COPS DEBUNK CRYSTAL METH EMAIL

No Evidence To Support Schoolyard 'Strawberry Quick' Warning

Do you know "strawberry quick"? Coloured pink, it looks like
strawberry pop rocks--the candy that sizzles and pops in your
mouth--but it's actually crystal methamphetamine circulated in
schoolyards to lure kids into drug use.

Kids ingest it, believing it's candy, and must be rushed to hospital.
The drug also comes in chocolate, peanut butter, cola, cherry, grape
and orange.

This warning is being circulated through email as the new school year
approaches. People who receive it are asked to read it and tell their
kids.

"Pass this email on to as many people as you can (even if they don't
have kids) so that we can raise awareness and hopefully prevent any
tragedies from occurring," the message advises. Sounds scary, but
there's one major problem--according to police, the story is an
Internet hoax.

Detective Jim Fisher, Vancouver Police Department Drug/Gang Section
Operational Intelligence Coordinator, said the flavoured crystal meth
advisory has circulated online since January 2007, but there appears
to be no truth to it. The drug section has not recovered or been made
aware of any methamphetamine flavoured with anything resembling
Strawberry Quik.

"We've done some research on it because [the question] comes up fairly
frequently for us," he said.

Although methamphetamine can have a purplish hue if it was
manufactured using red phosphorus, it's a naturally occurring colour
and is not added by dealers for appeal, he added.

Health Canada drug analysis labs, which test drug seizures, have
confirmed they have never had any such sample submitted to them for
analysis, according to Fisher.

Drug section members also frequently speak to colleagues elsewhere in
B.C., in Alberta and Ontario, but Fisher has never heard of any
seizures of flavoured meth in any other Canadian jurisdictions.

"We've never seen any flavoured or scented or anything advertised like
that. What addicts are looking for is really good crystal. The closer
to the lab, the bigger the crystal," he said. "The more times it's
handled, the more it breaks down and if you're trying to enhance
somebody's likelihood of buying your dope, rather than somebody else's
dope, that's what they would want to see--really good crystals."

The origin of the hoax hasn't been established, but it may be that an
original warning gets misinterpreted as it's passed along. "It could
have been something where people are saying, 'Hey, this is being said.
It doesn't exist, but be careful,' and then it gets morphed into,
'This exists and be careful.'"

Fisher also suspects some people with good intentions forward the
email to other people without researching. "Probably the origin will
be somebody trying to do a service without doing any kind of
checking--a parents group, a PTA group or something like that," he
said. "There's no harm in warning [kids about drugs]. But if they
[parents] feel they need to warn them about methamphetamine, the truth
is the most common way it's being distributed right now is as a
portion of ecstasy."

Most buyers aren't aware that the majority of pills police have seized
and analyzed contain a other drug besides MDMA [ecstasy], and the
majority of the pills contain a significant amount of meth. Other
drugs found in ecstasy pills include ketamine, cocaine and ephedrine.