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House clears date rape drug bill
Posted
2-7-2000 Washington. The House approved legislation Jan. 31 that would make so-called date rape drugs federally controlled substances. President Clinton is expected to sign the Hillory J. Farias and Samantha Reid Date Rape Drug Prohibition Act, which orders the Justice Department to place the drug gamma hydroxybutyric acid (GHB) on schedule 1 of the Controlled Substances Act. GHB has been implicated in more than 5,000 cases of abuse and 49 deaths, including those of the two teen-agers for whom the bill is named. The bill also would order the listing of GBL, a precursor substance to GHB, as a list 1 chemical, and would make the drug ketamine, which has been implicated in cases of sexual abuse, a schedule 3 controlled substance. "These drugs are available on the Internet," said Rep. Fred Upton, R-Mich. "It has to stop. This bill does that." Final action on the bill was complicated by the fact that while GHB has been abused, it is also in development as a treatment for a form of narcolepsy. That led to a dispute between the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Food and Drug Administration over how it should be treated. The Justice Department wanted to subject improper use of the substance to the most severe penalties, but it could not justify such action where the substance has potential medical uses. The compromise language in the final bill would subject illegal use of GHB to schedule 1 penalties, but would allow the drug to be developed for legitimate purposes. The bill also would require the development of model protocols for training law enforcement personnel in detecting GHB abuse, as well as taking toxicology specimens and victim statements.
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