LAKEWOOD — Beware the Pez dispenser. One in four people arrested for using the designer drug known as Ecstasy keeps the drug, which comes in tablet form, in a Pez candy dispenser, while others keep it in candy bags, said Ocean County First Assistant Prosecutor Terrence Farley, director of the Ocean County Narcotics Strike Force.
“It’s crazy paraphernalia,” Farley told a group of 45 school nurses and 30 emer-gency medical technicians at a May 25 program on street drugs. The program was hosted by Kimball Medical Center and held at the Eagle Ridge Golf Club.
The U.S. Drug Enforcement Adminis-tration’s Internet Web site describes Ecstasy as a stimulant with hallucinogenic properties, the psychedelic effects of which can last between four and six hours. Ecstasy is also known as (methylenedioxy-methamphetamine).
Many Ecstasy users carry pacifiers, Farley said. The drug is made of caustic chemicals that can tense one’s jaw muscles, he explained, so users often suck on a pacifier to keep from grinding their jaw.
While Ecstasy is one of the most widely used illegal drugs in the Northeast, it is not as prevalent as marijuana, which is “the No. 1 drug of choice in the United States” and the nation’s “No. 1 cash crop,” Farley said.
“We’re no longer the wheat belt or the citrus belt of the world,” he said. “We’re the marijuana belt.”
Today’s marijuana abusers shun joints (smaller cigarettes) and instead smoke the drug in greater quantities in blunts (large cigars) that come in a variety of flavors,” Farley said.
After placing the marijuana into the cigar or into rolling papers, many people dip the joint or blunt into embalming fluid to add to the hallucinogenic effect of the drug, even though the fluid is a known carcinogen, he said.
“I have a five-page medical warning that comes with this [embalming fluid] when it goes to funeral homes” for its appropriate use, Farley said. “That’s how dangerous it is.”
Children have figured out a way to smoke marijuana at home and escape detection by using soda bottles and dryer sheets, he said.
The street drug program was hosted by Kimball Medical Center as a community service, said Joe Hicks, the hospital’s executive director.
“This is one of the ways we reach out to the community to offer the expertise we have,” Hicks said.
Lakewood EMS worker Crystal Van de Zilver, one of the event’s attendees, said she accepted Kimball’s offer so she could learn more about the latest street drug trends.
“I want to gain knowledge of what’s out there and what people are using,” she said. “I want to keep up to date.”
— Fraidy Reiss