Spiking of drinks, a grave threat for students’ security

Spiking of drinks, a grave threat for students’ security

Mangalore Today News Network

By Dr. G. Shreekumar Menon

Mangaluru, Sep 1, 2025: College and university campuses are often regarded as high-risk zones because of the risky behaviours of some students present on the campus. Nowadays partying is a common occurrence among students for a variety of reasons, ranging from birthday celebrations to weekend parties. Any student out enjoying a drink at a party or a club is at a high risk in these settings. It’s tough to determine how prevalent drugging is because it’s an understudied area.

An offender may spike someone’s drink to lower their defences and make it easier to commit a crime against them. Estimates suggest that one third of drink spiking incidents are associated with sexual assault. The use of alcohol and sedating substances by rapists is a centuries‐old practice. Today, numerous legal and illegal drugs can be misused and covertly added to beverages in a social setting. Many of these substances when combined with alcohol will have their effects magnified. Drink spiking is illegal, whatever the intent. It also involves slipping prescription or illegal drugs (such as benzodiazepines, amphetamines or GHB – also called liquid ecstasy) into an alcoholic or non-alcoholic drink.

“Drink spiking”, is defined as “the unsolicited addition of a drug to a drink consumed in a social setting” is relatively common, not only among students but among all sections of society. Spiking – giving someone alcohol or another drug without their consent or knowledge – has recently emerged as a source of public safety concern.

In parties and clubs, there is an over-inflated sense of safety despite being in a new environment and there is also the opportunity of easy access to alcohol, which can turn out to be an ideal setting for a drug facilitated sexual assault.

Ultimately, girls may not know for certain that they were drugged, or what they were drugged with.

Alcohol because of its easy availability is commonly used to spike both non-alcoholic and alcoholic drinks, making the drink stronger than the drinker expects. As a depressant, alcohol slows down the messages from the brain to the body causing slower reflexes. Drugs like Rohypnol, Gamma Hydroxybutyrate (GHB) and Ketamine are all known as “date-rape drugs”. Like alcohol, these drugs cause drowsiness, sedation and sometimes amnesia.

There have been a number of publicity campaigns in recent years to raise the awareness of drink spiking. Emphasis should also be laid on how excess alcohol consumption makes people more vulnerable to assaults and injury. Since alcohol consumption is legal in all States, except Gujarat, it is an ever present danger, and students are at high risk.

India is the world’s third-largest market for alcoholic beverages, with an estimated value of $35 billion. The spirit segment, which includes whisky and rum, is expected to grow. Indians are drinking more than ever. One in seven Indians in the 10-75 age group use alcohol, a 2019 government survey found. Rapid urbanisation, rising income, easy availability and changing attitude towards alcohol and lifestyle are contributing to growing consumption in India. India’s high spirits consumption makes it the third-largest market—after China and Russia—for alcoholic beverages in the world, with an estimated value of $35 billion.

The per capita consumption of (pure) alcohol in India was reported at 5.7 litres a year in 2016, up from 4.3 litres in 2010 and 2.4 litres in 2005, a 2018 WHO report said.

Total consumption—considering only drinkers—is 14.6 litres a year.

Spiking induces sleepiness, weakness and reduced ability to walk and move. Victims will often wake up confused and with memory loss. Therefore, consuming a spiked drink can lead to girls becoming an easy target for rape, sexual assault or theft. There are several signs that can alert someone to whether they have been drugged, including: difficulty in breathing, feeling drunk despite having little or no alcohol, nausea, dizziness, blurred vision and waking up with little or no memory.

Most of the modern synthetic drugs are colourless, tasteless and odourless, making it impossible to detect if the drink is spiked. For example, Rohypnol is a Benzodiazepine used to treat insomnia or as an anaesthetic. It also causes drowsiness, dizziness, slow reflexes, loss of motor control and amnesia for up to 12 hours. 

Ketamine is another anaesthetic used to spike drinks. This drug causes relaxation, dizziness, detachedness, slow reflexes and hallucinations for up to two hours.
 
There is no one fool proof way to understand if a drink has been spiked. Benzodiazepines are detected in a significant number of drug facilitated sexual assaults (DFSA). The absorption leads to altered mental state, drowsiness, confusion, slurred speech and lack of co-ordination.

While blood and urine from the victim are routinely analysed, due to the delay in reporting DFSA cases and the short half-lives of most of these drugs in blood and urine, drug detection in such samples is problematic.

Samples of blood (for blood alcohol level) and urine (for analysis of drugs of misuse) are normally taken in DFSA cases. The samples are analysed for blood alcohol level and the presence of any of the following: cocaine, amphetamine, cannabinoid, opiates, methadone, benzodiazepines, ketamine, diphenhydramine, GHB and rohypnol.

Although there are inadequate global estimates on the non-medical use of pharmaceutical opioids, tramadol has been reported in many countries from West and North Africa and the Middle East; while hydrocodone, oxycodone, codeine, tramadol and fentanyl has been reported in North America, as being used for DFSA, according to the UNODC.

Another danger arises from Non-Medical Use of Prescription Drugs (NMUPDs) which means consumption of a prescription drug without a doctor’s prescription or non-compliance with the prescription guidelines.  The UNODC reports indicate that the last decade has experienced increased availability of substances in the drug markets and the growth of a dynamic market for NMUPDs. Data from UNODC shows that NMUPDs exceeds many illicit drugs and is ranked second after cannabis in some countries.

Due to the social stigma, most cases of DFSA are not reported, creating more problems for law enforcement, and thereby helping the perpetrators to easily escape from the clutches of the law. Educational authorities should ensure that drug awareness classes focus on the dangers of spiking, and the need to alert the police, if such cases are suspected.

 

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Dr. G. Shreekumar Menon, IRS (Rtd), Ph.D. (Narcotics)

Former Director General of National Academy of Customs Indirect Taxes and Narcotics & Multi-Disciplinary School Of Economic Intelligence India; Fellow, James Martin Centre For Non Proliferation Studies, USA; Fellow, Centre for International Trade & Security, University of Georgia, USA; Public Administration, Maxwell School of Public Administration, Syracuse University, U.S.A.; AOTS Scholar, Japan. He can be contacted at shreemenon48@gmail.com