Americans' use of club drugs has sharply escalated in recent years, resulting in a sharp spike in emergency room visits in the past five years.
Ecstasy, a synthetic drug considered part hallucinogen and part amphetamine, became wildly popular over the past decade at dance parties called raves because of the energy and euphoria the drug purportedly gives users. The drug, also known as MDMA, can be deadly. It has been linked to brain, heart and kidney damage. Emergency room visits resulting from the use of the drugs numbered 5,542 last year, up from 637 in 1997.
Federal officials have also detected a similar uptick in consumption of "date rape" drugs such as GHB and Rohypnol. Asa Hutchinson, director of the Drug Enforcement Administration, noted the explosive use of club drugs and predatory drugs is fast approaching "epidemic levels."
In response to the marked increase in the use of these dangerous drugs, the DEA will double the number of club-drug investigations by federal authorities through "Operation X-Out." The agency plans to target Internet trafficking and the drug trade in the Netherlands, where some 80 percent of the world's supply originates. On the homefront, the DEA will beef up interdiction efforts at airports and in South Florida, a main entry point for the drugs.
These are important steps in attempting to stem the spread of the use of this drug, which had rapidly increased in recent years. According to DEA statistics, 8.1 million Americans 12 and older tried Ecstasy in 2001, up from 6.5 million the year before.
We are heartened by the progress in this fight, in particular the busts of four Internet drug-trafficking rings operating in the United States and Canada in September. More than 100 people were arrested, and agents seized enough chemicals for 25 million doses of GHB (gamma hydroxybutyrate) and similar substances.
But more must be done to keep these drugs from entering the United States, as well as to ensure American youths and their parents do not underestimate the risks of these substances.
The tragic tale of 15-year-old Samantha Reid is instructive. She died in 1999 of an overdose of GHB slipped into her soda.
"Many kids across the United States who are experimenting with drugs, slipping them into other people's drinks, are under the false impression that you can put them in a corner and they'll wake up," said Judi Clark, the girl's mother, in an Associated Press report. "Samantha didn't wake up."
Hopefully, the DEA's expanded interdiction efforts will result in a lot more busts and a lot less heartbreak for parents such as Clark.