21-year-old dies after one drop of new synthetic drug at Voodoo Fest
By Naomi Martin, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune
on November 01, 2012 at 9:07 PM, updated November 01, 2012 at 10:55 PM
The best friends had traveled together to music festivals all over the country. Sometimes, they would take drugs. But they had one rule: Never accept drugs from strangers.
But on Saturday, after a night drinking vodka-Red Bulls at Voodoo Festival at City Park, 21-year-old Clayton Otwell, of Little Rock, Ark., apparently forgot his rule, said Mandie Newell, his best friend and companion at the festival.
A stranger, wanting to repay Otwell for helping find his cell phone, offered Otwell a free dose of 25-I, a new synthetic hallucinogenic drug. As Newell watched, her friend knelt and the stranger plopped a single drop from a vial into Otwell's nose.
Otwell immediately started babbling incoherently, Newell said. She got him to the medical tent at the festival, but within 30 minutes, he had a seizure and never regained consciousness. Taken to Tulane University Hospital, he was placed on life support Saturday night; he died Tuesday.
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Otwell was one of at least three people treated for 25-I overdoses during Voodoo Festival weekend, one local emergency room doctor said, noting that friends of all three had indicated it was their first time taking the drug.
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The drug, sometimes called "N-Bomb" for its chemical composition 25I-NBOMe, is an extremely potent synthetic substance that the Drug Enforcement Administration considers analogous to LSD and therefore illegal in all 50 states, said DEA Special Agent Bob Bell.
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It's hard to pinpoint when 25-I first appeared on the scene, but 2012 has seen an uptick in 25-I-related overdoses and deaths, Bell said. Two teenagers in Grand Forks, N.D. and a 16-year-old boy in Sacramento, Calif., are believed to have died from 25-I overdoses earlier this year, DEA officials said.
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By Naomi Martin, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune
on November 01, 2012 at 9:07 PM, updated November 01, 2012 at 10:55 PM
The best friends had traveled together to music festivals all over the country. Sometimes, they would take drugs. But they had one rule: Never accept drugs from strangers.
But on Saturday, after a night drinking vodka-Red Bulls at Voodoo Festival at City Park, 21-year-old Clayton Otwell, of Little Rock, Ark., apparently forgot his rule, said Mandie Newell, his best friend and companion at the festival.
A stranger, wanting to repay Otwell for helping find his cell phone, offered Otwell a free dose of 25-I, a new synthetic hallucinogenic drug. As Newell watched, her friend knelt and the stranger plopped a single drop from a vial into Otwell's nose.
Otwell immediately started babbling incoherently, Newell said. She got him to the medical tent at the festival, but within 30 minutes, he had a seizure and never regained consciousness. Taken to Tulane University Hospital, he was placed on life support Saturday night; he died Tuesday.
...
Otwell was one of at least three people treated for 25-I overdoses during Voodoo Festival weekend, one local emergency room doctor said, noting that friends of all three had indicated it was their first time taking the drug.
...
The drug, sometimes called "N-Bomb" for its chemical composition 25I-NBOMe, is an extremely potent synthetic substance that the Drug Enforcement Administration considers analogous to LSD and therefore illegal in all 50 states, said DEA Special Agent Bob Bell.
...
It's hard to pinpoint when 25-I first appeared on the scene, but 2012 has seen an uptick in 25-I-related overdoses and deaths, Bell said. Two teenagers in Grand Forks, N.D. and a 16-year-old boy in Sacramento, Calif., are believed to have died from 25-I overdoses earlier this year, DEA officials said.
...
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