Still, many Internet consumers appear to be willing to assume that risk. A well-known example is the so-called date-rape drug, GHB (gamma hydroxybutyrate). This chemical became popular among would-be rapists a few years ago. Given to unsuspecting women, it causes a deep sleep.
Even small dosages of GHB, however, can cause comas from which victims never awake. The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration has recorded 71 deaths caused by GHB in the United States alone.
As a result, many countries prohibit the sale of GHB. The United States placed GHB under regulation in 1990 and banned it in March 2000. But the Internet now seems to have become the main promotional vehicle for a related drug that in some ways, is even more dangerous. It's called BD, short for its chemical name, 1,4-butanediol or butylene glycol.
Unbelievably, BD is being falsely pushed as a harmless relaxant or bodybuilding aid. In reality, BD is converted by the body into pure and deadly GHB.
An examination of how BD is promoted on the Web reveals a lot about the global nature of the Internet and its implications for e-commerce.
Evading restrictions
PelchatLabs, based in France and one of the most prominent GHB and BD sources recommended in Internet discussion groups, says it stopped shipping products to the United States in April 2000, and now no longer ships to Canada, Sweden, Finland, Denmark or Argentina.
To get around such restrictions, however, PelchatLabs' home page links to three other Web sites. European Cosmetics Labs and the other two sites do ship to the United States--and even offer free shipping to U.S. addresses.
Each of the three sites sells only two products. European Cosmetics Labs, for instance, sells only "nail polish remover" and "ink stain remover." Even a one-person Internet start-up might seem hopelessly unprofitable with such a limited product line.
A closer inspection of the "nail polish remover," however, reveals the secret. The liquid is 99.99 percent gamma-butyrolactone, a chemical almost identical to BD. The "ink stain remover" is 99.8 percent BD.
European Cosmetics Labs promotes its products as having "NO BITREX." Bitrex is a bitter flavoring added to real nail polish remover to keep people from drinking it. The only reason to advertise "NO BITREX" is to promote BD for human consumption.
The three sites, upon investigation, are not separate from PelchatLabs--but are all related.
All three sites are registered to the same e-mail address at "Shovelcat.com." This domain name is registered to a Daniel Pelchat, who is also the registered administrator of PelchatLabs. ("Pelle chat," literally translated from French to English, means "shovel cat.")
In an e-mail exchange, Pelchat said the sites' Webmaster "is the same for the three companies." He added, "Some of these chemicals draw less attention when shipped separately."
Another site registered to Pelchat, GHBinfo, contains formulae for cooking up GHB at home from separate substances. The site recommends that beginners take 1 gram to 2.5 grams of GHB to start, building up to 4 grams.
Unfortunately for anyone who follows this advice, even small dosages of GHB-related chemicals can be fatal. A study published in the New England Journal of Medicine in January analyzed eight patients who had been admitted to emergency rooms after taking BD. Two of the eight patients died, one after ingesting only 5.4 grams.
The macabre joke about BD is that butylene glycol is a common industrial solvent that can be ordered by legitimate businesses in the United States for about $200 per 55-gallon drum.
PelchatLabs sells its packaged form of BD, called PRO-G, for $140 per 600 grams. That's a markup of about 10,000 percent.
Who says you can't make money on the Internet?
Brian Livingston's Wired Watchdog column appears at CNET News.com every Friday. Do you know of a problem affecting consumers? Send info to tips@BrianLivingston.com. He'll send you a book of high-tech secrets free if you're the first to submit a tip he prints.
Biography
Brian Livingston has published 10 books, including "Windows 2000 Secrets" and "Windows Me Secrets." He has been a contributing editor at PC World, Windows Magazine, InfoWorld and other magazines for more than 10 years. Before his work as an author, Livingston was a management consultant advising financial institutions on computer technologies. In 1991, he
received the Award for Technical Excellence from the National Microcomputer Managers Association for his efforts to develop standards in the computer
industry.
http://www.bodybuilding-fitness-ebooks.com/
and you...
http://www.bodybuilding-fitness-ebooks.com/
wow
honesty of the author who wrote this story... I believe he has
inadvertantly misled people by citing inaccurate information. He
has probably done this innocently enough, due to the great deal
of purely falacious 'facts' promoted by various well meaning fear
mongers on the net.
First of all, on the subject of Pelchatlabs... the company was not
based in France, nor did it have anything to do with that country
from a business standpoint. This is a common mistake made by
people who aren't aware that Canada is not purely an English
speaking country... and one Canadian province in particular is
French. Pelchat labs was based in, operated from, and owned by
a resident of Quebec Canada. Not France.
