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News - WA's Deadly ecstasy risk - Sunday Times 18th Sept 05
WA's Deadly ecstasy risk
Pills contain cancer chemicals
Terevor Paddenburg
Ecstasy tablets laced with chemicals including pesticides, animal tranquillisers and cacer-causing by-products are being sold on WA streets.
The Sunday Times has uncovered evidence that some pills sold in Perth contain frightening amounts of dangerous chemicals.
Documents obtained from the WA Chemistry Centre, which tests illicit drugs seized by police, reveal a dramatic shift in the ecstasy market.
It has prompted renewed warnings from police and health experts that young people taking ecstasy at raves and nightclubs are gambling with their lives.
One beige pill branded with an Xbox motif contained only ketamine - a veterinary tranquilliser that can cause delusions - and no trace of MDMA, the key ingredient in ecstasy.
A second beige pill with the Calvin Klein motif contained a cocktail of ketamine, speed and caffeine, but no MDMA.
Alarmingly, a batch of pills coloured green and stamped with a Mitsibishi logo, contained a by-product of the drug manufacturing process suspected of causing cancer.
Colin Priddis, manager of WA Chemistry Centre's illicit-drug testing lab, said the by-product chemical was known as MDEA and "could well be carcinogenic".
"When you manufacture these drugs you get all sorts of by-products and what effect they have toxicologically just isn't known," he said.
Mr Priddis said other batches of pills he had tested contained pesticides and cough medicine.
One seized batch contained no MDMA, but a cocktail of seven other drugs, including extremely high doses of caffeine.
Ecstasy tablets containing a chemical used to treat cats and dogs for incontinence had also appeared on the market.
Last week, Royal Perth Hospital toxicologist Frank Daly, who treats overdose victims weekly, said that illicit drug use in WA had become "the norm".
He said everyone from lawyers to labourers were going on weekend drug binges.
WA Police drug education officer Gill Wilson said users were playing "Russian roulette" every time they swallowed a pill.
He said that in WA, ecstasy was smuggled into Australia from Europe, where manufacturers had secret labs making millions of pills at a time for less than 1c each.
By the time they hit WA, the pills were retailing for $30 to $45 each.
Sgt Wilson warned there was no set recipe for ecstasy and the purity and additives varied wildly between types and batches.
In the three months to July 1 this year, WA police made 120 separate ecstasy seizures.
But Sgt Wilson admitted catching ecstasy dealers was difficult without good intelligence because pills were small and easily disguised as medication or lollies.
Worldwide, there were 1190 known ecstasy "brands", many of them in WA, including pills with Playboy, Versace, Harry Potter and Red Bull motifs.
Sometimes pesticides and other chemicals were used to give the user a "head rush".
Sgt Wilson said high-quality Motorola pills had appeared in WA, but within months there were at least four copycat batches, some which looked identical but were placebos made from flour and water.
Source - Sunday Times 18th Sept. 2004