Three people who collapsed after using GBL (Liverpool, United Kingdom)

[isthisincognito]

Three people who collapsed after using a chemical for cleaning alloy wheels as a legal high are lucky to be alive, police said today.

Two men aged 20 and 22 and a 16-year-old girl were rushed to hospital on Sunday morning.

They were treated for having taken the chemical known as GEEBS.

All three had been discharged from the Royal by last night.

In 2012 GBL – nicknamed GEEBs – was blamed for killing two friends in Birmingham who died within hours of each other.

The substance – full name gamma butyrolactone is closely related to the banned gamma-hydroxybutrate (GHB) drug.

Carl Fearon, 24, was found dead at his flat while eight hours later, mum-of-one Lynette Nock, 28, died at a memorial wake held by his friends.

The tragedy came exactly three years after medical student Hester Stewart, 21, was found dead at a house in Brighton after a party.

Police found a bottle of GBL next to her body.

Her mum Maryon called for the government to classify GBL as a class A drug, along with heroin and ecstasy so users and dealers would face tougher penalties.

GBL is legal for use in industry as a stain remover, rust remover, superglue remover and as a paint stripper.

It is not illegal to buy GBL for cleaning use, but it is classed as a Class C drug if sold for consumption.

http://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/news/liverpool-news/geebs-liverpool-drug-users-lucky-6720404

I really despise the journalism in this article, more so than usual. I urge you to leave a comment, not that it will make any difference.

 

[isthisincognito]

I’ve never done it. Everyone wants to have a good time in uni but that’s what alcohol is for.

So a little context here, in 6 years, this drug has taken 6 lives (according to the article)

I found a report published by St. Georges university from 2012 which claims ghb/gbl has been indicated in 14 deaths, 10 of which are polydrug cases. ref: at the bottom

In comparison to the 40,000 annual deaths in the uk attributed to alcohol.

Unfortunately I have no figures of the estimated numbers of users of either GHB/GBL. So I will admit that it is a figure without any real context, but here are some figures for other killer drugs.

Alcohol (Legal within licensing restrictions)
UK users: 40 million
UK deaths/year: 40,000

Tobacco (Legal)
UK users: 10 million
UK deaths/year: 114,000

LSD (Class A)
UK users: 83,000
UK deaths/year: 0 recorded

Amphetamine (Class A)
UK users: 430,000
UK deaths/year: 35

Ketamine (Class B)
UK users: 100,000
UK deaths: 1

Figures from 2011, More up to date figures should be available via the world health organisation. I also have not represented prescription overdoses, which is a relatively unreported pandemic.

ref: http://www.sgul.ac.uk/research/projects/icdp/pdf/np-sad-13th-annual-report-2012.pdf

 

[poledriver]

fucking tobacco. how the hell can they whinge about other drugs when tobacco is killing that many people.

 

[isthisincognito]

Nevermind, my error.

 

[MrPorter]

And not a single mention of rape YAYYYYYYY

 

[23536]

35 people in the UK dead a year from amphetamine?

 

[Si Dread]

Seriously? I was just about to post something along those lines 23536... ^ CITATION!

 

[isthisincognito]

I took those figures from a BBC page, so probably not the most reliable, nor do they cite where the figures are from.

It was just the first hit on google. I've seen some better reports on the WHO website somewhere.

For the reference, I took them from here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/sn/tvradio/programmes/horizon/broadband/tx/drugs/survey/

 

[isthisincognito]

According to this report, there was 62 amphetamine related deaths (of which 43 are polydrug cases) in the UK in 2011.

Page 7 of the report :http://www.sgul.ac.uk/media/np-sad2...-report-2012finalversionfeb28thmastercopy.pdf

This was the World Drug Report published by the WHO, but I can't see the figures in there relating to substance mortality rate, so my mistake. http://www.unodc.org/documents/data-and-analysis/WDR2012/WDR_2012_web_small.pdf

 

[danhod]

I heard that it was poisonous GBL and purchased from a new shop master cleaner / cleaner power
can anyone confirm this?

 

[isthisincognito]

^ I know nothing about that, I've asked a few people who live in that area, but no one knows anything other than what has been reported.

Some further articles relating to this.

From the guardian

We understand that the three people involved may have taken other substances and as a precaution checks are under way to establish what those drugs were and to ensure that they have not taken drugs that are part of a bad batch.

http://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/feb/17/three-collapse-legal-high-clean-allow-wheels-geebs

So could potentially be a polydrug case - my immediate assumption would be alcohol, based on the setting (house party). But that is nothing but speculation, and I doubt we will ever see the toxicology outcome.

The mirror also ran this story, and added this.

The conditions of all three improved during the day and the youngest man was discharged.

GBL is legal for use in industry as a stain remover, rust remover, alloy cleaner, superglue remover and as a paint stripper.

However, it is an illegal class C drug if swallowed and ingested, and anyone possessing it for such a use risks a prison sentence of up to two years.

Two years ago the substance was blamed for killing two friends within hours.

Carl Fearon, 24, was found dead at his flat while eight hours later, mum-of-one Lynette Nock, 28, died at a memorial wake held by his friends.

The tragedy came exactly three years after medical student Hester Stewart, 21, was found dead at a house in Brighton after a party.

Police found a bottle of GBL next to her body.

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/geebs-three-students-end-up-3153285

I'm also find it unusual that the images show two matrix vans at the scene, I hope they're just stock images. For reference purposes the Merseyside Matrix team from wikipedia

Matrix Disruption team

The Matrix Disruption Team led by a Chief Inspector, consists of syndicates made up of Inspectors, Sergeants and Constables. Each syndicate works with other Matrix units to provide the force with a level two response to gun crime, faction based criminality and cash-in-transit robberies. They are the first response to any major large-scale disorder within the Merseyside force area. These officers are specifically trained to deal with a variety of disorder situations, ranging from small protests to large-scale crowd disorder.

Public Order is one of the main functions of the department and therefore all officers receive the required training and are subjected to rigorous training scenarios. Matrix has a number of Baton Gun trained specialist officers, consisting of two Sergeants and ten Constables.

The Matrix team also have specialist search teams and rope access teams. They use yellow Mercedes Sprinter police vans with special markings on the side to show they are Matrix. The team also uses a marked Vectra Estate but this does not have any Matrix markings on, just the usual Merseyside livery.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merseyside_Police#Matrix_Disruption_team