Yes, it's deja vu all over again. Please bear with me. I'm trying to see if it gets into the Mail Archive on this pass.
Stephen ------- Forwarded message follows ------- From: Self <[email protected]> To: TIPS <[email protected]> Subject: Date rape drugging Date sent: Mon, 14 Nov 2011 23:19:58 -0500 A new "DAWN report" from the US Department of Health appears to confirm fears that date-rape drugging is a widespread phenomenon and a serious risk for young women. In their report, they use the general term "intentional poisoning" to cover cases where drugs have been deliberately used to cause harm or to prevent a person from defense against another crime (e.g. rape). According to statistics they compiled from visits to emergency departments in the USA, almost 15,000 were cases of deliberate poisoning, amounting to 32% of all drug-related visits to emergency departments. Nearly 2/3 of those classified as intentionally poisoned were women. As for the drugs involved, 60% were unidentified. The initial press report of this study (USA Today at http://tinyurl.com/7s8u43g ) uses it to emphasize the widespread nature of this practice, noting "According to the data, about 60 percent of these cases occurred after someone surreptitiously slipped a drug into the victim's drink.". They also say "such poisonings have been implicated in the rapes of an estimated 3 million American women, although in reality that figure could be considerably higher." This is disturbing stuff. Yet I find it curious that the experience in the UK seems to be strikingly different. In one report (Hughes et al, 2007) of emergency department admissions in Wales, they studied cases of alleged drink spiking over the past year and analysed urine samples, of which 19% tested positive for "drugs of misuse". The drugs identified were amphetamine, cocaine, and morphine. None involved traditional date-rape drugs. They concluded "Most patients allegedly having had a spiked drink test negative for drugs of misuse. The symptoms are more likely to be a result of excess alcohol." A reader's comment (Al-Jafari, 2007) was more pointed. He said: "The study of alledged victims of drink 'spiking' by Hughes et al raises a few issues not addressed in their paper. I note that of the 8 patients who tested positive for drugs of misuse, not a single one tested positive for a tradition 'date rape' drug such as Ketamine, Rohypnol or GHB. One possible explanation is that the drugs, including amphetamines, ecstasy, cocaine and opiates, were knowingly taken by the patients. On realising that they were suffering from ill effects, rather than admitting that they had knowingly taken illicit substances for fear of repercussions, they may have used 'spiking' as an excuse. Another study (Greene et al, 2007) analyzed blood and urine samples of 78 participants, mostly young women. All had presented at an inner city London emergency department claiming to have been the victim of drink spiking. Alcohol was detected in most cases, and in 60% of cases indicated significant intoxication. Sedative drugs were detected in only 3% of participants. They concluded, "Use of sedative drugs to spike drinks may not be as common as reported in the mainstream media. A large number of study participants had serum ethanol concentrations associated with significant intoxication; the source (personal over-consumption or deliberate drink spiking) is unclear." A third, a review paper (Burgess et al, 2009), comments, "There is a stark contrast between heightened perceptions of risk associated with drug-facilitated sexual assault (DFSA) and a lack of evidence that this is a widespread threat." A news article in _The Telegraph_ (http://tinyurl.com/yjlh6hj ) on the research explicitly quotes one of the researchers as calling drink spiking "an urban legend" and that "police have found no evidence that rape victims are commonly drugged with such substances". Finally, an Australian study (Quigley et al, 2009) examined the situation at a Perth hospital, and reported "We did not identify a single case where a sedative drug was likely to have been illegally placed in a drink..Drink spiking with sedative or illict drugs appears to be rare". A news report on their study is at http://tinyurl.com/7eb58wj So here's the question. Is date-rape drugging largely a myth, as these UK and one Australian paper suggest, or is it a real and serious problem, as the recent USA DAWN report indicates? Some possibilities: 1) Is it a time difference? The UK studies were reported in 2007; the DAWN report in 2011. Greene doesn't say (in the abstract anyway) when the data were collected, but Hughes says 2004, and DAWN, 2009. Yet five years seems a rather implausibly short time for the situation to evolve from myth to reality. 2) is it a difference in national character? Are Americans poisoners, and the Brits dissemblers? Possibly, I'd say, but unlikely. 3) Is it a difference in methodology? DAWN indicates that a case is considered to be "intentional poisoning" when "A patient´s ED [emergency department] chart indicates that she or he was deliberately drugged by another person with the intent of causing harm (e.g., drug-facilitated sexual assault)." They also say that "It should be noted that, within these cases, toxicology tests may not always be conducted.". If not based on toxicology, how does the information about 'deliberately poisoned" get to the patients' charts? They do not say explicitly, but most likely, the information is obtained through self-report. On the other hand, the UK and Australian results were based on blood and urine analysis, a more objective source of evidence than self- report. And given that most of the drugs claimed to have been used in the DAWN cases were unidentified and none of those identified included any of the standard date-rape ones, I'm more persuaded by the urban legend claim than the clear and present danger one. As campaigns to educate young women about the danger of leaving drinks unattended is a widespread phenomenon on university campuses, the issue is a critical one. Are these warnings a well-founded response to highly risky behaviour, or are we scaring the bejezus out of students with an urban legend which has no more validity than the one about razor blades in Halloween candy? Stephen References Burgess, A (2009). Embodying uncertainty? Understanding heightened risk perception of drink "spiking". British Journal of Criminology, 49, 848-862. [abstract at http://bjc.oxfordjournals.org/content/49/6/848.abstract ] Quigley, P. et al (2009). Prospective study of 101 patients with suspected drink spiking. Emergency Medicine Australasia, 21, 223-28. [free text at http://tinyurl.com/7l7sb2k ] Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, Center for Behavioral Health Quality and Statistics. (November 3, 2011). The DAWN Report: Drug-Related Emergency Department Visits Attributed to Intentional Poisoning. Rockville, MD. [free at http://oas.samhsa.gov/2k11/DAWN040/WEB_DAWN_040_HTML.pdf Hughes, H. et al (2007). A study of patients presenting to an emergency department having had a "spiked drink". Emergency Medicine Journal, 24, 89-91. [free text at http://emj.bmj.com/content/24/2/89.full Greene, s. et al (2007). What's being used to spike your drink? Alleged spiked drink cases in inner city London. Postgraduate Medical Journal, 83, 754-758. [abstract at http://pmj.bmj.com/content/83/986/754.abstract Al-Jafari, S. (2007). Letter: 'Spiked' drink or voluntary drug use? http://tinyurl.com/6ork6b2 -------------------------------------------- Stephen L. Black, Ph.D. Professor of Psychology, Emeritus Bishop's University Sherbrooke, Quebec, Canada e-mail: sblack at ubishops.ca --------------------------------------------- --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: [email protected]. To unsubscribe click here: http://fsulist.frostburg.edu/u?id=13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df5d5&n=T&l=tips&o=14183 or send a blank email to leave-14183-13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df...@fsulist.frostburg.edu
