Fake ecstasy deaths: People feel abnormal not doing drugs

There are more warnings about fake ecstasy tablets after a teenager died in Dunbartonshire on Tuesday.

Police now believe the deaths of 17 people in Scotland and Northern Ireland could be linked to a batch of dodgy pills.

Melissa and Jamie are both 18.

They believe "almost everyone" in their small town experiments with dangerous Class A drugs.

"You're actually abnormal here if you don't take them," they say.

"You could pick anybody in this street and they'll all have taken them. That's how bad it is."

Alexandria is a small town in a rural area around Loch Lomond, half an hour west of Glasgow.

Melissa believes many young people take drugs because the nightlife is pretty quiet.

"There are just a few small pubs around here," she explains. "You have to go to Glasgow if you want a proper nightclub."

'Hallucinations'

An 18-year-old girl from the town has become the seventh person to die recently in the region after taking a pill, known as Green Rolex.

It gets its name from the crown symbol printed on it, which is identical to the Rolex watch logo.

It is sold as ecstasy but doctors have called it "unstable, unpredictable and extremely dangerous".

"Hundreds of my friends are taking ecstasy and Green Rolex," admits Melissa. "They're just small pills, you get white ones and green ones and pink ones as well."

The most recent victim is believed to have taken the drug with friends with three of them treated in hospital.

Melissa says she knows them but never takes ecstasy herself.

"People mostly take it when they're having parties in houses," she says. "That's how they get in the state they're in."

Jamie admits he tried ecstasy once but didn't like it and hasn't done it since.

Superintendent Grahame Clarke from Police Scotland has asked users not to take Green Rolex and says it's not clear what's in the pill.

"You wouldn't take a drink out of a bottle if you didn't know what was inside it," he says. "So why take the risk with an ecstasy tablet?"

Doctor Richard Stevenson, who works in A&E at Glasgow Infirmary, says: "People have been taking Green Rolex, thinking it's ecstasy.

"It causes quite a lot of hallucinations, can start aggressiveness, but it progresses into quite a serious syndrome where people fall unconscious and they can suddenly die."

Police Scotland announced on Wednesday that they had recovered a large stash of the pills at a property in Aberdeen.

Another haul was found in Ireland, they said.

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