[symple_googlemap title=”Synthetic Drugs” location=”200 block of East Fifth Street, Los Angeles, CA” height=”300″ zoom=”13″]
Nearly 50 people were sickened by what police believe was a bad batch of a synthetic drug in the Skid Row area of downtown Los Angeles, police reported Saturday.
Firefighters and paramedics set up shop around 1 p.m. Friday in the 200 block of East Fifth Street to evaluate multiple people experiencing what police said were likely drug-induced symptoms, according to Sgt. Ed Kinney. Calls for service related to the incident began to slow down around 8 p.m.
As of midnight, about 47 people had been evaluated or treated, Kinney said.
Officers believed those experiencing symptoms of illness had consumed synthetic drugs from the same batch because of the large volume of calls within the same time frame, Kinney said.
“The information from people on the streets is it’s cheap … and they’re willing to risk their health,” he said.
He added the symptoms displayed by patients were similar to the ones associated with PCP, which include excessive sweating and accelerated heart rate.
In April, about 10 people, including a police bicycle officer, were sickened within a 24-hour span in the area of San Pedro and Fifth streets — not far from Friday’s incident — by an unknown substance or intoxicant.
At the time, officers assigned to the area spread the word that it appeared a drug being circulated was making people sick, but authorities didn’t figure out what caused the illnesses and no one was arrested.
— City News Service