COPS WARN ON GHB

Don't leave your drink unattended, don't accept drinks from strangers,
and don't drink alone.

These are a few of the safety tips Montreal police offered on the
weekend as they went bar to bar to warn revellers of the lurking
dangers of the so-called date-rape drug.

About 40 officers handed out pamphlets and coasters at 15 clubs and
pubs in the Gay Village, the Old Port, the West Island and on St.
Laurent Blvd. as part of Quebec's drug awareness week.

Montreal police Constable Benoit Couture said most people have heard
of gamma-hydroxybutyrate but don't realize the prevalence of the
colourless, odourless tranquillizer.

Just a drop slipped into the drinks of unsuspecting bar patrons and
GHB creates conditions ripe for a sexual assault, like multiplying the
symptoms of drunkenness, bringing on unconsciousness, even leading to
seizures, cardiac arrest or coma.

"People are aware of it, but we wanted to wake them up to the fact
this could happen to them," Couture said. "It's not an out-of-control
problem ... but it's something people need to think about."

Many people don't even realize they have ingested the drug, he added,
thinking they just overdid it by drinking too much.

This is why statistics on its prevalence are hard to come by. People
either don't think their drink was spiked or realize only after all
traces have left their body.

GHB also leads to memory loss, which makes it hard for police to
investigate a suspected sexual assault or drugging case.

A 15-year-old girl woke up wrapped in a sheet in a Longueuil motel
room in 2002 with only a memory fragment of four men sexually
assaulting her.

Days later, an 18-year-old John Abbott College student was rushed to
hospital after losing consciousness in a downtown nightclub.

Last summer, six men inexplicably passed out at a South Shore bar. All
showed symptoms of having ingested GHB.

Couture said police may repeat their awareness campaign, but he did
not know when that might happen.