Trinidad schools hit by new addictive drug `Molly’

(Trinidad Guardian) “Mol­ly” which is a new ad­dic­tive drug has hit the na­tion’s schools and of­fi­cials of the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion are cur­rent­ly “scram­bling” to get more on it and its ef­fects so that they can deal with the fright­en­ing is­sue.

The news of the drug was on­ly brought to the at­ten­tion of the min­istry’s man­ag­er of the Stu­dent Sup­port Ser­vices Di­vi­sion (SSSD), Pro­fes­sor Den­nis Con­rad yes­ter­day morn­ing. Con­rad said the drug seems to be so ef­fec­tive for the chil­dren that it seems to be the pre­ferred choice of a drug over “herb-like sub­stances.”

Con­rad was speak­ing at yes­ter­day’s me­dia con­fer­ence held at the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion in Port-of-Spain. He gave the as­sur­ance that the SSSD of­fi­cers are ag­gres­sive­ly pur­su­ing “the is­sue of ed­u­cat­ing our stu­dents on the is­sue of sub­stance abuse as well as the im­pli­ca­tions of their be­hav­iour.”

“It is quite a chal­lenge stay­ing on top of things, on­ly this morn­ing (yes­ter­day) I was ad­vised that there is a new drug that is im­pact­ing on our stu­dents…some­thing called Mol­ly,” Con­rad said.

“I have not enough in­for­ma­tion but it is some­thing that’s in­creas­ing­ly pop­u­lar among our stu­dents and might ac­tu­al­ly be re­plac­ing oth­er, herb-like sub­stances,” he added.

Con­rad said the ed­u­ca­tion as­pect of it is crit­i­cal to stay on top of things and to in­form the stu­dents, who, he said are of­ten seek­ing to im­press oth­ers and seek­ing to en­hance their sta­tus in­ap­pro­pri­ate­ly.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia af­ter the con­fer­ence, Con­rad fur­ther dis­closed that cur­rent­ly some so­cial work­ers are “play­ing de­tec­tive.” “This Mol­ly drug is very new and so­cial work­ers and guid­ance of­fi­cers are on guard now. In fact, some so­cial work­ers are play­ing de­tec­tive in an at­tempt to stay ahead of the stu­dents.”

Con­rad, in as­sur­ing that guid­ance of­fi­cers and so­cial work­ers will be placed in every school through­out T&T, said in the very near fu­ture the SSSD will be ad­dress­ing par­ents and the pub­lic at large on this is­sue.

Ac­cord­ing to a CNN re­port, Mol­ly is a drug that is “pure” MD­MA (The drugs fre­quent­ly found in Mol­ly are Methy­lone, MD­PV, 4-MEC, 4-MMC, Pent­e­drone and MePP), which is the ac­tive in­gre­di­ent in Ec­sta­sy. MD­MA was orig­i­nal­ly de­vel­oped as a med­ica­tion to treat de­pres­sion.

But, the CNN re­port stat­ed that to­day’s Mol­ly is most of­ten not MD­MA: “In the past few years, the drug has be­come a tox­ic mix­ture of lab-cre­at­ed chem­i­cals, ac­cord­ing to the US Drug En­force­ment Ad­min­is­tra­tion.”

The lab-cre­at­ed chem­i­cals mim­ic the ef­fects of MD­MA; most of them are cen­tral ner­vous sys­tem stim­u­lants that cause eu­phor­ic highs. They can al­so cause a rapid heart­beat, high blood pres­sure, blood ves­sel con­stric­tion and sweat­ing, and they can pre­vent the body from reg­u­lat­ing tem­per­a­ture. Some of the chem­i­cals have been re­port­ed to cause in­tense, pro­longed pan­ic at­tacks, psy­chosis and seizures.

Af­ter they wear off, the chem­i­cals can cause dev­as­tat­ing de­pres­sion. Sev­er­al of these com­pounds have caused deaths.