Timothy Appleby, Globe and Mail, Nov 22 1997

KNOCKOUT
Alarm bells are sounding as the use of date-rape drugs in the U.S. spreads northward..

As grim headlines about date-rape drugs appeared across the Southern United States in 1995 and 1996, Metro Toronto police looked on with some alarm.

"We were bracing ourselves," recalled Staff Inspector Ken Cenzura, who heads the force's member sexual-assault squad. "We're well aware of the near-epidemic they had."

Thus far, no comparable flood appears to have occurred in Canada - even as abuse in the United States spreads steadily northward.

But a lack of national data, along with the notorious difficulty of detecting such drugs, makes it hard to be sure. So too does the perennial distinction between a rise in crime and a rise in reported crime, particularly when it involves sex offences.

What is clear, from anecdotal but persuasive evidence gathered by police and urban rape-crisis centres across the country, is that while there have been just a handful of convictions, the rapist's Mickey Finn is surfacing with regularity.

"We're seeing it," Staff Insp. Cenzura said. "We've had two in the last couple of weeks, and there was one a few months ago."

Three drugs have drawn particular attention. One is the sleeping pill Halcion, available by prescription, and used as a knockout drug by a Toronto man who was described at his January sentencing as "arguably the most pernicious and persistent serial rapist in Canadian history."

The second is a street drug --- legal in Canada --- named gamma hydroxy betyrate (GHB) that can be purchased in some health-food stores; or mixed up from a recipe found on the Internet.

And the third is the colourless, odourless sedative Rohypnol, with its amiable-sounding nickname "roofies." Manufactured by the pharmaceutical giant Hoffman-LaRoche Ltd. and sold in more than 80 countries, Rohypnol is not legally available in Canada or the United States, but rather is smuggled across the Mexican border by the boxful.

Whether by rapists or other drug abusers, the illicit use of Rohypnol has become a public-relations nightmare for Hoffman-LaRoche in the United States.

In the case of all three three drugs, the thread that runs through victims' uncertain accounts is of amnesia: Memory blackouts accompanied by a gnawing sense that something awful occurred.

"We've had 10 or so cases in Toronto in the past two months that are very suspicious, but this is very difficult to get at," said Mary Addis, director of the Women's College Hospital sexual-assault centre in Toronto.

"There's been enough of an increase over the past couple of years for us to notice," echoed Lorraine Parrington of the sexual program at Winnipeg's Klinic Community Health Centre, where she is aware of 20 to 25 cases in that time.

"We are concerned," said Kathi Cridland, director of Saskatoon's Sexual Assault and Information Centre. "We have had victims come in who know they are definitely missing chunks of time."

Kathy McIntosh, co-ordinator of the sexual assault centre at the Hotel-Dieu Grace Hospital in Windsor, Ont., gauges that she sees one such case a month, perhaps reflecting the proximity of Detroit.

"People are coming forward more than they used to," she said. "I don't believe that it's happening more, though for a long time I was the only one in Ontario who seemed to be hearing about it."

But after a local newspaper story this spring, Ms. McIntosh fielded inquiries from as far afield as Nova Scotia and McGill University in Montreal.

In Calgary, too, alarm bells have rung, manifest in police seminars where officers are taught about roofies and other drugs.

Rohypnol has also reportedly surfaced at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, B.C., and elsewhere in the province.

Experts stress the difficulty of detecting date-rape drugs in the hours or days after an assault. Women who have been attacked commonly delay reporting their trauma.

"People wake up and can't remember what happened," Ms. Addis said. "They think, 'I must have drunk too much.' And often it takes coming in and talking with our nurse to sort it out and find out that the alcohol wasn't the issue at all."

As well, drug screening, by necessity, is highly specific. Unlike an airport X-ray machine that can scan everything in a suspicious suitcase, drug testing involves hunting for a particular substance in a blood or urine sample.

Rohypnol, for instance, is a benzodiazepene, in the same family as Valium, Librium and Halcion. As such, it has similar qualities, although its potency is about 10 times that of Valium. But without a Rohypnol-specific test, its presence will not register.

Hence the caution of pharmacist Joel Mayer, who leads the toxicology section at Toronto's Centre of Forensic Sciences. "There's something going on, anecdotally it's there, though we have not seen a dramatic increase" he said of date-rape drugs.

