LSD Found on 2 Students at Vista Junior High

Sheriff’s deputies in Vista arrested two junior high school students Thursday on suspicion of possessing and selling the psychedelic drug LSD, raising concern that the vanguard hallucinogen of the 1960s is making the rounds among a new generation.

Arrested were two students at Lincoln Middle School, ages 13 and 15. They were not identified because of their age. Possession and sale of LSD are both felonies.

Sheriff’s Deputy Perry Templeton said that at least two other students at the school are believed to have used the drug and that he is unsure how many others may have tried it or purchased it.

An 8-Hour Trip

“I talked to one girl who said a friend of hers took a dose and went on an eight-hour trip. She said she looked at a heavy-metal poster on her wall, and the guy (in the poster) was talking to her. It freaked her out,” Templeton said.

The synthetic chemical is put on quarter-inch-square pieces of paper, perforated on the edges like postage stamps. Each piece, known as a “tab” or “blotter acid,” is marked by a symbol, such as a half-moon, a star, a diamond or a three-leaf clover. Generally the tab is wrapped in aluminum foil to preserve the chemical.

Each dose sells for $3 to $5. It is taken orally, either by licking or chewing the paper.

Templeton said the arrests Thursday occurred on the school campus after deputies were alerted by the school’s staff to suspicious activity. The 13-year-old was arrested on suspicion of selling the drug to the 15-year old who, in turn, was arrested on suspicion of selling it to a third student.

Patricia Campbell, principal of Lincoln, said the school’s staff heard rumors of LSD circulating in North County last year and flyers were passed out to parents to alert them.

“We’re a very pro-active community in dealing with drugs,” she said. “We’ve had a lot of training and intervention work, and we certainly have experienced marijuana, crystal methamphetamine and the rest, but this is the first incident I can think of involving LSD. I had never even seen anything like this before.”

Resurgence of Drug

Ronald D’Ulisse, a special agent and spokesman for the federal Drug Enforcement Administration in San Diego, said his agents have seen a sudden resurgence of LSD in recent months.

“Two years ago, there was no LSD around. But now we’re hearing about it in the schools and finding it on the streets. We’re encountering it more and more.”

The manufacture of LSD, or lysergic acid diethylamide, requires sophisticated knowledge of chemicals and is not known to be made in San Diego County, D’Ulisse said.

The most dangerous element of making the drug, narcotics officers say, is the possible inhalation or absorption of the drug by the maker.

LSD, which is not physically addictive, effectively “scrambles the signals within the brain so that, when the eye sees something and the ear hears something, the signals cross and you can ‘hear’ the color red and ‘see’ music, for instance,” D’Ulisse said.

“Some people say that it’s ‘mind expanding,’ but what it is is a fundamental and profound chemical alteration of the brain,” he said.

The psychotic effects on the user vary among people, D’Ulisse said. It can spark aggressive behavior.

High Can Last 2 Days

The drug takes effect in 30 to 60 minutes. Its effects typically last more than eight hours and, depending on the dose, for as long as two days.

Templeton said the source of the LSD in Vista is unknown, adding that the investigation is continuing and that more arrests are possible.

Templeton agreed that LSD has not been prominent in recent years and that arrests are rare.

“There are some narcotics officers who haven’t even seen LSD,” Templeton said. “But, if we’re finding it now at the middle school level, I think we’ll be seeing more of it.”

Templeton said that, at a meeting of narcotics officers statewide last fall, an officer from San Francisco said that he had seen a resurgence of LSD on his city’s streets but that other narcotics agents in California reported they hadn’t seen the drug for years.

Just two months ago, Templeton said, officers reported making LSD arrests in the Los Angeles area--at about the same time that officers in San Diego started hearing street talk of the psychedelic drug showing up in San Diego County.

“But it wasn’t something we had verified until now,” Templeton said Thursday.