Scariest than Rohypnol (the date rape drug)

[Prosal]

 

Drug Turns Crime Victims Into Zombies

 

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BOGOTA, Colombia (Reuters)

 

 

The last thing Andrea Fernandez recalls before being drugged is holding her newborn baby on a Bogota city bus.

 

Police found her three days later, muttering to herself and wandering topless along the median strip of a busy highway. Her face was badly beaten and her son was gone.

 

Fernandez is just one of hundreds of victims every month who, according to Colombian hospitals, are temporarily turned into zombies by a home-grown drug called scopolamine which has been embraced by thieves and rapists.

 

"When I woke up in the hospital, I asked for my baby and nobody said anything. They just looked at me," Fernandez said, weeping. Police believe her son Diego was taken by a gang which traffics in infants.

 

Colorless, odorless and tasteless, scopolamine is slipped into drinks and sprinkled onto food. Victims become so docile that they have been known to help thieves rob their homes and empty their bank accounts. Women have been drugged repeatedly over days and gang-raped or rented out as prostitutes.

 

In the case of Fernandez, the mother of three was rendered submissive enough to surrender her youngest child.

 

Most troubling for police is the way the drug acts on the brain. Since scopolamine completely blocks the formation of memories, unlike most date-rape drugs used in the United States and elsewhere, it is usually impossible for victims to ever identify their aggressors.

 

"When a patient (of U.S. date-rape drugs) is under hypnosis, he or she usually recalls what happened. But with scopolamine, this isn't possible because the memory was never recorded," said Dr. Camilo Uribe, the world's leading expert on the drug.

 

Scopolamine has a long, dark history in Colombia dating back to before the Spanish conquest.

 

Legend has it that Colombian Indian tribes used the drug to bury alive the wives and slaves of fallen chiefs, so that they would quietly accompany their masters into the afterworld.

 

Nazi "angel of death" Joseph Mengele experimented on scopolamine as an interrogation drug. And scopolamine's sedative and amnesia-producing qualities were used by mothers in the early 20th century to help them through childbirth.

 

Finding the drug in Colombia these days is not hard.

 

The tree which naturally produces scopolamine grows wild around the capital and is so famous in the countryside that mothers warn their children not to fall asleep below its yellow and white flowers. The tree is popularly known as the "borrachero," or "get-you-drunk," and the pollen alone is said to conjure up strange dreams.

 

"We probably should put some sort of fence up," jokes biologist Gustavo Morales at Bogota's botanical gardens, eyeing children playing with borrachero seeds everywhere.

 

"If you ate a few of those, it would kill you."

 

Although scopolamine can be easily extracted from the seeds, experienced criminals hardly ever bother with them, police say.

 

Pure, cheap scopolamine is brought across the border from neighboring Ecuador, where the borrachero tree is harvested for medical purposes, Uribe said. The alkaloid is used legally in medicines across the world to treat everything from motion sickness to the tremors of Parkinson's disease.

 

There are so many scopolamine cases that they usually don't make the news unless particularly bizarre. One such incident recently involved three young Bogota women who preyed on men by smearing the drug on their breasts and luring their victims to take a lick.

 

Losing all willpower, the men readily gave up their bank access codes. The breast-temptress thieves then held them hostage for days while draining their accounts.

 

The U.S. Embassy in Bogota takes scopolamine very seriously and offers staff tips on how avoid being drugged. One piece of advice may seem obvious: Don't let your drinks out of your sight when at a Bogota bar or nightclub.

 

Still, at least three visiting U.S. government employees here have been drugged and robbed over the past two years. Other American victims from time to time appear at the embassy seeking help, still shaking off a scopolamine hangover.

 

"I remember one case, an American reported being drugged," an embassy official said. "He says to his doorman 'Why did you let them walk out with my stuff.' The doorman says, 'Because you told me to.'"

 

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It's also used in other South American countries, particularly in Rio, where it's called "Boa noite Cinderella".

 

Scary stuff indeed.

 

 

 

[Guest]

Jeez, sounds like a dream drug for BGs to use on customers...i hope it never makes it to LOS! Very scary stuff!!!!!

[ALHOLK]

Very scary stuff!!!!!

Even more so as I recall reading that the effective dos is very close yo the lethal dose.

[kojis]

Do you know what drugs they were using in Pattaya when many tourists where drugged and a few (couple?) of them died a few years back. Could it be scopolamine. I'm familia with the drug name but can't place where I heard of it. Sure scary though!

[FreeTime]

Scopolamine has been around for a long time. Used to be commonly known as 'truth serum'. The CIA experimented with the drug in the 1950's. I think they were starting to do LSD testing around this time as well. Has many medical applications apart from the criminal aspect.

 

 

 

 

[chuckwoww]

"One such incident recently involved three young Bogota women who preyed on men by smearing the drug on their breasts and luring their victims to take a lick."

 

Sounds like nasty stuff. Mind you I know some blokes only have to see a tit and they go into a trance that lasts for years.

 

[ALHOLK]

I'm not sure but I don't think it was scopolamine. It could have been a kind of eye drops that was common in such cases in eastern Europe but I have forgotten the name.

[chuckwoww]

The original Mickey Finn was chloral hydrate.

[Julian2]

Scapolamine was the Truth Serum of choice of the bad guys like SMERSH in the Ian Fleming novels if my memory serves me correct, James Bond before special effects.

[FAT_AUSSIE]

I think the BG's where using something like demazapam.

 

could be wrong though.

 

FA...