STUDY TURNS UP LITTLE PROOF OF DATE-RAPE DRUG

Only five urine samples from 578 rape victims give evidence of Rohypnol.

SAN FRANCISCO-Alcohol was by far the most common drug found in a study of
urine samples taken from 578 rape victims who said they had been drugged
before the attack, a forensic scientist said Friday.

In 40 percent of the samples, no drugs were found, while only five samples
showed the presence of the so-called date rape drug Rohypnol, said Dr.
Mahmoud El-Sohly.

"From what we are seeing now, it does not seem that any one drug is
responsible," said El-Sohly, who runs a private lab and teaches
pharmaceutics at the University of Mississippi. He presented his study
Friday at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences.

Only five samples showed Rohypnol, and four of those also showed the
presence of other drugs, including alcohol, cocaine and opiates, El-Sohly
said.

Hoffman-LaRoche Inc., the maker of Rohypnol, nicknamed "roodies" on the
street, paid for the testing, ElSohly said. The samples were provided by
police departments, rape crisis centers and emergency rooms.

Alcohol was present in 208 cases (36 percent), tranquilizers in 49 (8
percent) and cocaine in 40 (7 percent). In 234 cases, ElSohly found no
trace of any drugs.

In 1996, congressional hearings led to a federal law outlawing Rohypnol,
scientifically called flunitrazepam, and mandating an additional 20-year
sentence for anyone caught using it to commit rape.

ElSohly's findings came as no surprise to people working in rape crisis
centers, said Catherine Dougherty, a sexual-assault nurse examiner in
Monmouth County, N.J.

"A lot of my colleagues who suspected the use of date-rape drugs have sent
our samples, and I don't know any who have gotten positive hits," she said.