Secondly, the products sold were purchased legally within
Canada from a Canadian supplier, and the business was
registered with the Canadian tax department. The proprietor
paid taxes from his web-based business to the Quebec and
Canadian goverments. The products were NOT sold to
Canadians, for that reason.
There is no denying the purpose of his products was for the easy
manufacturing of GHB. But, punishing the person who sells the
products for making it is no different than arresting the sales
man at K-Mart who sold the bullets used in the columbine
shooting. There are plenty of people who will use GHB in an
unethical way... but, that doesn't mean that there were and are
no practical uses for GHB, or its precursers as sold by
Pelchatlabs.
Last but not least... GHB does not cause fatal comas. Saying that
GHB overdoses kill people is misleading.... because it implies
that people who use the drug normally, in reasonable amounts...
or even people who maybe take a little more than they should
are likely to end up dead. This is frankly, incorrect. Saying this
is like saying that alcohol is a poison, and that drinking vodka
causes poisoning and risk of death. Although, both claims are
based on real problems associated with extreme excess
consumption of either alcohol or GHB... no one would accuse
Smirnoff vodka of selling a dangerous and deadly product... or
punish a distributor for selling brewery equipment from another
country. Alcohol, when taken is excess can cause alcohol
poisoning, which leads to all the same symptoms of GHB
overdose including coma.... very few people who overdose on
GHB and end up in a "mild" coma die, and most wake up within
2-3 hours, and are fully recovered the next day (roughly 9999
overdoes out of 10,000 fall within this category). Alcohol
poisoning on the other hand can be much more serious, and at
least 0.5% (1 case in 200) result in death.
In both cases, an affected person is much more likely to die from
indirect causes due to their impaired judgement (driving a
vehicle, passing out in a bathtub, drowning in their own vomit,
ect...) than they are from the intoxicating agent itself.
Alcohol producers advertise similar things about their
products... Voldka and Beer is advertised with with wild parties
and college kids having a good time, Baileys and Rum are
advertised as being relaxing and soothing or as an aide to
intimacy. GHB advertising is no more misleading than that. The
affects promoted are accurate, and the claim of safety is equally
truthful providing it is used by consenting adults in safe and
reasonable quantity, in a safe place (not in the drivers seat of a
car, or other dangerous places for a person to be intoxicated).
The DEA made GHB and other drugs illegal for the same
misguided and knee-jerk reasons it had for prohibition of
alcohol in previous decades. The difference now, is that other
more dangerous drugs that should be illegal (and are) are
causing horrible social problems in America. Drugs like crack
cocaine, and crystal meth are terrible, and no one would argue
with the merrits of the DEA led war on them. People now
assume that the DEA wouldn't outlaw a drug if it wasn't bad like
those more common drugs they have been battling for years.
This unfortunately leads well meaning people to write articles
like this. If GHB had been around in the days of prohibition, it
would have caused the same uproar that alcohol prohibition
caused.
In many parts of Europe, GHB is legal. It causes far fewer
deaths, and much lower cases of addiction than alcohol. In
parts of Germany and France, it is used as an anesthetic on
infants, because it is more natural than synthetic drugs and
carries fewer risks of complications.
GHB is so natural a part of the human body, that in fact is the
biggest and most valid reason for it to be illegal.... yet it is the
least often mentioned in stories like this. When a person
overdoses on GHB, it takes less than 4 hours to fully metabolize
from the time of ingestion; In less than 2 more hours from that
point it is totally undetectable in a toxicology report. Even if a
person dies before that 4 hour or the following 2 hour window is
up, it is not traceable 6 hours after ingestion. This makes it a
very dangerous tool for the deviants in society who would use it
to co-erce women into sexually compromising situations... or
someone who wants to commit murder by causing a person to
ingest GHB before they drive, would potentially get away with it
because the result would look like an accident, and the driver
would appear to have been sober and simply was unable to
control the vehicle.
Those are good reasons to make it illegal... I see no reasons to
propagate bad ones... and punish the person who sold the
materials from which to make it!
- Comments on "Chemical cocktails on the Web"
- by jblj April 17, 2006 1:45 AM PDT
- Although I very much respect the positive intentions, and
- Like this Reply to this comment
-
(4 Comments)honesty of the author who wrote this story... I believe he has
inadvertantly misled people by citing inaccurate information. He
has probably done this innocently enough, due to the great deal
of purely falacious 'facts' promoted by various well meaning fear
mongers on the net.
