Texas EMS Providers Seeing New Dangerous Drug Concoctions

July 31--CORPUS CHRISTI -- Drugs laced with embalming fluid have become the new local trend, and their effects are widespread and alarming, officials said.

Cases of patients who have ingested synthetic marijuana soaked in formaldehyde are rapidly rising and often have cause violent reactions in users, Dr. Daniel Roberts, an emergency physician and Corpus Christi Fire Department EMS medical director, said during a Thursday presentation to judges and probation officers.

Complicating matters, Roberts said, is that the chemical -- used to preserve corpses -- is often paired with synthetic marijuana and those often go undetected in drug tests.

"Now we've got that double whammy," he said. "Everybody acts differently to that stuff."

Local synthetic marijuana users have had strokes triggered by the drug and were left paralyzed, Roberts said. The fire department gets regular calls of a habitual user who will strip in the hospital and bang on walls.

Synthetic marijuana, unlike traditional marijuana, are herbs soaked in fluids commonly found in household cleaning products.

"It's a dangerous thing because people don't know what's in it," he said.

The bizarre story of a Miami man who stripped and ate a homeless man's face in 2012 got national attention. Initial reports said he had used a designer drug called bath salts, but medical officials later learned the man had used a mixture of synthetic and regular marijuana, Roberts said.

Probation officers are hearing more and more about the concoctions and their effects, said Judy Randolph, Nueces County Community Supervision and Corrections Department interim director. She hosted Thursday's presentation to educate court officials about the local trends.

"I think it's an up and coming problem that's only going to get worse," Randolph said.

Substance abuse -- whether drugs or alcohol -- are involved in about 85 percent of cases the probation office gets, Randolph said.

Synthetic drugs specifically are the most common juvenile probation officers see, officials said during the presentation. In a case 117th District Judge Sandra Watts presided over, the drug was inside packaging adorned with a children's cartoon character.

The rate of adults in treatment for drug and alcohol use in Nueces County is multiple times the state average, a Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi study last year shows. And while the rate of adults in treatment statewide decreased 29 percent from 2008-12, the rate in Nueces County increased 51 percent, the study found.

Judges lamented having loads of cases involving synthetic marijuana, which was outlawed in April 2011.

Perpetrators in several local violent cases have said they were under the influence of synthetic marijuana, including Daniel Garcia who shot and killed Mostafa "Ben" Bighamian in his convenience store last year.

Three teenage boys who in 2012 kidnapped a girl and took her to Padre Island where one boy raped her before leaving her on the side of the road also said they had been smoking the synthetic drug.

"I started seeing how violent these people are under the influence and I wanted everyone involved in the criminal justice system to get all the information and knowledge at this time," Randolph said.

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