The Little Blue Book

The problem is in plain sight: the misuse of illicit and legal drugs reaches into every corner of the Australian community – into workplaces, families, sporting clubs, and professional life. Not so plainly seen is the cocktail of toxic, dirty, industrial chemicals commonly used in the making of street drugs and the severe impact of these substances on internal organs, and on the health and appearance of heavy users. Also not plainly seen is the unsanitary conditions and lack of care for ordinary cleanliness commonly found in the sheds, factories and converted garages that pass as laboratories, the ‘drug-kitchens’. Street drugs are also regularly contaminated with substituted ingredients (to make up volume or to replace chemicals in short supply), and commonly made by amateur cooks. Many of the ingredients in street drugs like ice, GHB, or ecstasy, will burn the skin on contact, and if tipped onto lawn will kill the grass. Crystal meth (ice), for instance, is a zombie-list of dirty poisons. While production begins with ephedrine or pseudoephedrine, the street drug is commonly a shaken blend of acetone (solvent, paint thinner), hydrochloric acid, sulphuric acid (or battery acid), toluene (a hydrocarbon fuel additive, also a solvent), ammonia hydroxide or red phosphorous, drain cleaner (if acetone is in short supply), lithium and weed killer (glyphosate). Putting chemicals of this type into the body can permanently damage internal organs. GHB, gamma hydroxybutyrate, or ‘grievous bodily harm’, is similarly toxic. Its precursor chemical is gamma-butyrolactone, a degreasing solvent used in nail polish removers and floor cleaning products. Ecstasy, or MDMA (methylenedioxy-methylamphetamine), is a synthetic drug that acts on the central nervous system. Like ice, in street form it is a noxious brew of chemical muck like battery acid, urinal ‘cakes’, weed killer (glyphosate), caffeine, and even crushed glass (the latter, crushed glass, to strip the walls of the intestine to speed absorption of the drug into the blood stream). Heroin too can be ‘cut’ with impurities like rat poison, chalk, sugars, brick dust, strychnine (a deadly poison) and even powdered milk. The cutting, using these contaminants, is to make the sale of the drug more profitable for dealers; that is, enabling them to make more of the drug at a lower cost. Unfortunately, synthetic opioids like fentanyl (which is an extremely powerful painkiller developed to treat severe pain after surgery) and the even stronger ‘elephant sedative’ carfentanyl, are also sometimes used to cut heroin. A heroin-fentanyl cocktail can be deadly to users, who may not realise the extreme potency of the drug being offered to them. The margin for error when using heroin laced with synthetic opioids is very small, and the potential for overdose very high. The challenge for users of street drugs is in knowing what’s in the drug, what it’s been ‘cut’ with, and its purity. Many overdose deaths occur when drugs of higher purity suddenly hit the streets. SOME THINGS TO KNOW ABOUT ICE & ‘STREET DRUGS’ RECOGNISING DEPRESSION, ANXIETY, AND OTHER DISORDERS 96