Molly, Bath Salts cited as most commonly used drugs among Ultra Music Festival attendees
It is no secret that drug use is extensive in dance and festival culture. Last year, researchers from the Center for Forensic Science Research & Education set up shop outside of Bayfront Park to take a closer look at the types of drugs attendees smoked, consumed or snorted during the week of Ultra Music Festival. There were two important findings. First, (voluntary) participants “were very open” pertaining to their awareness of the drug scene and drug use; of 145 young adults, 72 percent admitted to having used either marijuana, cocaine, molly or ecstasy that weekend. Second, more often than not, festival attendees were blind to what was actually in the drugs that they took. Of the 104 urine samples taken, more than 80 percent tested positive for either molly or “gravel,” a synthetic bath salt that was the cause of 21-year-old Adonis Peña Escoto’s death last Spring.
While some of Ultra’s fans may be quick to criticize the study of further raising the drug problem, the researchers assure that their intention was to better understand “some of the newly emerging and potentially dangerous new drugs popular in the [electronic dance music] community.”
Barry Logan, director of the Center for Forensic Science Research & Education, recently sent the results of the federally funded study to Miami Mayor Tomás Regalado, who was far from pleased. Despite the large sums of money that Ultra reels in each year, Regalado hopes to do away with the festival to prevent even greater tragedies since 2014’s security guard trampling and the death of a young fan.
However, it should be noted that Logan stated that his study could not be fully accurate as the representative sample pool was “less than one tenth of a percent of the tickets sold for the festival.”
Via: Miami Herald
Categories: News