MIAMI, Fla. — Saliva samples taken at Miami’s Ultra Music Festival are expected to help doctors across the country and possibly stop drug deaths, experts said.
The results could help keep concertgoers safe at the annual Electric Daisy Carnival this fall in Orlando.
Related story: Expert offers warning signs for parents to tell if children are on drugs
A group of volunteers walked the sidewalks near the Ultra’s Music Festival, looking for anyone willing to participate in research about designer drugs.
“We don’t associate with the police, it’s totally anonymous and free,” a volunteer said.
The volunteers collected saliva, urine and blood samples.
The street research is funded by tax dollars through a grant by the National Institute of Justice.
Dr. Barry Logan said his group was one of the first to spot the rise of the drug flakka.
9 Investigates found out the dangerous drug has caused hundreds of deaths in South Florida and caused problems for police on Central Florida’s Space Coast.
“Right now in the U.S. there's new drugs appearing every couple of months some of them are benign but some are pretty dangerous,” said Dr. Barry Logan.
Last year, the group said it found a hallucinogen, ethylone, that put emergency rooms on high alert for overdoses that many doctors hadn’t seen.
“We can figure out what new drugs are appearing on the street. We share that information with emergency rooms, EMTs emergency medical services, epidemiologists. poison control. It helps them understand some of the adverse reactions in their ERs,” said Logan.
One concertgoer said many who take drugs, know the risks of taking something synthetic that could be mixed with unknown compounds.
“A lot of times if you do buy something, you think is Molly, it’s going to turn out to be bath salts or something that's going to really harm you if you take too much of it,” said a concertgoer.
The group’s mission is to nail down what people are specifically taking and pass along that information to doctors in Florida and across the country.
“If we find people voluntarily using them on their own, that's one way to collect information (rather) than to administer drugs in a study kind of setting,” Logan said.
There was one reported death at this year's Ultra Music Festival, but the man's obituary said his death was caused by complications from a seizure.
Cox Media Group
