JEDDAH, 21 October 2006 — A little advice: if you’re stopped by police with a stash of illegal drugs and you decide to get rid of the evidence by consuming it, make sure the requisite drug overdose isn’t going to kill you. A young man in his 30s could have used this advice before consuming an entire bottle of Captagon pills after stopping at a queue of vehicles at a checkpoint near Madinah, according to a report yesterday in the daily Al-Madinah. Nervous that his stash of illegal stimulant would be discovered, the man consumed them after being asked to step out of his SUV for a search. Captagon, the commercial name for the controlled stimulant fenetylline that is illegal to posses in the Kingdom, is fatal in large doses. Captagon is one of the more common illegal drugs used by youths as an “upper”. Abusers of the drug can exhibit symptoms similar to those apparent in abuser of amphetamines, including a nervous and twitching appearance, shortness of breath and dilated pupils. Exhibiting these symptoms, the man collapsed as he stepped out of his vehicle. He was pronounced dead on the way to a hospital.
