tried it myself and it is the
nastiest thing in the world. I was sweating, cold, dizzy. It was terrible."