A popular children's toy found to contain a chemical that the human body turns into popular date rape drug GHB has been banned in three states, and is being recalled by its Melbourne creator. Believe it or not, it was not Baby's First Frat Party Keg or the Easy-Bake VIP Club Cake Oven.
Bindeez, an award-winning craft toy, has colourful beads that are joined together to create designs and sprayed with water to fix them. The company yesterday ordered a nationwide recall of the Chinese-made product, saying a chemical had been substituted for original non-toxic glue without the company's knowledge. The body metabolises the substance into gamma-hydroxy butyrate. Three children have been admitted to hospital in the past 10 days after ingesting the toy's beads.
I really dug my Legos and G.I. Joe figures, but having something like "magic beads" would have made my childhood infinitely more intense. Playing "doctor" would have been replaced with playing "club promoter" or "frat boy".
2. Drukqs ("afx237 v7" / "gwarek2" - Aphex Twin)
Rubber Johnny
3. New Drukqs Are Needed
A Florida sheriff's bulletin warned of purported new drug that comes from human waste.
The inhalant called "Jenkem", allegedly causes hallucinations and a euphoric high. The bulletin noted Jenkem users dislike its sewagey taste, which can last for days. That's because Jenkem's active ingredients are urine and fecal matter, hence its street names like "Butthash" and "Fruit from Crack Pipe".
This, of course, is total bullshit.
As the story goes, Jenkem originated in Africa and other third world countries by fermenting raw sewage to create a gas which is inhaled to achieve a high. The fecal matter and urine are placed in a bottle or jar and covered most commonly with a balloon. The container is then placed in a sunny area for several hours or days until fermented. The contents of the container will separate and release a gas, which is captured in the balloon. Inhaling the gas is said to have a euphoric high similar to ingesting cocaine but with strong hallucinations of times past.
Once ingested the onset of the high takes approximately 10 seconds with the most severe hallucinations happening in approximately 20 minutes. Alleged accounts indicate that the subject immediately passes out after ingesting the gas then regains a magical/hallucinogenic state within seconds of regaining consciousness. The high has been described by subjects as a feeling of "being out of it" and "talking to dead people". Some claim the feeling lasted for several hours or even days.
While the police informational bulletin about Jenkem was widely circulated, evidence that Jenkem use is a real or a significant phenomenon anywhere in the world is scant. Descriptions of Jenkem starting appearing in the press in the mid-1990s, most of them merely referencing it in passing, and nearly all of them specifically mentioning its use as being unique to street children in Lusaka, the capital city of Zambia. And we all know that info from Zambia is usually ironclad in its integrity.
The earliest reference to Jenkem is a 1995 wire report:
People used to wonder why a gang of scruffy pre-teen boys hung around the sewer ponds of the Garden Township here [in Lusaka].
The stench is so overpowering that people literally speed through that stretch of the slum area wondering how those who live close by ever got used to it.
The answer has finally dawned on Zambians, and it has left them pondering the desperation of its street children. The boys at the garden township have discovered "Jenkem," a new way of getting high.
The process is simple. Human excreta is scooped up from the edges of the sewer ponds in old cans and containers which are covered with a polyethylene bag and left to stew or ferment for a week. The contents are then inhaled and the result is a lungful of biogases and a powerful "hit."
Jenkem "huffers" bury their entire face in the ghastly mess, gasping it all in.
"Ba mudala, niyikali kuchila dobo," Mukela Nyambe, a fifth grade drop out, told IPS with teary eyes and a running nose. "Old man, this is more potent than cannabis."
The Drug Enforcement Commission (DEC) says there is nothing they can do about it. It may be a terrible health hazard but is completely legal, as are glue or petrol sniffing, previously the most common way street kids numbed their senses.
At the Lusaka sewage ponds, two teenage boys plunge their hands into the dark brown sludge, gathering up fistfuls and stuffing it into small plastic bottles. They tap the bottles on the ground, taking care to leave enough room for methane to form at the top. A sour smell rises in the hot sun, but the boys seem oblivious to the stench and the foul nature of their task.
They are manufacturing "Jenkem", a disgusting, noxious mixture made from fermented sewage. It is cheap, potent and very popular among the thousands of street-children in Lusaka. When they cannot afford glue or are too scared to steal petrol, these youngsters turn to Jenkem as a way of getting high.
"It lasts about an hour", says one user, 16-year-old Luke Mpande, who prefers Jenkem to other substances.
"With glue, I just hear voices in my head. But with Jenkem, I see visions. I see my mother who is dead and I forget about the problems in my life."
Sniffing sewage is a symptom of the desperate plight of Zambia's street-children. There are thought to be some 75,000 in the country as a whole — a number that has doubled in the past eight years.
Nobody knows exactly where the idea for making Jenkem came from, but it has been used by street-children in Lusaka for at least two years. Nason Banda of the Drug Enforcement Agency is not proud when he says that it is unique to Zambia. He shudders when he sees the boys at the sewage ponds, scavenging for fecal matter to make Jenkem.
"It's unimaginable" he says. "It hits right at the heart to see a human being coming down a level, to be able to dip his hand into a sewage pond, picking out the material and not caring about anything but the feeling of getting high."
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