Pubdate: Mon, 28 Jun 1999
Source: Houston Chronicle (TX)
Copyright: 1999 Houston Chronicle
Contact:  http://www.chron.com/
Forum: http://www.chron.com/content/hcitalk/index.html

TEEN-AGERS GET HIGH ON COUGH MEDICINE INGREDIENT

FORT WORTH (AP) -- In small doses, it is cough medicine, but in large doses
it is the latest experimental drug for young people.

Police say dextromethorphan is surfacing at parties in the Dallas-Fort
Worth area as an alternative to illegal drugs.

An investigation into drug use at "rave" parties in Dallas led law
enforcement officers to a home in a Fort Worth suburb, where they seized
more than 600 grams of a powder they thought to be ecstasy, an illegal drug
also known as X.

North Richland Hills police were surprised when laboratory results showed
the substance to be dextromethorphan, the main ingredient in dozens of
over-the-counter cold and cough medicines such as Robitussin and Sucrets
Cough Control.

"I have never heard of it," police Sgt. Andy Wallace said.

The 600 grams were enough to make thousands of doses of the drug, also
called DMX, DXM, DM and Robo, police said.

It can cause euphoria and mild hallucinations when taken in doses up to 30
times more powerful than a spoonful of cough medicine, according to people
who have taken it, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram reported.

"I think it's something that has just started recently," said Robyn Weaver,
a Denton-based counselor with the Greater Dallas Council on Alcoholism and
Drug Abuse. "I have noticed it in the 13- and 14-year-old age groups."

She said some stores are considering putting cold medicines behind the
counter because the products are "jumping off the shelves."

After the drug was seized, a 26-year-old man and his 21- year-old wife were
charged with manufacture of a controlled substance -- ecstasy.

Now that tests have shown the powder to be a legal drug, charges against
the couple probably will be dropped, officials said.

The man said he bought dextromethorphan legally on the Internet from a
mail-order chemical supply company.

He said he sometimes gave the substance to friends, although he said he did
not sell it to them. Sometimes they gave him money for the drug as a gift,
he said.

He said he never misrepresented the dextromethorphan as ecstasy.

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