First of all, on the subject of Pelchatlabs... the company was not
based in France, nor did it have anything to do with that country
from a business standpoint. This is a common mistake made by
people who aren't aware that Canada is not purely an English
speaking country... and one Canadian province in particular is
French. Pelchat labs was based in, operated from, and owned by
a resident of Quebec Canada. Not France.
Secondly, the products sold were purchased legally within
Canada from a Canadian supplier, and the business was
registered with the Canadian tax department. The proprietor
paid taxes from his web-based business to the Quebec and
Canadian goverments. The products were NOT sold to
Canadians, for that reason.
There is no denying the purpose of his products was for the easy
manufacturing of GHB. But, punishing the person who sells the
products for making it is no different than arresting the sales
man at K-Mart who sold the bullets used in the columbine
shooting. There are plenty of people who will use GHB in an
unethical way... but, that doesn't mean that there were and are
no practical uses for GHB, or its precursers as sold by
Pelchatlabs.
Last but not least... GHB does not cause fatal comas. Saying that
GHB overdoses kill people is misleading.... because it implies
that people who use the drug normally, in reasonable amounts...
or even people who maybe take a little more than they should
are likely to end up dead. This is frankly, incorrect. Saying this
is like saying that alcohol is a poison, and that drinking vodka
causes poisoning and risk of death. Although, both claims are
based on real problems associated with extreme excess
consumption of either alcohol or GHB... no one would accuse
Smirnoff vodka of selling a dangerous and deadly product... or
punish a distributor for selling brewery equipment from another
country. Alcohol, when taken is excess can cause alcohol
poisoning, which leads to all the same symptoms of GHB
overdose including coma.... very few people who overdose on
GHB and end up in a "mild" coma die, and most wake up within
2-3 hours, and are fully recovered the next day (roughly 9999
overdoes out of 10,000 fall within this category). Alcohol
poisoning on the other hand can be much more serious, and at
least 0.5% (1 case in 200) result in death.
In both cases, an affected person is much more likely to die from
indirect causes due to their impaired judgement (driving a
vehicle, passing out in a bathtub, drowning in their own vomit,
ect...) than they are from the intoxicating agent itself.
Alcohol producers advertise similar things about their
products... Voldka and Beer is advertised with with wild parties
and college kids having a good time, Baileys and Rum are
advertised as being relaxing and soothing or as an aide to
intimacy. GHB advertising is no more misleading than that. The
affects promoted are accurate, and the claim of safety is equally
truthful providing it is used by consenting adults in safe and
reasonable quantity, in a safe place (not in the drivers seat of a
car, or other dangerous places for a person to be intoxicated).
The DEA made GHB and other drugs illegal for the same
misguided and knee-jerk reasons it had for prohibition of
alcohol in previous decades. The difference now, is that other
more dangerous drugs that should be illegal (and are) are
causing horrible social problems in America. Drugs like crack
cocaine, and crystal meth are terrible, and no one would argue
with the merrits of the DEA led war on them. People now
assume that the DEA wouldn't outlaw a drug if it wasn't bad like
those more common drugs they have been battling for years.
This unfortunately leads well meaning people to write articles
like this. If GHB had been around in the days of prohibition, it
would have caused the same uproar that alcohol prohibition
caused.
In many parts of Europe, GHB is legal. It causes far fewer
deaths, and much lower cases of addiction than alcohol. In
parts of Germany and France, it is used as an anesthetic on
infants, because it is more natural than synthetic drugs and
carries fewer risks of complications.
GHB is so natural a part of the human body, that in fact is the
biggest and most valid reason for it to be illegal.... yet it is the
least often mentioned in stories like this. When a person
overdoses on GHB, it takes less than 4 hours to fully metabolize
from the time of ingestion; In less than 2 more hours from that
point it is totally undetectable in a toxicology report. Even if a
person dies before that 4 hour or the following 2 hour window is
up, it is not traceable 6 hours after ingestion. This makes it a
very dangerous tool for the deviants in society who would use it
to co-erce women into sexually compromising situations... or
someone who wants to commit murder by causing a person to
ingest GHB before they drive, would potentially get away with it
because the result would look like an accident, and the driver
would appear to have been sober and simply was unable to
control the vehicle.
Those are good reasons to make it illegal... I see no reasons to
propagate bad ones... and punish the person who sold the
materials from which to make it!