Program highlights drug problem
Conroe ISD Police Department officials gave a recent presentation to residents of The Woodlands to educate and push for more community awareness about the dangers of synthetic LSD.
Synthetic LSD has made some big waves in Montgomery County in the past year.
Late last year, kids in The Woodlands were reportedly found roaming the streets naked, hallucinating and bathing in public fountains to bring down the fever brought on by the drug. A student from Oak Ridge High School was in a coma for nine days after suffering severe reactions.
But after a 16-year-old honor roll student from Conroe died in The Woodlands this summer after experimenting with the drug during a “texting party,” authorities in Montgomery County have been pushing the word about its dangers.
Officials from the Conroe Independent School District Police Department gave a presentation to residents during a recent Watch Talk Wednesday at the Woodlands Township in an effort to educate and push for more parental and community awareness. The Township sessions often touch on current issues involving local law enforcement.
“When there’s a new drug trend, the schools tend to see them first before the community really knows that it’s happening. So we started to see this early on,” said Sgt. Matthew Blakelock of the Conroe ISD Police Department. “We’ve seen it on several campuses. I don’t think we have an epidemic, but it’s very concerning to us. Unfortunately, it took someone dying. That really got the ball rolling.”
Some parents at the recent session had sons and daughters in college who were affected by synthetic LSD. Cathy Dunne, a resident, has a son enrolled in the University of Wyoming who told her about a synthetic LSD-related death on his campus.
“I didn’t really know about it, so I learned a lot,” Dunne said.
Conroe ISD police have worked with school principals, administrators and educators so that they’re aware of the new drug trend. But beyond public awareness, law enforcement agencies now have a leg-up in the synthetic LSD trade.
Although the drug was illegal on a federal level, it wasn’t in Texas until now. In May, the governor signed a bill that would make possessing even a small amount of synthetic LSD a felony charge. The law, SB 172, is effective Sept. 1.
“I feel a lot better now than I did last year,” said CISD Chief of Police William Harness.
If the threat of death wasn’t enough to deter teenagers and young adults from trying synthetic LSD, law enforcement are hopeful that the risk of a felony record and hard jail time will be a deterrent.
What has made synthetic LSD worrisome to officials is that it’s cheap to make, the materials can be easily purchased online and information to manufacture the hallucinogenic drug is readily available. Although there are typically less than a dozen known cases of synthetic LSD use or distribution at CISD, the potential for the drug to get out of hand with teenagers and young adults has mobilized officials.
“People can easily make it in a garage; people make it all over the place. You just don’t know what you’re getting,” Blakelock said. “Right now, I can do a search and buy as much as I want (online). ...It’s easy money for these folks. It’s scary.”
The drug can be so volatile that the amount of one grain of salt can lead to an overdose, Blakelock said.
“But it’s not the overdose people have to be worried about. It’s just simply taking it that could kill them,” Blakelock said. “They don’t know what it’s mixed with or what’s added to it, and it makes it that much more dangerous.”
Synthetic LSD is known as a “designer drug,” where chemists can tweak the molecular structure or function of the controlled substance. By tweaking molecules and due to the open, unregulated market of “research chemicals,” the potency and side effects can drastically vary between producers and even within a single chemical batch.
“It’s like a Russian roulette. You just don’t know what you’re getting and how much it’s going to take this time for it to be your last,” Harness said.
Synthetic LSD is admittedly a misnomer. All LSD is chemically produced. But synthetic LSD, also known as the “N-Bomb,” is produced by a drug discovered in the last decade known as 25I-NBOMe, not the lysergic acid diethylamide that was first synthesized in the 1930s and traditionally used to make LSD.
Side effects of the drug include elevated heart rate or blood pressure, seizures, paranoia, hallucinations, uncontrollable shaking, damage to heart, muscle or brain tissue, and even death. Severe reactions are not necessarily caused by an overdose, officials said. Because it’s impossible to determine what’s in a particular dose and how an individual may react, a fatal reaction may be caused without overdosing.
Synthetic LSD can either be smoked, ingested and injected depending on whether it’s in a clear liquid or powder form. But it is most commonly taken orally in the form of a tab, a small square sheet of paper with a dose of the drug. The drug can be absorbed through the skin, so touching the drug itself is enough to trigger a reaction.
The drug is particularly marketed to young kids. Images on the synthetic LSD tabs commonly depict cartoon characters like SpongeBob SquarePants, smiley faces and even a dancing bear, which have all been seen in cases at Conroe ISD.
“It’s crazy. It targets junior high, high school and even younger kids,” Blakelock said. “You think about it. If a teenager brings some of this home, and they leave this in their room, and a little brother or sister opens up the packaging — they like to snoop — they’re automatically going to think these are the stickers that you lick and stick on things.”
The tabs are commonly secured in small aluminum foil or plastic bags to avoid dermal contact.
“Parents have to keep their eyes open that their kid can experiment with something like this,” Blakelock said.