Date-Rape Drug... Learn about it!

This report appeared on Asiaone online news story.
It tells about the dangers of receiving a business card from strangers while
you are the lone driver in your car.
I have received many emails with different angles to this story but all stressed the same thing...
" Be extra careful about strangers offering you their business cards which could be laced with
this powerful chemical or drug. "

ASIAONE / NEWS / ASIAONE NEWS / MALAYSIA / STORY

Mon, Apr 19, 2010 New Straits Times

Emails on rape drug 'make sense'
By Ben Tan

JOHOR BARU:
Ever heard of burundanga?
It's not the name of a bird but a potent date rape drug. Stories about the drug are spreading like wildfire in cyberspace through the personal emails of Malaysians and Singaporeans.

The forwarded emails are of victims or near victims of rapes and date rapes that warn the public to beware of criminals using business cards laced with burundanga.
Most of the time, the forwarded emails gave a scenario at the carpark area at popular hypermarkets in major cities, especially here at night.

It starts with a stranger coming up to a victim, usually a lone woman, and knocking on the driver's window on the pretext of giving her his business card.
When the victim winds down the window and takes the burundanga-soaked card from the man, she begins feeling dizzy and numb mere minutes later. The man will follow her car closely and take advantage of her once she loses consciousness.

However, the emails also have different variants where the victims managed to drive away, but still feel faint or with some even sounding their horn loudly in panic.
Johor police chief Datuk Mokhtar Shariff said like many other stories and urban legends circulating in cyberspace, the burundanga emails played on the public's fear.
"Most of the time they tell of alleged close calls with the criminals and not actual crimes.
They are mainly an 'entertaining' sort of cautionary tale."
Mokhtar said state police had not received any reports with regard to burundanga.
But he acknowledged that the emails did serve a purpose in that it was a warning.
"It has a lot of common sense whereby lone females should not accept anything, including business cards, from strangers," he said, adding that the public must learn to exercise due caution.

The drug from South America is known to achieve its "zombifying" effects by inhibiting the transmission of nerve impulses in the brain and muscles.
Victims who fall for this are believed to have no memory of what happened to them.
Burundanga is the street version of a pharmaceutical drug called scopolamine. It is made from the extracts of plants in the nightshade family.

It can induce symptoms of delirium such as disorientation, loss of memory, hallucinations and stupor.n powdered form, scopolamine can be easily mixed into food or drinks, or blown directly into victims' faces, forcing them to inhale it, which makes it an ideal date-rape drug.
In developed countries, the drug has several medicinal uses and has also been used as a "truth serum" by law enforcement agencies.

It has also been used as a blackout drug for crimes such as robbery, kidnapping and date rape.
In South America, burundanga is used in popular culture as a traditional potion to induce a trance-like state in shamanic rituals.
Reports of the drug's use in criminal activities first surfaced in Colombia during the 1980s and peaked in the 1990s.