Pubdate: Fri, 27 Jul 2001
Source: Morning Call (PA)
Copyright: 2001 The Morning Call Inc.
Contact:  http://www.mcall.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/275
Author: Mike Frassinelli

LATEST DRUG CRAZE: EMBALMING FLUID (HONEST!)

Users buy cigarettes dipped in it to smoke; it can make them psychotic as 
well as high. It hasn't hit here -- yet.

In Hartford, it is called "illie" and comes in harmless looking bags 
decorated with cartoon characters. In Philly, it's not illie, it's "wet." 
In Los Angeles, it is known as "sherm."

By any name, it's trouble.

Embalming fluid, long used as a chemical to slow the decomposition of the 
dead, more recently is being used by the living as a way to get high.

Users -- mostly teens and those in their 20s -- are spending about $20 to 
buy tobacco or marijuana cigarettes dipped in embalming fluid and dried.

While local drug counselors, funeral directors and police were not aware of 
a problem in the Lehigh Valley, a 14-year-old boy in Morrisville, Bucks 
County, high on "wet" that he bought in Trenton, N.J., stabbed a 
33-year-old neighbor to death in May 2000. The teen is serving a seven-year 
juvenile sentence for the killing.

And Reading juvenile probation officer Julie Kirlin told The Associated 
Press: "Some people around here think it's just a city problem, but it's not."

Users who want embalming fluid often get it with PCP, phencyclidine, 
interspersed. Leading to more confusion, PCP since the 1970s has been known 
in street drug lingo as "embalming fluid."

The chemical "tends to make people psychotic and very paranoid and 
aggressive," Dr. Julie Holland, a drug expert who works in the psychiatric 
emergency room at Bellevue Hospital in New York City, said Thursday night.

Holland, editor of the book, "Ecstasy: The Complete Guide," added that 
"someone who smokes marijuana might be intrigued, because this is a new 
type of marijuana."

The chemical, she said, "separates you from your mind" and can cause users 
to hallucinate.

The chemical also can cause users to become violent. The Morrisville 
juvenile stabbed his neighbor more than 70 times.

In New York, the chemical is known alternately as "hydro" and "wet."

Capt. Joseph Stauffer, commander of the Allentown Police Department's 
Criminal Investigations Division, said trends in New York and Philadelphia 
often make their way here.

Still, he said, "That is something that, to my knowledge, we have not come 
across. Nothing would surprise me. Just about everything has been tried -- 
or probably will be."

Margaret Mary Hartnett, administrator of the Lehigh County Office of Drug 
and Alcohol Abuse Services, has heard about embalming fluid use in other 
areas, but not locally.

"I have been in this field 11 years, and it is just amazing what these kids 
can come up with to use as highs," she said. "Remember that whole thing 
with inhalants, and kids were sticking their faces in paint cans?"

Drug users in Lehigh County, she said, are younger and sicker, and more are 
using multiple drugs and have dual mental health and substance abuse disorders.

Funeral directors in Seattle were warned that youngsters might try to swipe 
their embalming fluid.

Local funeral directors can't fathom why someone would want to ingest the 
nostril-clearing fluid in any form.

They use gloves and eye protection when handling embalming fluid, which is 
injected into an artery following death to aid in the preservation process.

"My goodness, that is strange," said Jane C. Pearson, supervisor of Pearson 
Funeral Home Inc. in Bethlehem.

She said embalming fluid, which has glutaraldehyde and other additives, has 
an unpleasant "pungent" odor all its own.

"It makes my eyes water," she said. "I can't imagine what smoking it would do."

Told that her supplies of embalming fluid might be coveted by some teens, 
Debbie Ashton, director of Ashton Funeral Home Inc. in Easton, noted, "They 
kind of want to see us before they need to see us."

"It's not pleasant to be around for long, I can't imagine soaking it and 
smoking it," she added. "It doesn't sound like a pleasant thing to do. I 
don't know who gave them the idea."

The Associated Press contributed to this report
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