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Killer cocktail of prescription drugs, narcotics haunts Goa coastline
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Separate box # 1 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Deaths of foreign tourists in Goa October 2003 01 November 2003 05 December 2003 14 January-February 2004 18 (Source: Goa Police, Foreigners' Branch) ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Killer cocktail of prescription drugs, narcotics haunts Goa coastline By Frederick Noronha & Ashley do Rosario PANJIM, March 12, 2004 Goa's golden beaches are seeing a deadly cocktail of drugs, politics and crime combine to kill 38 foreigners who dropped by here in the past five months, 32 of them in the peak rave season from December-February alone. Police officials play down the role of drugs in these deaths. But all evidence indicates a key link. The small state of 1.4 million has slowly, meanwhile, been waking up to the reality that a killer-cocktail of medicines available in neighbourhood pharmacies are becoming the new mantra to attain a sometimes-lethal high. "Only one death can be (definitely) attributed to drug abuse," Deputy Inspector General Muktesh Chander told SAHARA in an interview here. He was referring to the case of Frenchman Borgnat Fabrice Thierry Nicolas (30), found with an empty syringe lying next to the dead body. To explain the string of foreigner deaths, the senior official hinted that many visitors didn't have an "impressive medical history" even before landing in Goa. "Many of them are low-budget tourists and live in extremely un-hygienic and unhealthy conditions," he said, suggesting that this could be a reason for the deaths of the surprisingly high number. But others disagree sharply. "You could say roughly 30% of the foreigner deaths are linked to drugs," acknowledges a knowledgeable source at the Government-run Goa Medical College, speaking on condition of anonymity. "I'm saying that drugs are being sold at the instance of the police. The police have become the biggest narcotic traders... of course, not all the police. I said this on the floor of the House," charges Goa Pradesh Congress(I) Committee vice-president and spokesperson Jeetendra Deshprabhu. This businessman-politician whose family held the Portuguese title of Viscount of Pernem -- a coastal rustic paradise in Goa's extreme north, adjoining Maharashtra -- recently raised an Assembly question over foreigner deaths in the area, part of which he currently represents as legislator. In reply, the government listed five who died in this small taluka between August 2003 and January 2004. They were Martin Carlo (Italian, 38), Boulo Francois Xavier (French, 23), Andreas Rindt (Austrian, 44), Nigel Wills (British, about 50-55 years), and a suspected suicide case Miss Karina Puntus (Austrian, 27). This covers just one of Goa's 11 talukas, albeit one who's tourism scene has got more closely involved with the drug-scene. Autopsy reports presented in the Goa legislative assembly mostly kept the cause of death "reserved" pending chemical analysis in the Pernem cases. Viscera was preserved. "My question was answered in a grossly ambiguous manner," complains Deshprabhu, in an interview with SAHARA. In many cases, the mystery remains. Goa still lacks its own State Forensic Laboratory. Earlier, police paid between Rs 300 to 500 to get tests done at Kalina, Mumbai. Now, the tests are done gratis at the Central Forensic Lab in Hyderabad. But, as one insider told this newspaper, "we get step-motherly treatment there". Qualitative and quantitative analysis of narcotics or alcohol is not adequately done, and only the substance present is mentioned. This is insufficient to make a point in law, often times. Others too voice concern over what's happening. "The narcotics link is very significant (to the foreigner deaths), but they (the authorities) are not admitting it," says journalist Devika Sequeira, bureau chief in Goa of the Bangalore-based Deccan Herald, a senior Goa journalist who has been tracking this story the closest. She adds: "Often, all the signs -- like pulmonary and brain edema (fluid accumulation and swelling of lungs and brain) -- are there, indicating that the deaths were due to drug overdose." Sequeira's persistent follow-ups on this issue have drawn the attention of London journalists, eager to get the story of what's happening to their nationals holidaying here. Lawyers of one of those convicted in the UK for smuggling narcotics disguised in rose-water bottles put out eager public appeals via the Internet to get details from her, and Sequeira says a Scotland Yard team too had been in email contact wanting to visit Goa to study the situation here. Goa claims to get 2 million visitors each year, the bulk of whom are desi. Roughly one-in-ten are foreigners, flying in mainly aboard the direct 584 Euro charter flights expected during the October 2003-May 2004 fair-weather season. Besides the warm sunshine, good food and friendly atmosphere, cheap drugs have long been a lure drawing a certain segment of the Western visitor to Goa. Drugs made their entry here with the 'hippies way back in the 'sixties. But, two trends have cropped up of late. Rave parties caught on in Goa in a big way, with one brand of music even being named after this place -- called 'Goa Trance'. This commercialised and cloned-manifold to speedily replicate the earlier 'alternate' culture. Today, rave-type events get sponsored by liquor majors and is also advertised heavily in the local media, particularly at peak season. Secondly, this state took time to wake up to the fact that prescription medicines were being used to hit a new high. Ketamine, one of the club drugs, is a powerful hallucinogen used as an animal tranquilizer by veterinarians. The US-based National Institute on Drug Abuse says liquid Ketamine was developed in the early 1960s as an anaesthetic for surgeries, and used on the battlefields of Vietnam. One generation later, it was back to haunt a new breed of travellers following the trail of those who came to this then-remote locale, ironically, to escape from the Vietnam War through the flower-power movement. Powdered Ketamine emerged as a recreational drug in the 1970s, and was known as "Vitamin K" in the 1980s. It resurfaced in the 1990s rave scene as "Special K." Special K is a powder. The drug is usually snorted, but is sometimes sprinkled on tobacco or marijuana and smoked. Special K is frequently used in combination with other drugs, such as ecstasy, heroin or cocaine. Psychedelic effects are produced quickly by low doses (25-100 mg) of Ketamine. Higher doses (1 gram or