The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) yesterday said that 6-methoxy Methylone has been found in illegal drugs commonly known as “poisonous coffee” or “poisonous milk tea” sachets.
Police have found illegal drugs hidden in sachets of instant coffee or milk tea during raids in recent years and the FDA said it has assisted law enforcement agencies to examine the substances found, identifying the mixtures.
Among 14,550 items the FDA examined between 2010 and August, about 90 percent were illegal drugs, with the majority being ketamine — accounting for about 87 percent — followed by cathinones.
It said that drugs identified in the items included 15 cathinones, eight active ingredients from marijuana, eight phenethylamines, two tryptamines, two benzodiazepines, a non-barbiturate and a piperazine.
FDA official Wang Der-yuan (王德原) said that gas chromatography and mass spectrometry tests of a “poisonous coffee” sachet seized by police recently showed the presence of 6-methoxy Methylone — the first time the substance has been detected in a sachet in Taiwan.
“It seems similar to synthetic cathinones [commonly known as ‘bath salts’], so we guess it is also a stimulant that targets the central nervous system,” Wang said, adding that while the toxicity of 6-methoxy Methylone is unclear, it is likely to cause respiratory depression, rapid breathing, increased blood pressure and hallucinations.
The FDA urged people to say “no” to unknown substances from unknown sources and be on the alert when entering recreational sites where people are likely to possess illegal drugs.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching