Pubdate: Sat, 17 Feb 2007
Source: Bucks Free Press (UK)
Copyright: 2007 Newsquest Media Group
Contact: http://www.bucksfreepress.co.uk/aboutus/submissions/sendletter/
Website: http://www.bucksfreepress.co.uk/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/3770
Author: Lucy Clapham
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?207 (Cannabis - United Kingdom)

IT'S ATTEMPTED MURDER

DRUG dealers who are bulking-up cannabis with glass should be
charged for attempted murder, an ex-addict has claimed.

Keith, from High Wycombe, believes mixing drugs like cannabis with
glass is so dangerous it could kill people and thinks the dealers who
are doing it should be punished more severely.

He said: "If it's laced with glass or anything specifically harmful to
anyone they should be charged with attempted murder, you know it's
going to kill them." advertisement

Keith, who used to have a UKP150 a day heroin habit, said the people
worst affected are those that use large needles to inject their drugs,
which are big enough to allow harmful particles to filter through. I
know brick dust has been used before," he said. "Normally they cut it
with Johnsons baby powder or vitamin C. To me, if people are cutting
it with anything else, that's dangerous. That's just going out to hurt
somebody. You're not doing it to gain, you're doing it to deliberately
hurt someone."

Police announced this week that rat poison has also been found mixed
with some drugs to make them heavier before they are sold on.

Detective Inspector Steve Williams, the county's top officer in the
fight against drugs, said: "Drug dealers use all kinds of substances
to bulk up their merchandise and make more money. I have seen lab
reports for cocaine come back listing chalk and powdered pain-killers
as ingredients."

Sergeant Gordon Reilly, from High Wycombe police, said officers had
seen strychnine (rat poison) in blocks of cannabis resin, which gives
users an extra buzz, but warned the wrong combination could be fatal.

Brian O'Conner, chief executive for the Addiction Counselling Trust
(ACT) based in Gordon Road, backed the warning.

He said: "We from the ACT perspective would say to people you take a
risk when you use any type of drug because you don't know what the
strength is and you don't know what it's been cut with to bring it to
the strength that's normally provided on the street."

He added that the Department of Health had warned herbal cannabis was
being mixed with microscopic glass beads, leaving users with a sore
mouth and chesty coughs.
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MAP posted-by: Richard Lake