Lethal amphetamine found in ecstasy
Ecstasy tablets in NSW may contain a toxic and deadly amphetamine, NSW Police has warned.
PMA, which has been passed off as ecstasy, was linked with the death of a man in the ACT.
Police last week announced the drug could have been sourced from NSW.
The tablet the young ACT man is alleged to have taken was yellow with a euro currency symbol on it, Drug Squad commander Detective Superintendent Greig Newbery said.
PMA was a nasty drug, director of the emergency department at St Vincent’s Hospital, Gordian Fulde, said.
The real bitch about it is that people buy it and think they are getting ecstasy, he said.
It can give you fits. It usually kills a person by either seizures or overheating.
The side effects associated with PMA include visual hallucinations, a general change in consciousness, increased blood and body temperature and increased blood pressure and pulse rate.
It also causes laboured breathing, nausea, vomiting, convulsions, coma and death.
If a person experiences adverse side effects after consuming what they believed to be ecstasy, Fulde said, make sure you’re with a buddy and seek medical advice.
You don’t have to give your real name, I don’t care, you are going be all right, he said.
We’ll pat you on the back and you can go back to your party or whatever you’re doing.
Every few years we get people dying and, in most cases, had they been brought to the emergency department, they almost certainly would not have died.
A 20-year-old woman died earlier this year after taking an ecstasy tablet that contained PMA.
A number of overdoses, one near fatal, occurred in Sydney in 2004. Six people died in South Australia between September 1995 and January 1996 after taking ecstasy tablets which contained PMA.
Newbery pointed to a report from the Division of Analytical Laboratories (DAL) that indicated the presence of PMA in a small number of tablet seizures made by police this year.
We are renewing our warning to members of the public that they are endangering their lives when taking illicit drugs.
