ABSOLUTE VERMIN
A BRAZEN drug dealer has revealed he mixes MDMA and Meow Meow with rat poison before selling it to unsuspecting Brits at festivals.
The poison in the new drug, called ‘pow’, is said to give users “a little buzz” and gets them “hyperactive”.
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In new documentary Festival Drugs: Meet the Dealers, the BBC Three series showed the law breakers smuggling the potentially lethal pills over the French border in their rectums and trying to sneak it into an event using the same method.
Presenter and investigative journalist Livvy Haydock visited one of the dealers, known as Jacket, to see how he makes the drug.
'IT MAKES IT POTENT'
Jacket, who explained adding the poison makes the drug more potent, said: “'It doesn't worry me. Because - like I said with these things - people are just trying to make ends meet.”
The concoction is also mixed with drug meow meow before being heated in a saucepan to make several thousand pounds worth of the drug.
Rat poisons, which carry warnings not to consume them on packaging, kill rodents by thinning their blood and causing trauma to arteries and veins - which leads to internal bleeding.
The active ingredient in rat poison is brodifacoum. It is used in baits to kill rodents such as mice and rats. It is sometimes referred to as a super-warfarin, because it is longer acting than the drug Warfarin. Warfarin is used to prevent blood clots in people.
Brodifacoum reduces Vitamin K in the body which leads to decreased blood clotting ability. If clotting ability is reduced significantly, bleeding can occur.
POTENTIALLY LETHAL
The amount needed to deliver a fatal dose to a human varies from person to person but around 30 grams of bait would make a child severely ill.
Drug-related deaths in England and Wales are already at their highest level since records began in 1993, according to NAT, although it is unclear what proportion of these are due to drugs.
'PEOPLE ARE TRYING TO MAKE ENDS MEET'
In August, a 17-year-old girl from Oldham died at Leeds festival following a suspected drugs overdose after police said potentially lethal-strength ecstasy pills were being sold on site.
Georgia Jones, 18, and Tommy Cowan, 20, died in May last year after taking MDMA at Mutiny Festival in Portsmouth.
NEWS
And Louella Fletcher-Mitchie, 24, the daughter of Holby City actor John Michie, collapsed and died at Bestival in Dorset in September last year.
Her boyfriend Ceon Broughton, 30, who supplied the drug was convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to eight-and-a-half years in jail in March this year.
All three episodes, the second of which investigates how drug dealers gain access to festivals, are available to watch on the BBC iPlayer now.
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