Tourists overdose on drugs, fun in Goa

GOA, India — The peaceful, fun-loving and tourist-friendly image of India’s western beach state of Goa has suffered a major blow after a new police report pointed to at least 59 “mysterious deaths” of foreign tourists in the past 15 months.

Twenty-five of the visitors died in a three-month period — the peak tourist season between December 2003 and February 2004 — and many suspect most of the deaths were caused by drug overdoses.

“Up to 10 foreign tourists had died here almost every year, and it hardly made any news. But this time the toll was sensationally high,” said David Lobo who runs a restaurant at Calangute, a beach popular among foreign tourists.

Although police linked only five deaths to drugs last year, activists campaigning for a “clean and drug free Goa” believe that overdoses of heroin and a killer cocktail of other drugs openly available at local pharmacists caused the “mysterious deaths” of 59 foreign tourists.

A Goa Medical College forensic medicine specialist, who asked not to be named, said that because of “inordinate delay” by police in collecting the viscera from bodies of dead tourists, traces of ketamine were going undetected.

Since the “plasma half-life of ketamine is just 2 to 4 hours, the viscera [in cases of suspected ketamine deaths] should be collected soon — if possible within 24 hours of death. But in as many as 90 percent of cases, this [doesn’t happen] … making detection of traces of heavily decomposed ketamine in the viscera difficult.

“In quite a few cases, tourists admit in their dying statements to have taken ketamine. But later, forensic experts fail to find any of the drug in the viscera after death, obviously because of a delay in collecting the viscera. … In such cases police cannot link the death to ketamine.”

Ketamine hydrochloride, or ketamine, was originally used as an anaesthetic for American soldiers in the Vietnam War. It resurfaced as “Special K” in the 1990s, and became popular at rave parties, used with cannabis, heroin, cocaine and Ecstasy.

“Under the influence of ketamine, which gives its users an ‘out of body’ or ‘near death’ feeling, some tourists dived into the sea without knowing how to swim, and died. Later, police registered them as ordinary drowning deaths,” said Joel De Souza, a restaurant owner in Anjuna, another popular beach in Goa.

Of the 59 foreigners who died, the largest number, 28, came from Britain. Ian Hughes, the British deputy high commissioner in Bombay, visited Goa recently to meet with police officials, members of narcotic squads and doctors at Goa Medical College to discuss the deaths.

About 20,000 British backpackers visit Goa every year, far outnumbering tourists from other countries. It could be one reason why nearly half the drug fatalities in Goa are from Britain.

An officer at police headquarters in Panaji said: “Some professional British drug traffickers have probably started operating on this circuit, smuggling ketamine and other drugs to the UK and other European destinations. Only a few ‘small fries’ have been caught, but it is only the tip of the iceberg.”

A federal Narcotics Control Bureau official from New Delhi said: “Because of the well-publicized crackdown on drug cartels in Thailand last year, the price of heroin and other drugs shot up there. So, in recent months an increasing number of foreign drug users have switched to Goa and Manali, where they find a variety of drugs easily available in the underground market.”

Manali is a hill station in the northern Indian state of Himachal Pradesh, the gateway to the Himalayas.

In the last three months, Goa’s Food and Drugs Administration seized ketamine and methamphetamine worth about U.S. $10,200 from four unauthorized pharmacists around Goa’s popular beaches.

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