FED: Warning of potential shift to use of killer drug

AAP General News (Australia)
04-07-2008
FED: Warning of potential shift to use of killer drug

By Karlis Salna

CANBERRA, April 7 AAP - The death of a 20-year-old Canberra man from the illegal designer
drug PMA has raised concerns among doctors of a possible shift in drug use towards the
"more lethal" substance.

The man, who was recently admitted to Canberra's Calvary Hospital with a suspected
overdose of MDMA, died 10 days after ingesting paramethoxyamphetamine, which goes under
the street name PMA, Death or Dr Death, and which is often passed off as ecstasy.

He suffered kidney and liver failure as a result of taking the drug.

The death of the man, believed to be the first case of fatal PMA poisoning in the ACT,
has raised concerns of greater use of the dangerous substance because of reduced availability
of other recreational drugs.

Calvary Hospital's director of intensive care Paul Lamberth, in a letter to the Medical
Journal of Australia, warns the reduced availability of pseudoephedrine, used in the production
of other illegal drugs such as ice and speed, may encourage greater use of PMA.

Dr Lamberth said the use of pseudoephedrine in illicit methamphetamine manufacture
had been reduced as a result of retail restrictions under the Pharmacy Guild of Australia's
"pseudo watch" program, introduced in 2005.

"However, PMA is made from the readily available and unmonitored precursor, anethole,"

Dr Lamberth warns.

"A market shift in drug use towards the more lethal PMA because of reduced availability
of pseudoephedrine would be a cause for concern."

Dr Lamberth also warns that because PMA had a slower onset of action than MDMA, there
is a risk of additional doses being taken while users await the drug's effects.

The effects of PMA include an increase in energy, visual hallucinations, a general
change in consciousness, pupil dilation and increased blood and body temperature.

It can also increase blood pressure and pulse rate, cause laboured breathing, nausea
and vomiting as well as convulsions, coma and death.

There have been a number of highly-publicised deaths related to the drug in recent
years, including that of 20-year-old Sydney woman Annabel Catt, who died of a PMA overdose
after attending a concert in Sydney in 2007.

It is also reported that an Adelaide man and a Sydney teenager died after taking the
drug in October 2004.

Six people reportedly died after taking the drug in South Australia between September
1995 and January 1996.

AAP kms/rl/sp

KEYWORD: PMA

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