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Dangerous drugs disguised as MDMA are “bloody everywhere” this summer, says the Know Your Stuff drug enforcement service.
Of the samples he’s tested at festivals, more than half have been dangerous cathinones, also known as bath salts, where people thought they had MDMA.
Know Your Stuff is baptizing 2020 as the “summer of cathinones.”
In an alert posted on his website, he said that the most common type of cathinone seen by staff is eutilone.
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“We saw small amounts last year and now there are lots.
“This is a big change and bad news.”
Know your material / supplied
Cathinones have been showing up across the country in different forms.
Eutylone gives the same euphoric high as MDMA, but fades after an hour or so, often leading people to take more, thinking it is weak MDMA.
Know Your Stuff said it had heard “too many stories of miserable experiences with eutylone.”
“All the stories are similar: ‘Last night I had a little, after an hour or so I thought it was running out, so I had a little more, I was up all night, and now it’s noon and I can’t sleep and I sit as s … ‘”.
But they realized that not being able to sleep was the best result; Eutilone can also cause anxiety, headaches, paranoia, vomiting, seizures, and possibly death.
The service said it knew of at least two people who had needed medical help, one of whom was having seizures.
LAWRENCE SMITH / Things
Festival goers are cautioned not to take drugs if they have not been tried.
It’s early in the festival season, but the proportion of samples Know Your Stuff is seeing that don’t match what punters think they have increased last year.
During the 2019-20 season, nearly one in 10 samples was not what the owner thought it was.
This year, actual MDMA is “pretty rare,” the service said.
“There is so much eutilone right now and so little MDMA that we say if you don’t try it, don’t take it.”
Eutilone has been found throughout the country and in different forms, including white and brown powder, light or brown colored lumps, and light blue pills with the Playboy logo.
The government passed urgent legislation in early December to allow the testing of pills for illegal substances at concerts and festivals.
But it came too late for drug testers and many festival organizers.
Jez Weston, deputy editor of Know Your Stuff, said Stuff the demand for pill testing since the law change was “10 times” what they could provide.
“The change in the law is great, it means that we can be much more open about what we can do and it means that festivals are not taking a legal risk to take care of their attendees. However, we are a small, grassroots organization, run by volunteers, and we are already at our best, ”he said.
