“So you will get people smashing through windows or running through traffic as they are hallucinating because they think the walls are possessed and they throw themselves off a balcony.”
A drug which sends users into a paranoid frenzy where they act like zombies and bite the flesh off strangers faces is widely available in Australia and costs as little as $7.50 a hit.
Called flakka, but known on the street as ‘gravel’ and by chemists as alpha-PVP, the terrifying hallucinogen has earned a reputation as one of America’s scariest drugs – and it’s being synthesised in China and shipped in the kilograms to Australia.
Users can order the drug online and have it delivered to their mailbox the next day, or find an synthetic alternative in their local sex shop shelves – with no understanding of its dosage or contents.
Tyren Edwards, National Chief Scientist at Safe Work Laboratory, told Daily Mail Australia flakka was easier to get a hold of than methamphetamine in Australia.
‘Methamphetamine is harder to get hold of than flakka in Australia, it’s definitely out there … (but) you can only judge it on the seizures of synthetics which are hardly ever reported.’
Mr Edwards said as little as six grains of flakka was enough to send a user into a chemical state of oblivion, and could result in death in just 10 minutes.
He said the drug could be manufactured for just $0.75 a hit.
Videos of flakka users in the US show people writhing on the ground and screaching, hiding from non-existent gunman, running naked through city streets, trying to have sex with a tree and claiming they area God.
Adelaide forensic toxicologist Andrew Leibie, who has recorded positive tests in Australian workers to flakka and who has evidence of the drug turning up in post mortems, said the drug is being sold in places like Newcastle and Wollongong.
‘The problem with alpha-PVP is that it’s a mix of a potent hallucinogen like LSD with a potent stimulant like ice. They are at the same time extremely aggressive and extremely frightened,’ Mr Leibie said
So you will get people smashing through windows or running through traffic as they are hallucinating because they think the walls are possessed and they throw themselves off a balcony.
‘On its own LSD can be a pleasant hallucinogenic with very strong visions, but if you combine that with ice you get the euphoria and aggression that goes with it.
‘Flakka is that it has not been strictly illegal, because it’s a new drug developed in China most likely by a 19-year-old on a computer.’
‘They sell it over the internet and it’s inexpensive because there are virtually no middle men.’
