Louisiana health officials did not delay in reacting to the recent emergence of 25-I, a new synthetic hallucinogen, which also goes by the names "N-Bomb" or "Smiles."
The drug got passed around like candy during last week’s Voodoo Festival and is responsible for the death of 21-year-old Clayton Orwell of Little Rock, Ark. He ingested one drop of the liquefied drug, and within 30 minutes had slipped into unconsciousness. He died several days later. NOLA.com reports that at least two additional fest-goers checked into area hospitals that weekend due to 25-I overdoses.
According to NOLA.com’s report, here’s what one festival-goer recalls:
"This weekend, it was everywhere," said Jarod Brignac, 24, who also was with Otwell at the festival. "The people had bottles and bottles of it; they were walking through the crowd, trying to make a dime off people at the festival."
The potency of the drug is intense from the onset, said Brignac, who said he has taken 25-I once. At Voodoo and other music festivals, Brignac said, drug dealers do not warn people about the drug’s possible effects. "It’s called research chemicals, and everyone out there in the festival is the guinea pig."
Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals, at a press conference Friday, announced it was invoking the state’s emergency ban on the substance.
According to a press release issued Friday by DHH:
25-I is a synthetic drug that can cause brain hemorrhaging, seizures, hallucinations, confusion, paranoia, fear and panic. Over the past three months, the Louisiana Poison Center has received two calls related to 25-I, but health officials suspect more cases have occurred because without advance lab analysis, it is difficult to pinpoint what type of drug is responsible for a drug overdose. Some drug overdoses that medical personnel or law enforcement presumed to be bath salts or other illicit drugs could be 25-1 or another of many synthetic drugs.
This synthetic drug is commonly manufactured in China and India, and is being sold in powder and liquid form online, which is how people access it in the United States.
Along with Virginia, Friday’s ban makes Louisiana the second state to make 25-I illegal. The drug is now included in the state’s list of Schedule I drugs, meaning its possession, manufacture and distribution are punishable by up to 30 years in prison.
Here in Lafayette, Capt. Ted Vincent of the Lafayette Police Department’s Narcotics Division says 25-I has yet to hit the streets. Or if it has, he says, no arrests have resulted.
“We got the intelligence bulletin on this last week, and we know there’s six confirmed cases of overdoses in Arkansas, so I figured something would have come up around here,” Vincent tells IND Monthly. “But with this stuff going for up to $500 a gram, it’s probably too expensive to become a problem here.”
Click here to read more on Otwell’s death.
Read Friday’s press release from DHH here.
MAY 24 Blogger Robert Mann posts this entry about the Baton Rouge Chamber's recent report on Louisiana's higher education system. It's critical to economic development, and yet our system is facing a "funding crisis" with no way to resolve it, the report says. The Chamber says control of tuition and fees must be returned to the higher ed governing boards.
MAY 24 Here's a NBC33 story about Tyrann Mathieu. He has signed with the Arizona Cardinals, inking a $3 million, four-year deal. He gets a signing bonus of $265K, but gets another, larger bonus if he doesn't get cut from the team for doing drugs. The deal reportedly includes mandatory tests and meetings for the player.
MAY 24 Jarvis DeBerry posts here about the redonkulus rhetoric that would have us believe NOLA is a safe city with a murder problem. Maybe the city's crime stats don't compare with its murder stats because you can't manipulate a murder, he says: a dead body's a dead body. It just doesn't make sense, he says, and his readers agree: a poll asks if they believe the city is safe, and more than 90 percent say no.
MAY 24 Jindal administration officials announced Thursday that the privatization of public health care is going to cost a lot more than they budgeted for, the Advocate reports here. "I'm so surprised," said no one. Anywhere. The cost they're projecting now is more than $1 billion - a lot more than the $626 million budgeted for it. And, it's more than it cost the state to operate those hospitals. So why are we doing this again?
MAY 24 Blogger CB Forgotston ridicules the recent PR campaign by the state GOP in the wake of a legislative auditor's request to both major parties. The GOP (apparently unaware that the Dems got the same request) started yammering about being targeted because it had "killed" a tax increase. CB finds that laughable, but it's also pretty funny that the GOP was comparing this episode to the IRS scandal (Because the President has so much to do with our state auditor. Right?).
MAY 24 Politico details some recent fund-raising efforts by Sen. David Vitter, which have raised the question of his future political plans. This time, it is a $5,000 per head "bayou weekend" that includes "Cajun cooking" and an all-caps "alligator hunt," the story reports. Funds raised go to a super PAC that can spend money to support Vitter in federal or state races, the story points out.
MAY 24 The pink building on Royal in the quarter was sold at a sheriff's sale Thursday, this Picayune story reports. An injunction that would have halted the sale wasn't enforced because the family failed to post a $150,000 bond, the story reports. So the owner of the mortgages on the building bought it, for nearly $7 million. Now the feuding family will have to negotiate with that company to get a lease on the building that has housed their business for close to 60 years.
MAY 23 This post in Louisiana Voice tells us about a bill by a Winnsboro lege that would require all public high school students to take at least one Course Choice online class in order to graduate. (What?) Blogger Tom Aswell says it's a monument to "waste and corruption," especially in light of the problems he's exposed with the program in recent weeks. Idaho had a similar program, but voters removed it by a 2-1 margin, Aswell says.
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