POLICE WARN OF NEW DRUGS 33 TIMES THE STRENGTH OF ECSTASY

POLICE have warned of the dangers of new drugs which are up to 33
times as strong as ecstasy and which may have already killed three
people.

The alarm was raised yesterday by the National Criminal Intelligence
Service (NCIS) after a seizure on the Belgian-French border several
days ago. A lorry with a British driver was found to be carrying
330,000 tablets of one of the drugs - DOB. It may have been heading
for the Channel Tunnel.

The drugs which the NCIS warned of include DOB and DOM, which were
used in the United States in the 1960s as alternatives to LSD, but
fell out of fashion because too many people had bad trips or became
psychotic.

DOB is a controlled substance, but the NCIS also warned of other
ecstasy-related drugs such as 4MTA - sold as Flatliners - which are
not illegal in the UK, although the Home Office is taking steps to ban
them. Flatliners were linked to the three deaths, in Cornwall,
Somerset and Derbyshire. They are being sold in England as tablets,
rather than as an LSD-style microdot on a square of blotting paper,
under names including Golden Eagles.

Scottish drugs workers are trying to discover whether the drugs have
arrived north of the Border. Mike Cadger, the director of the
Edinburgh-based harm reduction-agency Crew 2000, said his volunteers
were trying to trace reports in Scotland of a "double-headed dove"
tablet which may have been a Golden Eagle. A dove symbol is often
embossed on ecstasy.

"The major concern is that whoever is doing this is quite specifically
targeting the ecstasy market, because it is such a big market," said
Mr Cadger.

"But what they are selling is not like ecstasy, but much stronger -
more like LSD-plus, a kind of super-LSD. Some of the consequences of
these drugs are that people have had anxiety, that this has led to
paranoia and, in some people, to psychosis.

"People who take DOM and DOB in relatively moderate doses of three to
four milligrams have been known to go on 24-to 36-hour trips. A bad
trip that lasted 36 hours is a frightening thought."

The tablets seized recently are thought to contain around 5mg of DOB.
Their potential market in Scotland is large. Around 60,000 Scots have
taken ecstasy in the past 12 months, and conservative estimates
suggest a further 60,000 have tried it at some point. Christmas and
the New Year are peak times for young people to experiment.

It is not known if they are being sold as a super-strength ecstasy for
regular users who want to recapture the "buzz", or whether ignorant or
unscrupulous dealers are selling them to the unwary as ecstasy.

Les Fiander, of the NCIS drugs unit, warned: "Users today do not know
what they are buying and until it hits their system they have no means
of knowing. Unfortunately, by that point it could be too late.

"Users believing they are taking ecstasy could easily discover that
these tablets contain nothing more powerful than milk products. On the
other hand, they could contain a lethal strength of ecstasy. All of
these tablets look the same.

"The market has become greedy both for new drugs and for the vast sums
of money that can be made from these drugs."

Experts are not sure why the drugs are so dangerous, although a
spokeswoman for the NCIS said this could relate to the unhygienic
conditions in which tablets were produced, usually in makeshift
laboratories in domestic garages.

There was evidence that major criminal gangs were moving into the
ecstasy market. Last year, seven drug factories were found in the UK,
although none involved DOB or 4MTA.

So far there have been only a handful of seizures of the new ecstasy
variants in England, but the NCIS spokeswoman said there were ominous
signs that these were the coming drugs trend of the next decade.

Dave Liddell, the director of the Scottish Drugs Forum, said the key
concern was that the new drugs were so much stronger, and more likely
to kill, than their predecessors.

"Drugs agencies are not aware of these being currently used in
Scotland," said Mr Liddell. "But given the strength of them, ecstasy
users should be very wary of these drugs."

Checked-by: Patrick Henry