Saturday, November 3, 2012

New deadly "legal" drug hits Australia








Two weeks ago, a middle-aged couple, looking for excitement, bought a white powder that promised the same high as cocaine.  They call it "bath salts", a legal, synthetic drug that quietly snuck into the country recently.


Berkelely Vale truck driver Glenn Punch, 44 and his girlfriend injected the drug while in the cab of his truck one afternoon, just for fun.  They bought a bag of white powder called "Smokin' Slurrie" from an adult sex shop in Rutherford.  Although it was labelled "NOT FOR CONSUMPTION", it is marketed as a legal high.


Two days later, they were both in a deep psychotic state and at one point, became so hot, they started discarding their clothes.  A naked Mr Punch jumped a barbed wire fence, attacked a security guard, and went into cardiac arrest.  He died in hospital two days later.


His long term partner was found a few hundred metres away, topless, agitated, and bloody after falling out of the truck.


Bath Salts is sold in adult sex shops, tobacconists and on the Internet. Users talk about their experiences on forums and in chat-rooms and the word is spreading - you can get high without breaking the law because manufacturers tweak the recipe to circumvent the illegal drug classification.


"I was up all night and the next day and I had only gone through about 0.5 grams - teeth grinding and hard to sleep the next day" wrote one user.  It's even popular with miners because it can't be detected in a urine sample.  What is happening to our country?


Mr Punch is the first Australian death reported so far.  It's so new, no figures on consumption yet exist.



.

No comments:

Post a Comment