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Health risk in a Giggle pill that can kill
* By Gemma Jones and Janelle Miles
* From: The Daily Telegraph
* September 29, 2009 12:00AM
THEY are called "Giggle" - but these pills are anything but a laughing matter with a man hospitalised after taking just one of the latest over-the-counter highs that packs the punch of 20 coffees.
The Federal Government is urgently investigating the caffeine-laced pills being legally sold in Sydney shops after the 19-year-old Queensland man was rushed to hospital on Saturday with dizziness and a heart rate of 166 beats a minute - double what is normal.
Police have seized the pills from a Queensland shop and the Therapeutic Goods Administration is investigating the herbal concoctions containing the high caffeine plant guarana.
The Daily Telegraph found Giggle pills for sale at the (Censored) Sydney, along with "Hypnotic pills" which are advertised as causing a "state of trance" and an "ecstasy like sensation over and over again."
Packets of three Giggle pills, made by New Zealand company named Light Years, were on sale for $XX.XX.
Royal Brisbane Hospital emergency medicine director Alan O'Connor said ingesting one Giggle pill was the equivalent of drinking 20 cups of coffee in one hit.
Emergency Medicine Queensland chairman David Rosengren described the pills as a "significant health risk". "It's not uncommon for us to see people coming in with symptoms of excessive caffeine ingestion and irregular palpitations, heart arrythmias," he said.
Sydney drugs campaigner Tony Wood whose daughter Anna died, aged 15, after taking ecstasy in 1995 said the marketing of the pills was disgusting. "It is a marketing ploy and they are going to make money out of our kids. It is about time the Government stepped in," he said.
NSW Health has issued a warning about high caffeine products, saying they could cause increased breathing and heart rates, restlessness, anxiety, dizziness, headaches, lack of concentration, stomach pains and dehydration.
Jim Kouts, one of the owners of Off Ya Tree,, accused the Brisbane man of taking the wrong dosage of the pills which carry a warning that pregnant women and people with mental illnesses or high blood pressure should not take them.
http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/ne...ll-that-can-kill/story-e6freuy9-1225780616510
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