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Excerpts from: Embalmed Cigarettes Gain Popularity

                     by JOANN LOVIGLIO, Associated Press [07/26/01] Embalmed Cigarettes Gain Popularity

To read a detailed study about this problem, please click here:
"Fry:" A Study of Adolescents' Use of Embalming Fluid with Marijuana and Tobacco

                     PHILADELPHIA (AP) -- Embalming fluid is becoming an increasingly popular
                     drug for users looking for a new and different high -- one that often comes with
                     violent and psychotic side effects.

                     Users -- mainly teen-agers and people in their 20s -- are buying tobacco or
                     marijuana cigarettes that have been soaked in the fluid, then dried. They cost
                     about $20 apiece and are called by nearly a dozen names nationwide, including
                     ''wet,'' ''fry'' and ''illy.''

                     ''The idea of embalming fluid appeals to people's morbid curiosity about death,''
                     said Dr. Julie Holland of New York University School of Medicine. ''There's a
                     certain gothic appeal to it.''

                     ''Whether they live in a million-dollar house or a $5,000 house, kids who are
                     smoking pot or crack and are looking for a different type of high are turning to
                     wet,'' said Julie Kirlin, a juvenile probation officer in Reading, about 50 miles
                     from Philadelphia.

                     Embalming fluid is a compound of formaldehyde, methanol, ethanol and other
                     solvents. The high depends on what the user is really getting: Often the drug PCP
                     is mixed in. In fact, PCP has gone by the street name ''embalming fluid'' since
                     the 1970s.

                     Twenty Houston-area users interviewed for a 1998 study by the Texas
                     Commission on Drug Abuse said the effects include visual and auditory
                     hallucinations, euphoria, a feeling of invincibility, increased pain tolerance, anger,
                     forgetfulness and paranoia. Stranger symptoms reported include an
                     overwhelming desire to disrobe and a strong distaste for meat.

                     Other symptoms may include coma, seizures, kidney failure and stroke. The high
                     lasts from six hours to three days.

                    In the Philadelphia suburb of Doylestown, a 14-year-old boy fatally stabbed a
                     33-year-old neighbor more than 70 times last year after smoking wet. The boy,
                     who said he took wet to quiet the voices in his head, is serving a seven-year
                     sentence.