'But our experience may not uncover the true picture. We have not done complete testing on all cases, and we have not had all the cases come in. So we have a very skewed and limited sample here."

Few suggest Canada is yet mirroring what has happened in the United States, notably Florida, Texas and California, a mounting outcry about date-rape drugs prompted President Bill Clinton to sign special legislation last year, imposing up to 20 years imprisonment for possessing Rohypnol for a criminal purpose.

The law's impact has been limited, said assistant state attorney Bob Nichols of Broward County, Fla. While Rohypnol use in Florida has leveled off, elsewhere it appears to be on the rise.

"In the United States and Europe, it's growing," he said. "Absolutely. It's slowly working its way up to New York and Connecticut and New England. And in England, Scandinavia and Germany, it's becoming a huge problem."

In Canada, Rohypnol is listed under Schedule 4 of the Controlled Drug and Substance Act, which in April consolidated and replaced earlier legislation. That makes it an offence to import or traffic in Rohypnol, but stops short of outlawing simple possession.

Mr. Nichols, who recently tried to get Rohypnol reclassified in Florida as a dangerous Schedule 1 drug, voiced astonishment at the leniency of Canada's law.

"Beware Rohypnol. The Latest Rape Drug," warns a recent pamphlet from the University of Toronto's faculty of nursing. And indeed, wariness is about the only defence against the small, flesh-coloured pills, which retail on the street for $2 or $3. They are also used as recreational drugs, and to combat drug hangovers.

Battling an avalanche of bad publicity, Hoffman-LaRoche has for months been working at the costly task of changing the pill's colour to green, worldwide, and adding a coating to make it dissolve more slowly.

It has also been actively working with sexual-as-assault counsellors, said Beth Wanlin, manager of public relations for Hoffmann-LaRoche in Canada, contending that her company has been given a bad rap.

"What we have learned through our own investigations is that it is quite clearly not Rohypnol that is the problem." Ms. Wanlin said' (contradicting a colleague in her office who described Rohypnol "the drug of choice, for people who want to abuse it." 'There are other drugs that are being used in this fashion."

As proof, Ms. Wanlin cites: some US statistics Over a 14-month period in 1996-97, a nationwide project by Hoffman-LaRoche tested the urine of 345 women who feared they had been sexually assaulted after being surreptitiously drugged.

Just four tested positive for Rohypnol.

But there were questions about that test, conducted at a lab in Mississippi, and chief of the was the issue of timing. How fresh or stale were samples?

"Rohypnol has a half life of up to 36 hours or so," Ms. Wanlin said. "You'd probably have 2 1/2 to 3 days to catch it."

Mr. Mayer the pharmacist disagrees.

"Twelve hours past the ingestion, you're looking at a diminished likelihood of detecting it," he said. "Beyond 24 hours it gets very difficult, if not impossible."

Investigators face other hurdles.

"A lot of these woman aren't going to the police, and part of it is because they've blacked out for much of it they don't have any details," said Ms Parrington of Winnipeg. "People talk about vague images, and some people seem to gain a little more [clarity] over time. But without a memory of the event, how do you go forward to the police? And how can they investigate?"

Where there have been prosecutions --- chiefly in Ontario --- the evidence has sometimes been horrifying .

The case of murderer Paul Bernardo was one: Halcion was used to drug Karla Homolka's sister Tammy, before she choked to death on her vomit.

Another involved Toronto serial rapist Selva Subbiah, jailed in January on 23 concurrent 20-year terms for drugging and raping scores of young women. He too used Halcion.

So did Brampton rapist Edward Robinson, jailed in August for 14 years for a string of similar offences. This month, a 21-year-old Toronto man was charged with sexually assaulting a 14-year-old girl, who told police he spiked her drink at a party. In that instance, the drug BHG, in liquid colourless form, has been cited.

BHG is also suspected in another Toronto incident this month, which saw a young woman drugged and then attacked by a man she met at a downtown dance club.

"She describes remembering bits and pieces of the evening," said Detective Jane Wilcox of the sexual-assault squad. "She indicated to us that something was in some juice she drank."

Caution must be the watchword, Det. Wilcox said. "Don't leave your drink unattended, and don't accept drinks from anyone but the bartender. It used to be 'Watch my purse.' Now it's 'Watch my beer.'