more) can cause convulsions and death. Strangely, a 10 ml vial costs just over a hundred rupees! "My god, it was available everywhere," says Jawaharlal Henriques, a medico who treats a number of foreigners in Goa's hippy-capital of Anjuna some 15 kms from here. Henriques is concern over narcotics sits uneasily with his open advocacy for legalising rave parties as a source for economic income for the area. In March 2003, reports reaching here said three men had been sentenced by London's Kingston-upon-Thames Crown Court for illegally importing Ketamine from Anjuna village in Goa to the UK. They were identified as Richard Widger (Briton), Bruno Veiga (Portuguese) and Marco Siddi (Italian). Ketamine was being allegedly smuggled in 500 ml bottles of rose-water. In a short while, a legal firm from London claiming to represent one of the convicts wrote back publicly enquiring about the source for media reports quoting the price of Ketamine in Goa. In February 2003, Customs sources at Goa's Dabolim airport said they seized 21.5 litres of Ketamine being smuggled by three Italians -- Julio Conte, Serena Discalzio and Julia Gulpurk, in a case which seems to have gone wholly unreported here. (Joint Commissioner of Customs Patni told SAHARA that his office had written to Central authorities requesting that Ketamine be included in the schedule under the Narcotics Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act. At present this misused medicine is not considered a narcotic, leaving a vital loophole. Panjim-based prominent vet Gustav Pinto told this paper that Ketamine was formerly used on cats -- "we anyway don't have many monkeys (being treated) in Goa" -- but now it's not used much.) In mid-September 2003, some 17.5 litres of Ketamine was nabbed from a Spaniard, Martinez Liano. Reports surfacing in the local media at that time claimed that a 23-year-old woman, believed to be his wife, had been founded dead, from a suspected Ketamine overdose, though a local doctor had certified her death as being due to "natural causes". Following the surfacing of these cases, some officials have got tough. Goa deputy director of the Food & Drugs Administration P K Jain told SAHARA he "It's apparent that abuse (of Ketamine) is greater than the genuine medical use. Rules prescribe it must be sold only on a doctor's prescription, against a cash memo. Medical stores are within their rights to stock it. But it appears that bulk unaccounted sales are taking place." Says blue-coat clad pharmacist Raj Vaidya: "We hear it used to be pretty bad, and are very happy about the clamp-down." Vaidya is secretary of the Voluntary Health Association of Goa and someone who's built up a reputation as a concerned health professional. He says it's not just Ketamine that has been getting misused, but also the light-opiate pain-killer Fortwin and related products. This stranger-than-fiction story would however be incomplete if the role of politicians in the sordid drama is not mentioned. One local ruling BJP politician has faced repeated charges of being behind organising the raves, and ensuring these are not blocked -- for noise-pollution, or on any other grounds -- by the authorities. In the late 'nineties, state-level politicians' aides have been involved in a bitter battle for control of the North Goa rave scene, leading to the story exploding dramatically on the front-pages of the local press. Former Goa Speaker Tomazinho Cardoso, ambivalent towards tourism's impact inspite of earlier representing the famed coastal tourism-dependent Calangute constituency, explains the pressures on politicians. The author of a play on tourism called 'Movall Vikh' (Sweet Poison), Cardozo narrates how he raised the issue of the impact of rave-tourism on the villagers of Anjuna. "(Congress MLA) Chandrakant Chodankar, the very next day, sent a bus-load of women to plead how they were dependent on the parties (noisy night-long affairs, with well-documented open scenes of drug-taking). But when I asked the women how many of their children were actually completing their studies, they admitted to a huge drop-out problem there (due to the distractions)," he says. Oddly, a fictional book called 'Gates of Fire' by Ellwyn Chamberlain paints Goa to be a drug-filled paradise, where police and politicians have a good nexus with mafia barons. Life imitating art, or just the reality that fiction too can sometimes be rather perceptive? (ENDS) ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Separate box # 2 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Who was Cleo Odzer? ------------------ This is yet yet another story from the colourful yet pathos-filled North Goa coastline that reads stranger than fiction. Cleo Odzer, a young American Jewess, rode down into Goa via the overland bus she boarded in Athens six weeks earlier. It was September 1975, and the turmoil in Iran and Afghanistan were yet to disrupt Europe's land route to India. But at that time too, there were beaches where the "parties are". To cut a long story short, she was a reluctant entrant into the Anjuna drug scene. After a "love affair with Goa", she explains in her book 'Goa Freaks: My Hippy Years in India' (Bluemoon Books, New York, 1995) what went on in this small coastal village then... and does now, though in a different form. To finance their "astounding appetites" for cocaine, heroin, and hashish, the Goa Freaks spent each monsoon season acting as drug couriers. Soon, Odzer too is running her own 'scams' -- couriering drugs from here to Canada, Australia and the US. She almost saw herself die of drugs in Goa. She returned to the US in 1980, and earned a PhD in anthropology with her dissertation on prostitution in Thailand ('Patpong Sisters: An American Woman's View of the Bangkok Sex World', 1994). Later, she even worked for Daytop, a drug rehabilitation organisation in New York. As fate would have it, she returned to Goa earlier this decade... only to die here. Suspectedly, of drugs. (ENDS) -- ------------------------------------------------------------------- March 2004 | Frederick Noronha, Freelance Journalist Su Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa | Goa India 0091.832.2409490 or 2409783 1 2 3 4 5 6 | ---------------------------------------- 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 | Email fred at bytesforall.org 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 | Writing with a difference 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 | ... on what makes *the* difference 28 29 30 31 | http://www.bytesforall.org ------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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