WEED WHACK

Forget Ecstasy and Crystal Meth. the New Drug Sending Kids to
Hospital Is a Plant That Could Be Growing in Your Backyard

Western Tech's bad trip started a few weeks ago, when a newly arrived
Grade 12 student told some classmates about his amazing discovery --
a free drug that could launch them on the kind of hallucinogenic
journey that Doors singer Jim Morrison used to take in the desert
after eating peyote buttons.

Things did not go as planned. Instead, as many as a dozen students
ended up in hospital, a few of them "near death," in the words of
vice-principal Tammy Paulen, who found herself caught up in an
institutional crisis she could never have imagined.

"This was a very, very disturbing experience," Ms. Paulen says. "We
were shocked."

For Western Technical-Commercial School, a beautiful old high school
set in the winding, tree-lined streets of the High Park area, the
events of the past few weeks have provided an unforgettable lesson in
both student dynamics and the medical horrors of jimson weed, a plant
known as far back as the time of Shakespeare.

The first sign of trouble was a phone call to Ms. Paulen from a
parent during the first week of November. The parent said her son was
in hospital, seriously ill from something he had eaten at school. As
Ms. Paulen quickly learned, this wasn't the only student who had
fallen ill. At first, some of the students tried to pass off their
illness as a case of bad Halloween candy. But as several of them
spiralled into life-threatening medical crises, the truth finally
emerged -- they had taken a drug that the new student had brought to
school. The students referred to it as "Datura." Ms. Paulen soon
learned what they were talking about: Datura stramonium, also known
as jimson weed, thorn apple and angel's trumpet.

Jimson weed, which has caused hundreds of poisonings in North America
- -- at least five other teens in southern Ontario have been
hospitalized since September -- has a deadly combination of attributes.

It grows as a weed through much of the United States and Canada
(including in the parks, gardens and alleyways that surround Western
Tech) and is extremely toxic. Even so, countless people have tried
it, lured by its reputation as the poor kid's hallucinogen. Those who
take it often experience symptoms that include hallucinations,
disorientation and loss of bowel control. Worst-case scenarios
include cardiac or respiratory arrest.

"It is not a pleasant high," says Kumar Gupta, a Toronto coroner and
addiction expert. "Most people who take jimson weed don't remember
much about it. They get the story from their friends, who say, 'God,
you were awful. And you pooed your pants.' "

Exactly what happened at Western Tech (and at other Toronto schools
where students may have experimented with jimson weed) is the subject
of an ongoing probe by school officials, who find themselves in a
position similar to that of legendary Woodstock figure Wavy Gravy as
he warned the crowd to stay away from the brown acid.

"We want to get the word out fast," Western Tech principal Audley
Salmon says. "We want people to know what they're dealing with."

Mr. Salmon says there is no way of knowing exactly how many students
actually experimented with the drug. "We can't put a number on it.
The reported cases can be added up on two hands, but we have no idea
how many didn't get reported. It's not the kind of thing that kids
want to talk to their parents about."

Western Tech is apparently not the only Toronto school where students
have experimented with jimson weed, or at least considered it.
Students at nearby Humberside Collegiate Institute, for example, said
they had heard of students who had some, but weren't sure if they had
tried it. "It's going around," one student said.

After questioning students, Ms. Paulen and Mr. Salmon came to the
conclusion that the jimson-weed experiment was sparked by a student
who had heard about the drug at another school, then transferred to
Western Tech, where he began evangelizing about a free drug that
offered a peyote-style high. He found a receptive audience, and in
the first week of November, several students became the High Park
area's first known jimson-weed test pilots.

The drug's effects have been documented many times (the first known
case dates back to 1676). In 1995, the Arizona Republic reported the
case of five young men who were rushed to hospital after chewing
jimson weed seeds. The five exhibited alarming symptoms, including
hallucinations that bugs were crawling on their bodies, and that they
were dead and that their body parts had been strewn about the
intensive-care unit.

Police and Western Tech school officials have issued dire warnings
about the drug's miserable high. But like surfers whose ears perk up
at the news of an impending storm that will produce monster waves,
some students tuned out the warning component of the school's
message. "We were like, wow, this is pretty funny," one Grade 12
Western Tech student said this week when he was asked if he had heard
about jimson weed. "They're telling us that now there are free drugs,
and they grow right here in the park. Excellent."

As Ms. Paulen learned in the course of her investigation, some
students were more skeptical than others when they were told about
the new, free drug, and decided to check out jimson weed on the
Internet, where they quickly learned that it was a bad idea. "Those
were the smart ones," Ms. Paulen says. "The others just trusted the
word of their friends."

The police were called in to see if charges could be laid against the
student who supplied the others. News of the poisonings went out to
Western Tech parents and was included on an inter-school bulletin,
warning other teachers and administrators about the perils of jimson weed.

The officer who handled the case, Constable Charles Exton of the 11
Division street crime unit, says jimson weed isn't illegal, since it
isn't listed under the federal Narcotic Control Act. "We can't go
after anyone for trafficking," he says. "But that's what it amounts
to." Constable Exton believes that the student who introduced the
drug to Western Tech may have heard about it on a CSI episode where a
student takes jimson weed, then kills a friend while under its
influence. His research, which included calls to the Ontario Regional
Poison Information Centre, showed him just how easy it is to find
jimson weed. After learning about the plant, he realized that he had
seen it in a neighbour's garden.

"The availability is the problem," he says. "Kids will take anything.
I think we're missing the boat here. People need to know about this."

Although the teens who fell ill are back at school and the one who
introduced jimson weed has been expelled, administrators believe they
face an ongoing task of educating students about the drug's risks.
Dr. Gupta says jimson weed has effects that are almost impossible to
predict. "You'd have to be a pharmacist to use it. It's very risky."

The only good part, he says, is that jimson weed isn't addictive.
"Almost no one does it twice. It isn't like other drugs, where you
feel better. It makes you feel worse."