Killer ecstasy tablets aimed at kids
CHILDREN as young as 12 are taking super-strength “Snapchat” ecstasy pills.
But they are dicing with death as they contain potentially lethal levels of psychoactive MDMA.
Dealers are flooding the streets with the toxic pills which carry the logo of the phone app – a favourite with kids.
Buyers can also have them posted to their home via encrypted “dark web” drug markets.
Two teenage girls collapsed in separate incidents in Cumbria last month, with one almost suffering cardiac arrest on the way to hospital.
On one website we found 96 listings for the pills which contain 200g of MDMA – enough to kill. One UK vendor offering 115 pills for £450 wrote: “Pink Dutch pills with STRONG MDMA content. IMPORTANT we recommend taking half if using them for the first time.”
The pills are made in Dutch labs and shipped over by dealers or bought anonymously by users.
Police and charities have warned youngsters to steer clear of them.
Helen Davies of Drug and Alcohol charity Cadas said of the “Snapchat” pills: “We don’t know exactly what they are made of so the effects are unknown.
“New psychoactive substances contain a lot of different chemicals and we don’t know their effects.
“People change chemicals and mix it up with other stuff. They are given names of things that people use every day as a way of attracting young people to use them.
“Just because it’s called Snapchat doesn’t mean it’s anything to do with Snapchat, or that it’s safe.”
Carl Walmsley, a community centre chairman in Mirehouse, Cumbria, where the girls were struck down last month, said: “It truly sickens me that there are people out there willing to risk the health of these vulnerable kids for the sake of making themselves a few quick quid.
“I would like to warn all youngsters not to fall for these innocent-looking tablets.”
Cumbria Police said they were investigating.
Last month the Daily Star Sunday revealed how dealers were targeting kids with branded drugs.
We told how car-branded tablets that killed two teens just weeks apart were being sold in their thousands using Amazon-style dark web drugs markets.
Drake Morgan-Baines, 19, suffered a fatal cardiac arrest and brain seizure after taking a “Tesla pill” at a nightclub in Bristol.
A few weeks earlier Morgan Miller-Smith, 16, died after taking pink “Rolls-Royce tablets” at a Halloween rave in Conwy, North Wales.