Health warning on new party drugs: ‘The potential for overdose is really elevated’

Three dangerous party drugs that have never been seen in Australia have been found on our shores, as a teenager continues to fight for life after overdosing at a Flemington music festival.

Three dangerous party drugs that have never been seen in Australia have been found on our shores, as a teenager continues to fight for life after the mass overdoses at a Flemington music festival.

The drug-checking service CanTEST identified three unknown substances in June 2023, and new Australian National University research has now revealed they were actually compounds that mimic MDMA and ketamine.

Professor Malcolm McLeod said the drugs identified in their paper were concerning as little was known about them.

“Relatives of these types of compounds have been associated with overdose,” he said.

Multiple partygoers were hospitalised after overdosing at a Flemington music festival. Picture: TikTok

“Sometimes non-fatal, but some­times fatal, unfortunately.”

Professor McLeod said they found what was thought to be an “ADHD drug” actually contained a new variant of a dangerous class of chemicals – linked to several of those who overdosed at Flemington – called cathinones.

“The second substance we analysed, which the client believed to be a ketamine-like substance, was, in fact, a new type of benzylpiperazine (BZP) stimulant often used as a substitute for MDMA,” he said.

“As for the third one, we later identified the drug to be a new phenethylamine drug known as propylphenidine – a category of stimulant drugs.”

The Health Department revealed on Friday that the nine revellers who overdosed at the Hardmission festival developed life-threatening hyperthermia after taking MDMA in a hot environment, but confirmed some also had other synthetic drugs in their system.

Three had methylone, pentylone and dipentylone, which are cathinones.

Professor McLeod said the ANU findings were also concerning because in each case in the study, the client thought they had a different drug.

“The potential for overdose is really elevated if you have unexpected substances,” he said.

“They could have different effects, they could have a slower onset, so you might say ‘Aah, this isn’t working, I’m going to take a bit more.”

Professor McLeod said they had not seen the new drugs again, so they did not appear to be “widespread”.

However, he could not rule out the possibility they were circulating in other places, including Melbourne, and pointed back to their previous discoveries, such a new Ketamine-derivative in 2022.

“That has now appeared elsewhere around the country – in Queensland and in Melbourne,” he said.

One of the cathinones found at Flemington – dipentylone – had also previously been found at CanTEST, in 2022.

“We put out an alert to the community back then,” Professor McLeod said.

He said while they warned about unexpected substances when they first tested the drugs last year, the new research was the first to identify their true nature.

“Probably 10 to 15 per cent of samples that come through our door at CanTEST are discarded,” Professor McLeod said.

It comes after a Western Health spokesman confirmed on Monday that a female in her late teens from the Flemington rave remained in a critical condition. Three men in their twenties, who had been in a critical condition at Royal Melbourne Hospital and St Vincent’s Hospital, were downgraded to stable on Sunday.

All other patients linked to the mass overdose have now been discharged.