University Medical Center EMS said they saw about a dozen people with calls relating to synthetic drugs on Thursday.
Typically, UMC EMS said they were seeing about 2 to 4 patients a day with synthetic drugs recently. Chad Curry, the training chief with UMC EMS, said they credit the decrease to law enforcement and the District Attorney’s office for their enforcement of the City of Lubbock’s ordinance.
“We’ve actually seen a decrease,” Curry said. “A lot of that is credited to the Lubbock Police Department, to the Lubbock DA, Matt Powell’s office has done a great job helping us combat those by shutting down those selling it inside the city. With the city making it illegal to have and sell it inside the city limits, in Lubbock and Lubbock County.”
The changing compounds in the drugs can make it hard to deal with for the medical field.
“That’s not uncommon, because what we’ll see is they will change the elements that are in it, the components that are to it, and they can get it back in the smoke shops for a little while,” Curry said about the large number of patients on Thursday.
Curry said these drugs can be harmful when they’re used. “We’ve seen up to 106 degrees on somebody’s core temperature. That’s bad for your brain, your kidney, all of your organs at that,” he said.
“We train everyday on the things we see, the cardiac arrest, the heart attacks, the stroke, drugs are no different, but we try to keep our staff as up to date with the newest that’s coming out on the market that we know about,” Curry said.
