Pubdate: Sat, 03 Dec 2005
Source: Globe and Mail (Canada)
Copyright: 2005, The Globe and Mail Company
Contact:  http://www.globeandmail.ca/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/168
Author: Peter Cheney
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/topics/jimson+weed

WEED WHACK

Forget Ecstasy and Crystal Meth. the New Drug Sending Kids to 
Hospital Is a Plant That Could Be Growing in Your Backyard

Western Tech's bad trip started a few weeks ago, when a newly arrived 
Grade 12 student told some classmates about his amazing discovery -- 
a free drug that could launch them on the kind of hallucinogenic 
journey that Doors singer Jim Morrison used to take in the desert 
after eating peyote buttons.

Things did not go as planned. Instead, as many as a dozen students 
ended up in hospital, a few of them "near death," in the words of 
vice-principal Tammy Paulen, who found herself caught up in an 
institutional crisis she could never have imagined.

"This was a very, very disturbing experience," Ms. Paulen says. "We 
were shocked."

For Western Technical-Commercial School, a beautiful old high school 
set in the winding, tree-lined streets of the High Park area, the 
events of the past few weeks have provided an unforgettable lesson in 
both student dynamics and the medical horrors of jimson weed, a plant 
known as far back as the time of Shakespeare.

The first sign of trouble was a phone call to Ms. Paulen from a 
parent during the first week of November. The parent said her son was 
in hospital, seriously ill from something he had eaten at school. As 
Ms. Paulen quickly learned, this wasn't the only student who had 
fallen ill. At first, some of the students tried to pass off their 
illness as a case of bad Halloween candy. But as several of them 
spiralled into life-threatening medical crises, the truth finally 
emerged -- they had taken a drug that the new student had brought to 
school. The students referred to it as "Datura." Ms. Paulen soon 
learned what they were talking about: Datura stramonium, also known 
as jimson weed, thorn apple and angel's trumpet.

Jimson weed, which has caused hundreds of poisonings in North America 
- -- at least five other teens in southern Ontario have been 
hospitalized since September -- has a deadly combination of attributes.

It grows as a weed through much of the United States and Canada 
(including in the parks, gardens and alleyways that surround Western 
Tech) and is extremely toxic. Even so, countless people have tried 
it, lured by its reputation as the poor kid's hallucinogen. Those who 
take it often experience symptoms that include hallucinations, 
disorientation and loss of bowel control. Worst-case scenarios 
include cardiac or respiratory arrest.

"It is not a pleasant high," says Kumar Gupta, a Toronto coroner and 
addiction expert. "Most people who take jimson weed don't remember 
much about it. They get the story from their friends, who say, 'God, 
you were awful. And you pooed your pants.' "

Exactly what happened at Western Tech (and at other Toronto schools 
where students may have experimented with jimson weed) is the subject 
of an ongoing probe by school officials, who find themselves in a 
position similar to that of legendary Woodstock figure Wavy Gravy as 
he warned the crowd to stay away from the brown acid.

"We want to get the word out fast," Western Tech principal Audley 
Salmon says. "We want people to know what they're dealing with."

Mr. Salmon says there is no way of knowing exactly how many students 
actually experimented with the drug. "We can't put a number on it. 
The reported cases can be added up on two hands, but we have no idea 
how many didn't get reported. It's not the kind of thing that kids 
want to talk to their parents about."

Western Tech is apparently not the only Toronto school where students 
have experimented with jimson weed, or at least considered it. 
Students at nearby Humberside Collegiate Institute, for example, said 
they had heard of students who had some, but weren't sure if they had 
tried it. "It's going around," one student said.

After questioning students, Ms. Paulen and Mr. Salmon came to the 
conclusion that the jimson-weed experiment was sparked by a student 
who had heard about the drug at another school, then transferred to 
Western Tech, where he began evangelizing about a free drug that 
offered a peyote-style high. He found a receptive audience, and in 
the first week of November, several students became the High Park 
area's first known jimson-weed test pilots.

The drug's effects have been documented many times (the first known 
case dates back to 1676). In 1995, the Arizona Republic reported the 
case of five young men who were rushed to hospital after chewing 
jimson weed seeds. The five exhibited alarming symptoms, including 
hallucinations that bugs were crawling on their bodies, and that they 
were dead and that their body parts had been strewn about the 
intensive-care unit.

Police and Western Tech school officials have issued dire warnings 
about the drug's miserable high. But like surfers whose ears perk up 
at the news of an impending storm that will produce monster waves, 
some students tuned out the warning component of the school's 
message. "We were like, wow, this is pretty funny," one Grade 12 
Western Tech student said this week when he was asked if he had heard 
about jimson weed. "They're telling us that now there are free drugs, 
and they grow right here in the park. Excellent."

As Ms. Paulen learned in the course of her investigation, some 
students were more skeptical than others when they were told about 
the new, free drug, and decided to check out jimson weed on the 
Internet, where they quickly learned that it was a bad idea. "Those 
were the smart ones," Ms. Paulen says. "The others just trusted the 
word of their friends."

The police were called in to see if charges could be laid against the 
student who supplied the others. News of the poisonings went out to 
Western Tech parents and was included on an inter-school bulletin, 
warning other teachers and administrators about the perils of jimson weed.

The officer who handled the case, Constable Charles Exton of the 11 
Division street crime unit, says jimson weed isn't illegal, since it 
isn't listed under the federal Narcotic Control Act. "We can't go 
after anyone for trafficking," he says. "But that's what it amounts 
to." Constable Exton believes that the student who introduced the 
drug to Western Tech may have heard about it on a CSI episode where a 
student takes jimson weed, then kills a friend while under its 
influence. His research, which included calls to the Ontario Regional 
Poison Information Centre, showed him just how easy it is to find 
jimson weed. After learning about the plant, he realized that he had 
seen it in a neighbour's garden.

"The availability is the problem," he says. "Kids will take anything. 
I think we're missing the boat here. People need to know about this."

Although the teens who fell ill are back at school and the one who 
introduced jimson weed has been expelled, administrators believe they 
face an ongoing task of educating students about the drug's risks. 
Dr. Gupta says jimson weed has effects that are almost impossible to 
predict. "You'd have to be a pharmacist to use it. It's very risky."

The only good part, he says, is that jimson weed isn't addictive. 
"Almost no one does it twice. It isn't like other drugs, where you 
feel better. It makes you feel worse." 
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MAP posted-by: Richard Lake