Thanks to liberals Police in Florida Grapple With a Cheap and Dangerous New Drug

[Charley Jesus]

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/25/us/police-in-florida-grapple-
with-flakka-a-cheap-and-dangerous-new-drug.html?_r=0

MIAMI — A hazardous new synthetic drug originating in China is
being blamed for 18 recent deaths in a single South Florida
county, as police grapple with an inexpensive narcotic that
causes exaggerated strength and dangerous paranoid
hallucinations.

On Thursday, the Fort Lauderdale police killed a man, reportedly
high on the man-made street drug, alpha-PVP, known more commonly
as flakka, who had held a woman hostage with a knife to her
throat.

The shooting of Javoris Washington, 29, was the latest in a
series of volatile episodes that the police in South Florida
have faced with highly aggressive drug users. Law enforcement
agencies have had difficulty tamping down a surge in synthetic
drugs, which were banned after becoming popular in clubs five
years ago only to re-emerge deadlier than ever under new
formulations. As soon as legislation catches up with the latest
craze, manufacturers design a new drug to take its place,
federal and local law enforcement agencies say.

In Broward County, which includes Fort Lauderdale and is
considered ground zero for the new drug, there have been 18
flakka-related fatalities since September, the chief medical
examiner there said.

“I have never seen such a rash of cases, all associated with the
same substance,” said James N. Hall, an epidemiologist at Nova
Southeastern University who has studied the Florida drug market
for decades. “It’s probably the worst I have seen since the peak
of crack cocaine. Rather than a drug, it’s really a poison.”

Flakka, which got its name from a Spanish colloquial term for a
pretty, enticing woman, is a synthetic cathinone that mimics the
khat plant grown in Africa. It is made from alpha-
pyrrolidinovalerophenone, what Mr. Hall describes as “second-
generation bath salts,” a reference to previous formulations of
the amphetaminelike stimulant.

Also known as gravel, flakka made a sudden and explosive
entrance into South Florida’s illicit drug market about six
months ago, particularly in poor neighborhoods, where drug users
including homeless people were lured by the low price, $5 a dose.

Police departments around the state, and especially those near
Fort Lauderdale, have been called to a growing number of
situations involving people high on the drug who were convinced
that packs of dogs or people were chasing them.

In February, a 50-year-old homeless man tried to kick in the
glass door at the Fort Lauderdale Police Department because he
believed people were chasing him. In Melbourne this month, a 17-
year-old girl ran down the street naked and covered in blood,
screaming that she was Satan.

In Broward County, a man ran down a street wearing only
sneakers, saying a pack of German shepherds was hunting him.
Another person became impaled on a fence.

“Police departments are always calling us for backup, because
they try not to apprehend somebody on synthetic drugs by
themselves,” said Mia Ro, a spokeswoman for the Drug Enforcement
Administration’s Miami division.

At first, the products known as bath salts were available in gas
stations. When specific chemical substances were banned in
Europe and the United States, chemists tweaked the formula, and
flakka emerged.

Five major synthetic cathinones were banned federally and by
most states in 2010. Flakka is illegal in the United States, and
law enforcement authorities are working with officials in China
for it to be outlawed there as well.

“Our supposition is that the original concept was to design it
so it would be technically not illegal,” Mr. Hall said. “It
appears they are now looking to also design the molecule to be
even more potent and more addictive. Addiction is good for
sales.”

But the law has not stopped its flow, Mr. Hall said.

Broward County’s chief medical examiner, Dr. Craig Mallak, said
the drug manufacturers added a ketone, an oxygen atom that
affects more receptors in the brain.

The drug works by blocking the reuptake function of transmitting
neurons, allowing a storm of dopamine and serotonin to flood the
brain, Dr. Mallak said.

Flakka comes in the form of crystals of different colors that
dissolve in the mouth, and the drug is also smoked and can be
used for “vaping” in e-cigarette-like devices. The body
temperature of users who take too much can rise above 105
degrees, resulting in excited delirium. Users can feel so hot
that they may strip off their clothes. Some have suffered kidney
failure and cognitive impairment.

“They do really wild things,” Dr. Mallak said. “A lot of them
get hyperthermia and die of heat stroke. A few attack police
officers, end up getting shot. They tear their clothes off and
go crazy.”

Many of the drug’s users remain high for three days on a $5 dose
the size of one-tenth of a packet of sweetener.

The Broward Sheriff’s Office said the county lab first detected
the drug in January 2014. By the end of last year, the lab had
encountered about 190 cases. From January to mid-April this
year, the lab had analyzed more than 400 cases.

“The problem we have as law enforcement is that it came on the
scene so fast,” said Detective William Schwartz, a narcotics
investigator at the Broward Sheriff’s Office. “This isn’t a drug
that’s proliferating in the clubs. We are seeing it destroy low-
income neighborhoods.”

Detective Schwartz said a $1,500 kilogram is delivered to
dealers by major international delivery services, making it
“readily available to anyone who knows how to use a computer,”
he said.

The dose is so tiny that the initial investment can yield 10,000
doses, sold at $3 to $5 each. The small dosage size also makes
it easy to consume too much, with fatal results.

“It looks just like meth, heroin or cocaine, depending on the
state it’s in on the street,” Detective Schwartz said.

But because the normal dose of cocaine or meth is so much higher
than flakka’s dose, one-tenth of a gram, even a little too much
puts the user in a state of excited delirium, Detective Schwartz
said, “and there’s no way back.”
 

[charlie...@gmail.com]

Wtf