DIRTY DRUGS

Young people are most likely to fall victim to street drugs laced with
dangerous contaminants, research at the University of the Fraser
Valley shows.

Darryl Plecas, RCMP University Research Chair in the School of
Criminology and Criminal Justice, teamed up with other UFV
researchers, and found the drug ecstasy is almost always laced with
unexpected ingredients or more addictive drugs.

"Youth are definitely most at risk because they are the largest
consumers of ecstasy," said Plecas.

Most street drugs are contaminated, but ecstasy is the worst offender,
he said.

"The average tablet has nine different contaminants, but the greatest
worry is that one of the most common contaminants is methamphetamine
(crystal meth)."

The drug often also contain adulterants such as OxyContin (a
prescription opiate), the horse tranquilizer ketamine, and
gamma-hydroxybutyrate, the date rape drug.

Young people who think they are just buying a "party drug" are getting
more than they bargained for.

"There have been deaths all over attributed to unintentional overdoses
of mislabelled or misrepresented drugs," said Plecas, pointing to the
recent deaths of two teenage girls who died last week in an Edmonton
hospital after taking ecstasy during a wedding party.

"The other problem is when someone shows up in hospital saying they
took ecstasy, but they don't really know what they took. You can
imagine the problems," he added.

Adulterants can be the consequence of lousy chemists and drugs
manufactured under less than ideal circumstances by people who are
trying to avoid detection.

However, nobody adds crystal meth to another drug unawares, Plecas
said.

"You don't put methamphetamine in a tablet without knowing it. The end
argument [for the research] is that there needs to be stiffer
penalties for people who contaminate drugs."

Retired Vancouver police officer Tony Smith, a spokesman for Law
Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP) in Canada, said stiffer jail
sentences for producers lacing their products perpetuates drug
prohibition.

The policy of prohibition has shown itself to be ineffective, said
Smith.

"I fail to see how tougher sentences would change things," he
said.

"This situation is created by war on drugs. We have chosen to give all
control over drugs over to criminal organizations."

The legalization of drugs would allow them to be better regulated,
Smith added.

"If we regulate and control the distribution as we do with
pharmaceutical drugs or liquor, we avoid the situation where drugs are
contaminated, or are much stronger than the buyer anticipates, often
resulting in overdose and possibly death."

Society has substantially reduced the use of tobacco - a legal and
lethal drug - through regulation and education, he said.

The study, titled The Problem of Adulterated Drugs, analyzed ecstasy
seized by the RCMP at raves in the Lower Mainland.

Two sets of samples were collected, analyzed and compared. The first
collection occurred from 2001 to 2002, and included 755 samples of
ecstasy. The second set of seizures took place 2006 to 2007, and
comprised 315 samples.

Both sets of samples showed the presence of crystal meth in ecstasy a
minimum of 33 per cent of the time.

The most recent sample group showed the ecstasy was mixed with some
other contaminant 56 per cent of the time, up from 23 per cent in 2001
to 2002.

Plecas co-wrote the paper with Sherry Mumford, a UFV criminal justice
alumna and now the regional addictions manager with the Fraser Health
Authority, and Amanda McCormack of the B.C. Centre for Social
Responsibility.

Plecas is in England this week to present the research at the Oxford
Round Table, a international forum on policy matters.