- SAN FRANCISCO -- The aqua-colored potion may boost your sex drive and help
you drop a few pounds, but police and health officials are warning that
it can be deadly.
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- Blue Nitro, popular in the gay community
and at all-night rave parties where drugs are taken, is being blamed for
sending users to the emergency room, some of them comatose.
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- "People have no idea they're drinking
paint thinner or floor stripper," said Lt. Kitt Krenshaw, head of
the city's Narcotics Division.
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- Blue Nitro is made from gamma butyrolactone,
a solvent added to paint thinners, along with potassium, riboflavin and
wintergreen oil. But when ingested, the liquid metabolizes into gamma hydroxybutyrate,
or GHB, a powerful synthetic central nervous system depressant that is
one of the so-called "date rape drugs."
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- Krenshaw said the product is illegal
in California under the state's Controlled Substances Act of 1996.
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- Al Abramowitz was told a similar potion
would boost his sex drive, so he downed two capfuls at a party. The next
thing he knew, he was throwing up on himself after having passed out in
his car.
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- "If I had been in a deeper sleep,
if I had taken more of this, I would have choked to death on my own vomit,"
said Abramowitz, an epidemiologist.
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- Symptoms can be especially dangerous
when taken with drugs or alcohol, health officials said. Among the side
effects are vomiting, sweating, increased blood pressure, amnesia, seizures,
delirium, loss of consciousness, coma and sometimes death.
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- Nationwide, there have been 26 GHB overdose
deaths since 1995, including six in California.
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- "It's a public health threat, so
I'm quite concerned," said Jo Ellen Dyer, a pharmacist with the California
Poison Control System, which reported 151 GHB poisonings in the last six
months of 1998. At least eight were linked to Blue Nitro.
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- Dyer said the makers of Blue Nitro have
marketed the tonic with false claims, including a brochure that provides
these boasts: "deep rejuvenating sleep," "prosexual,"
"combat aging," "combat addiction," "lose weight
naturally," "increased energy" and "improve athletic
performance."
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- Rick Alvarez, whose West Palm Beach,
Fla., company sells Blue Nitro, also known as "Vitality," told
the San Francisco Examiner that Blue Nitro has no negative side effects
when taken properly. =========================================================
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