Trinidad Minister warns: Cookies and brownies being infused with ‘zesser’ pills

(Trinidad Guardian) Watch those “cook­ies” and “brown­ies” in schools. Some in­fused with mar­i­jua­na and Ec­sta­sy pills, known lo­cal­ly as “Zessers”, have been found and are be­ing dis­trib­uted in lo­cal schools, act­ing Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds said yes­ter­day.

Re­ply­ing to Op­po­si­tion ques­tions in Par­lia­ment, Hinds said in­tel­li­gence sources had re­vealed the sit­u­a­tion. He said the “Zess­er” pills, which are a break­down of the crys­tals of the hal­lu­cino­genic/stim­u­lant drug Ec­sta­sy com­pressed in­to a cap­sule, are be­ing cir­cu­lat­ed in the sys­tem.

Ec­sta­sy is the pop­u­lar a name for 3-4 Methyl​ene­dioxy​metham­phet­a­mine, a psy­choac­tive drug pri­mar­i­ly used as a recre­ation­al drug. Ef­fects in­clude al­tered sen­sa­tions, in­creased en­er­gy, em­pa­thy and plea­sure. How­ev­er, it caus­es in­creased heart rate and can cause dry mouth, clenched teeth, blurred vi­sion, chills, sweat­ing, or nau­sea. It can al­so make some users feel anx­ious, con­fused, and para­noid and may dam­age brain cells in­volved in think­ing and mem­o­ry. Oth­er se­vere ef­fects on or­gans have al­so been re­port­ed.

The Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter re­cent­ly warned against “Zess­er” pills which had been not­ed in cir­cu­la­tion lo­cal­ly.

Hinds added: “So far these cook­ies and brown­ies have been seized by law en­force­ment at teenage par­ties and have been sent to the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre for analy­sis. Re­sults are pend­ing,”

He said he didn’t have in­for­ma­tion at hand on the schools where the items were found. He said the Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er is li­ais­ing with the Health Min­istry and ac­tion is be­ing tak­en to en­sure that all sub­stances de­tect­ed in T&T that are not al­ready on the sched­uled Dan­ger­ous Drugs Act will be added. He stressed that Ec­sta­sy and crys­tal meth (metham­phet­a­mine) will be placed on that list.

Hinds urged par­ents to be vig­i­lant against the sub­stances which he said could eas­i­ly be dis­guised in all forms of can­dies that are at­trac­tive to chil­dren. He al­so urged chil­dren to do the “safe, right thing.”

On an­oth­er query, Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh said items which were stored in a San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal ware­house—re­cent­ly plagued by a rat in­fes­ta­tion—will be sani­tised. He as­sured it wasn’t drugs, but rather pa­per tow­els and sim­i­lar items. He said work­ers based at that lo­ca­tion will be test­ed for ill­ness­es which rats trans­mit. The Pub­lic Health De­part­ment will be called in to in­spect whether the rats have mi­grat­ed to oth­er parts of the hos­pi­tal.

Deyals­ingh said if the prob­lem can be traced to any­one with re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for tak­ing pre­ven­ta­tive mea­sures, dis­ci­pli­nary ac­tion would be tak­en. But he said the will to do this is nec­es­sary since the job of per­for­mance ap­praisals in­volved hav­ing for­ti­tude.